Governor of Victoria, Her Excellency Professor the Honourable Margaret Gardner AC
COUNCIL & STAFF
PRESIDENT
Mark Bagally FVAS TREASURER
Raymond Barro EXHIBITING
Bruce Baldey VAS
Meg Davoren-Honey OAM VAS FVAS
Lucy Maddox
Nathalie Anne Henningsen
Gino Severin
Liz Moore Golding VAS
D’Arcy Rouillard NON-EXHIBITING
Rosemary Noble HON FVAS
Ron Smith OAM HON FVAS
MANAGER & SECRETARY
Kari Lyon
EDUCATION & PROGRAMS
COORDINATOR
Lucy Taylor Schmitzer MEDIA & EVENTS ASSISTANT
Hannah Hotker GRAPHIC DESIGN
Catherine Jaworski GALLERY ASSISTANTS
Sam Bruere
Catherine Jaworski
Rhiannon Lawrie
Oguzhan Ozcicek
Joshua Rushin
Lucy Wilde
CONSULTANT
Anne Scott Pendlebury HON FVAS HONORARY HISTORIAN
Andrew Mackenzie OAM HON FVAS VAS
MAGAZINE EDITOR
Bruce Baldey VAS
MAGAZINE DESIGNER
Catherine Jaworski
The VAS Magazine is printed through the Office of the Victorian Artists Society. Opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the VAS Council or the editors of this magazine. Articles from members will be appreciated. Contributions will be published on a strictly honorary basis and no payment will be made. The Victorian Artists Society acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which we meet. We pay our respects to Elders, past and present, and the Aboriginal Elders of other communities.
As you enter our building at 430 Albert Street and turn to the right, you are immediately in what we today call our ‘Cato’ Gallery.
It is a bright, well lit and beautifully proportioned space measuring 17’ 8” by 36’ 2”on the old scale, with a small alcove at one end, and tall windows at the other, which look out onto St Patrick’s Cathedral.
In this era we watch passing electric vehicles- but in the early days all one could see from the large windows were the tops of umbrellas and parasols as the Eastern Hill residents strolled by; and the horses and carriages making their way down to the ‘Paris’ end of Collins Street.
When the Society’s gallery complex was designed back in 1891, the plan was that this room would be used as the ‘Club Room’ and the alcove was to be partitioned off into what was known as the ‘Gentlemen’s Reception Room.’ And so it was.
Before looking further at the Cato’s pleasing features, it might be a good time to talk about the history of this small gallery, although actually not all that much has ever really been recorded.
But what we do know, is that it was shaped over the years by several significant, occasionally eccentric but always interesting characters.
Let me introduce you now to just a handful of them – the most distinguished, disreputable and renowned ones, who influenced the formation of this charming exhibition space and the roles they played during our first hundred years.
PART ONE – THE BEGINNING AND EXPOSITION
The Juvenile Hero
Mr. Richard Speight, Architect
Speight was all of 25 years old when he won an Australia wide competition to design a purpose built Gallery complex for our Society in Albert Street in 1892/3.
There were around twenty other contestants who all sent in excellent plans, but this young man, already with a reputation for American influenced design, was voted the successful recipient of the winning money. The story goes that Richard’s parents travelled to Melbourne from Western Australia for the award presentation, but it was reported that some sort of financial dispute surrounded the family and they were forced to bestow on their son loving and congratulatory wishes before making a hasty return to the West. Inspite of this temporary hindrance Richard continued
to pursue his career throughout Victoria. His father had been a great supporter of Richard’s architectural work, initially helping to finance his 1891 ‘Winfield’ Building at 487 Collins Street, a magnificent example of young Speight’s Federation Queen Anne style for which he became most well known.
However, our building ‘American Romanesque’ in style, was one of the young architect’s totally independent and most successful projects and his hand drawn plans and renderings can be seen today, proudly framed and hanging within our building.
So by 1893 our Society finally had its own home. It had been a prosperous year and extra activities had even extended to organized Musical Evenings, held for the pleasure of members and visitors alike.
And so the amateur musical talents of many members as well as a soon-to-be professional teaching space launched the VAS into a new era of entertainment upstairs, and serious music tuition downstairs.
Notoriety and financial security were now well assured.
Original floorplan of the Cato Gallery designed by architect Richard Speight
PART TWO – THE RISING ACTION AND CONFLICT
The Principal Antagonist Professor George William Louis Marshall – Hall, Professor of Music
English born George Marshall – Hall, arrived in Melbourne in 1891, around the time plans for our building were being finalized, to take up the position of the first Ormond Professor of Music at the University of Melbourne.
Controversial composer, music teacher, orchestra conductor, husband, father and ego driven womanizer, Hall settled in Melbourne when he was still relatively young. From the beginning he ruffled many academic feathers and quickly became a notorious figure within the Melbourne music scene. He was clever and well qualified, but his teaching methods and style of lecturing were unorthodox and disorganized by the set standards of the University Faculty. He formed his own orchestra and fostered friendships with the likes of composer Percy Grainger, a number of local writers and several of our early ‘Heidelberg’ painters, (who at this stage, were busily exhibiting down at the Buxton Gallery in Collins Street.)
He also gained a reputation for writing the most eyebrow raising poetry – mainly erotic verse which
caused deep concern within the University precincts.
Marshall- Hall had leased premises on the corner of Rathdowne Street and Victoria Parade in which to run his Conservatorium –which although not part of the Parkville campus, was nevertheless still part of the University of Melbourne. Although student enrolment was strong, his tutoring skills and directorship were questionable and he was a divisive figure stirring up dissatisfaction and resentment amongst the other staff members.
Needless to say, when his short lease expired, the University did not rush to support Marshall –Hall’s search for another building. In 1897 he was forced to go out on his own and find another suitable area to lease – one with a longer tenancy and more space.
Now this is where the Victorian Artists Society becomes involved.
By sheer coincidence, his quest came at a time when the newly built Society needed additional funds and it was decided to place a ‘TO LET’ sign in the window of the Club Room facing Albert Street.
Encouraged by his friendships with several artists now installed in our purpose built complex, Professor Marshall – Hall applied
for this tenancy and was successful. So in July 1897, the ‘Marshall Hall Conservatorium of Music’ moved into our building at 430 Albert Street. Time passed, but unfortunately as the Marshall Hall Conservatorium was still under the auspices of the University, complaints about the Professor continued to pour in. Firstly, his syllabus and teaching methods were all over the place. Secondly, the poetry he wrote was erotic and in the poorest taste and finally, doubt was cast on his moral suitability to lecture young students – particularly young women. However, as the Albert Street music studio was leased in his name it appeared he was entitled to remain on the premises.
Although idolized by his young female students who were not one bit put out by his manner of teaching or the content of his poems, eventually Marshall – Hall’s time with the University came to an end. The Music Faculty had definitely had enough.
The name ‘Marshall Hall’ was removed from all associations with the Albert Street Conservatorium and by 1900, a new Professor was in charge and the new name up on our building was simply – The Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. And so an eventful musical era came to an end- but not before a famous and controversial diva in her own right Dame Nellie Melba began to make regular teaching appearances at Albert Street.
She was pleased to support the new Director and a more disciplined curriculum.
As the decade progressed along with the appointment of yet another Head of Music Franklin Peterson, the Diploma and Degree courses gained better professional recognition, and Madame Melba’s singing classes raised standards and attracted significant attention.
In 1908, the Christmas edition of the VAS Magazine, created a little pre Christmas excitement amongst both artists and the musicians from the Conservatorium.
It highlighted a posting that read“there exists a rumor, that Arthur Streeton and his wife are shortly to return to Australia…”
The Cato Gallery
There was much talk amongst art, music and literary circles- Streeton and the other VAS painters had formed strong and personal alliances and friendships with many local writers and musicians over the years – so the return to Melbourne of one of the Society’s significant figures was an event to be welcomed.
The Conservatorium continued successfully for several decades more, undergoing further changes of name as well as leadership along the way.
Years passed, but by March 1952, the VAS decided to take back its Club Room space and the Conservatorium ceased to exist in its original form.
The aim of once more taking control of this space was to offer the Society a special gallery in which a collection of ‘Permanent’ paintings and sculptures could be housed.
The room was also to be used for Council Meetings- a practice which continues today.
PART THREE – THE RESOLUTION AND CONCLUSION
The Old Hero Doctor Edwin Cato, Philanthropist
Edwin or ‘Bunny’ as he was fondly known, was one of many children – the son of the dynastic Cato family who established the Moran and Cato chain of grocery stores throughout Melbourne in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
They were a well known family and all the children were exceedingly clever.
The two boys, Alec and Edwin attended Wesley College Melbourne both successful in their respective fields of study. Today Wesley holds a large and valuable collection of Australian art in its ‘Alec Cato Collection’ – thanks to the ongoing generosity of these two young men.
Mosaic windows in the Cato Gallery
Edwin became a surgeon but was also an accomplished ‘amateur’ painter and member of the Victorian Artists Society.
He was a dapper flamboyant figure, a brilliant medico and raconteur, possessing great wit and genuine charm. He was also a well known philanthropist, champion of Australian art and certainly one of the Victorian Artists Society’s earliest benefactors.
In the late 1950’s after supporting the development and refurbishment of the former Conservatorium studio a few years earlier, Dr Cato initiated a Watercolour Prize – to be awarded annually.
It was unconditional and non acquisitive, and the prize of one hundred pounds was to encourage painters of watercolour – his own chosen medium.
Over the years recipients included- Erik Thake, William Frater, Nornie Gude, A.W Harding and Shirley Bourne amongst many others.
In 1964, this gallery was re named the CATO – as a token of the regard and affection the VAS held for their benefactor.
After the death of Dr Cato in 1966, his widow graciously and generously continued the award annually for several more years.
The ‘Permanent’ collection of paintings quickly outgrew the Cato Gallery where it was originally intended to be housed, and better use of this gallery was now found by hiring it out to individual artists, small groups of painters and outside hirers.
Today it is still in great demand as both an exhibition and meeting space.
In winter it is bright, warm and cosy, and in milder months it offers a comfortable venue which looks out onto the greenery of the Albert streetscape.
The original fire place and chimney has been built in and the ‘servants’ bell on the eastern wall was disconnected long ago.
Around 2005, the room was painted a deep, almost
vermillion red but the colour failed to impress, and the familiar neutral Antique White was very quickly reintroduced.
The original leadlight panels in the windows designed and installed by Messrs. Brooks, Robinson & Co. back in 1893, are still in perfect condition, allowing the south west light to shine through just as it did well over a century ago.
So-
I think this brings me to the end of my version of the Cato story.
There were of course many others who were involved in its management over the years- other Directors of Music, Presidents, Gallery Convenors, Councils and the artists themselves.
But when I tell the story of this gallery to new members and visitors, I particularly love relating my favourite anecdotes involving the optimistic young architect, the notorious music Professor, eccentric Madame Melba and the old Doctor who gave so generously – each year presenting the Cato Prize in the little gallery which still bears his name today.
Oh and by the way –
Here’s a quote you may like from one of the very early music students studying in the Cato-
“..they, (the studio artists,) painted to our scales and we sang to the smell of their turpentine.”
(From ‘The Conservatorium of Music – An Historical Essay by Peter Tregear, 1997 A University of Melbourne Publication.)
Expressions of Emotion
Joy Hester
1920 - 1960
J‘What you have to be is not just one more Picasso or Miro, but yourself.’
Joy Hester, 1939
words Ian Hobbs
oy Hester’s short but extraordinary life features in films, plays and books.
Fascination with her story as a member of Melbourne’s bohemian Heide Circle in the mid-1900s long overshadowed critical appreciation of her artwork.
Today, though, Hester holds a firm place in the canon of Australian art.
Rendered quickly in ink and watercolour on paper, her images are bold, distinctive and radical in content, unique at the time, and it was the freedom and intellectual milieu of untutored life classes at the Victorian Artists Society as a teenager that sparked the first flush of experimentation.
From those early days, Joy Hester focused on the human face as a vehicle for portraying life experiences and relationships in all their complexities and ambiguities, presenting the universal themes of birth,
Image of Joy Hester
love, sex and death at an individual level, eliminating sentimentality. Not the Australian inland or myth-making for Joy.
As Heide Museum curator, Kendrah Morgan says:
‘Hester was showing female experience and personal and emotional states of being. It was too much for audiences at the time.’
The drawings are psychological in nature - visual expressions of the subject’s feelings - and may seem challenging to the point of unsettling at first, difficult to interpret, an acquired taste. In light of this imagery, it is unsurprising that she also penned over 200 poems.
Marginalised by the art patriarchy, Hester sold very few works in her lifetime. A young Patrick McCaughey, later a noted art historian and academic, spoke as a lone voice in the wilderness, when in 1966 he commented:
‘Her art reveals and exposes the tenuous fabric of human relations and aspirations with sympathy and warmth… radical simplification of the face to eyes and mouth gives these drawings their vitality.’
In the 1980s, curator Janine Burke’s retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria ignited interest that would eventually see Hester join fellow Heide Circle members, Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan and John Perceval as key contributors to Australian modernism, the cultural movement born of a reaction to world wars, industrialisation and social uncertainty in the first half of the 1900s.
What motivated Hester’s analysis of pain and suffering, love, loss, motherhood and identity?
Well, her short bio might give a clue or two.
Joy lost her alcoholic father at the age of 12, endured a stormy relationship with a mother who disapproved of her artistic lifestyle and left home at 17 to intermittently live with Tucker, then a life drawing class monitor at the VAS, before
marrying him during World War 11.
Financial struggles, multiple affairs and the inconvenient birth in 1944 of a child, Sweeney, fathered by a well-known Melbourne musician it later transpired, strained her marriage and restricted time to create.
She considered separation shortly before doctors diagnosed Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 26. Given two years to live, Hester immediately left Tucker and placed toddler Sweeney in the adoptive care of wealthy close friends and benefactors John and Sunday Reed, founders of the Heide artists’ haven at Bulleen, before heading to Sydney with her lover, artist Gray Smith. Joy had talked of a loose adoption arrangement with the infertile Sunday some years earlier, the terminal-illness diagnosis in 1947 merely fast
tracking the plan in a variation of the divided-heart dilemma that faces mother artists.
In another twist, returning to Melbourne after a year she had two children to Smith despite medical advice and unexpectedly lived in remission until relapsing in 1956. Four years later Joy died, just forty years old having found happiness and greater artistic freedom with Smith.
Hence the nature of the drawings, and the films, plays and books!
Hester’s oeuvre consists of a number of themes - including World War 11, Dreams, Faces, Love, Lovers and Childhood - reflecting responses to her internal and external worlds by portraying how the body feels rather than what it looks like.
Lovers (II), Joy Hester, 1956, brush, ink, watercolour, NGA
The Love series (1949-50), painted when Joy was settling down with Smith at Hurstbridge and entering remission, and Lovers (1955-56), gain most appreciation.
Faces can share an eye and mouth in the Love drawings, the male is shadowy, while sometimes looks of both desire and disquiet highlight the ambiguity of intimacy from a female perspective - is it passion or possession? Separated faces in the Lovers group extend depiction of the conflict between love and identity. In the book Joy Hester, Burke says love is affirmed in the images, but ‘the attempt to define oneself, to gain autonomy, meant rupturing the wholeness of the couple.’ Love and Lovers’ questioning of roles charted new territory in the mothers-are-homemakers 1950s.
Expressing these emotional states, Hester alluded to Picasso, Munch, the German Expressionists and Surrealists but essentially followed her own path, littered as it was with poverty, domesticity and illness.
She was a founding member of the Contemporary Art Society in 1938, (an organisation that held its formation meetings at the VAS), the only female member of the social-realist group Angry Penguins and held three solo exhibitions in her lifetime, all unsuccessful, partly because inks on paper rated lower than oils on canvas.
Given the stark nature of her works, it’s hard to imagine that Joy was the life of every gathering, possessing a ‘feminine, extroverted spontaneity’ according to one associate. Joie de vivre, you might say!
Sadly, she could reach very few through her drawings though and knew it at the end.
Joy Hester’s particular use of the face as a metaphor for the human condition had to wait decades for recognition.
Love I, Joy Hester, 1949, brush and ink on paper on cardboard, Heide Museum
Untitled, Joy Hester, from the Love series, 1949, brush, ink and pastel, NGV
Australian Impressionism
words Dr Mark Dober
For a century, iconic Australian artists Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts, Charles Conder, and several more of their colleagues were known as the Heidelberg School. Today these same artists are generally known as Australian Impressionists. Over time, a name change occurred. For what reasons, and what is the significance of this re-branding?
It was in 1872 that a Parisian critic responded to a sketchy painting by Claude Monet titled 'Impression: Sunrise', coining the term Impressionism. Monet’s painting was in a group show of artists who wanted to make paintings that engaged directly with the modern world. These artists were positioning their work in opposition to the ‘machines’ of the Salon: largesized and dark studio paintings with narrative content. The new Impressionist painting emphasised the artist’s personalised experience of seeing rather than the details of the subject; it was an art of immediacy and movement, of candid poses and compositions. The play of light was expressed in the use of broken and complementary colour, usually mixed with a considerable amount of white. Black was avoided, and the tendency was to abstain from dramatic contrast of tones. The paint was applied in short, thick strokes. Typically, wet paint was placed into wet paint, producing soft edges and intermingling of colour. The effect of these methods was a light toned and vibrant surface that was a celebration of experience.
Fast forward to Melbourne 17 August 1889 and a pivotal moment in Australian art history: the opening of the 9 x 5 Impression Exhibition. The show mostly consisted of small paintings on cigar box lids. Consistent with Impressionist methods, these had been made outdoors (plein-air). The young Australian artists, Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts, Charles Conder and Frederick McCubbin, would in time become household names. The newspaper review of the exhibition was critical of the ‘Impressionism’ on show. But at this time words like impression, impressionistic, and Impressionism were used interchangeably to describe any style of sketchy painting made in the landscape. Neither critic nor artists had French Impressionism in mind of which they were quite likely unaware. Instead, the primary influences on these artists were the work of James McNeill Whistler, who had shown his small nocturnes in his own 9 x 5 exhibition in London five years earlier, and the French tonalist and realist artist Jules BastienLepage.
In 1891 our aforementioned Australian artists were described by a journalist with The Australasian Critic as ‘the Heidelberg School’. He had named the group after the semirural area of Heidelberg where they had established one of their outdoor painting camps: the naming of the group as
the Heidelberg School came into popular usage.
At the same time, the description of their work as impressionist persisted. However, in the 1970s a reaction against describing the Australian work as impressionist, led by art historian Ann Galbally, set in. For the rest of the century our artists were referred to as the Heidelberg School. And then, by a process of rebranding led by the State galleries –a story both complex and intriguing but which I haven’t the space to set out here – the term Australian Impressionism came into general usage. Now there was no going back.
The term Impressionism, as applied to Australian art, itself underwent revision. For art historian Bernard Smith Australian Impressionism could be characterised as “a style devoted to the depiction of light” and he illustrated this definition with Streeton’s iconic 'The Purple Noon’s Transparent Might' (1896). (1)
I would however not describe Arthur Streeton's 'Purple Noon's Transparent Might' as an impressionist painting despite it being painted on location in high key and capturing the intense quality of the Australian light. 'The Purple Noon’s Transparent Might' is essentially a tonal painting and does not make use of chromatic colour or broken brush strokes, features characteristic of Impressionism. Streeton himself did not identify with Impressionism or its aims, and always referred to the art of his youth as the
Heidelberg School.
I believe that the re-branding of the Heidelberg School as Australian Impressionism has much to do with marketing. Both governments, which fund the network of public art galleries, and art institutions, are interested in seeing large attendances. Impressionism has excellent ‘brand recognition’ – it is the most popular art movement in history (2). So to label art as Impressionist is to maximise its attraction for audiences.
To brand art as Impressionist also lifts its prestige by linking it to an art movement that is significant to the story of an emergent Modern art. To view the work as Impressionist places it in a glamorous and progressive light. Other influential art movements of the time – like Aestheticism and Symbolism – that are far less well known and popular with the art-going public than Impressionism, have been accordingly played down. Naturalism - not at all a part of the trajectory of modern art as the history books describe – has mostly been written out of the narrative.
Today’s Impressionist brand has confused and weakened the identity of Impressionism. For the Australian context it is an unwieldly label incorporating too many varied styles and aims: the realist and tonal painting of Hugh Ramsay, studio made narrative works such as Tom Roberts’s The Shearing of the Rams, and the Post-Impressionist work of John Russell (who worked across styles, including his famous tonal realist
portrait of Vincent van Gogh).
Christoper Allen, art critic for The Australian, has argued that to describe the Heidelberg School as Impressionism is to diminish the originality and specificity of the Australian work. Allen has emphasized that their nationalist themes were uncharacteristic of French impressionism and are specific to the Heidelberg School. (3)
Endnotes
1 Bernard Smith, Two Centuries of Australian Art: From the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Thames and Hudson, Melbourne, 2003, p.45.
2 Exhibitions at the NGV which feature European impressionist or post-impressionist painting consistently achieve record numbers of visitors (the 2004 record for The Impressionists was broken by the 2017 exhibition, Van Gogh and the Seasons).
3 Christopher Allen, Distinct Impressions, The Australian, October 7 – 8 2017, Review, pp. 10 – 11.
The Purple Noon’s Transparent Might, Arthur Streeton, 1896, oil on canvas, NGV
Clouds
words JD Park
Who, What, Where, (1526 – 1530), Correggio
The myriad reflections on ‘cloudscapes’ range from the meteorological scientific to the imaginatively speculative. The writer must admit to a bias toward the former. However, in ancient times, clouds shared with the heavenly bodies, limitless imaginative conjecture. These experienced a romantic apotheosis in the late Renaissance and Baroque when they became the earthly reality of heavenly mystery. In paintings and on the stage, elysian figures appeared from the clouds and the earthly deserving were elevated into them.
All this changed in 1803 when a London quaker pharmacist, Luke Howard, proposed a scientific classification of clouds. This seemingly trivial event had far-reaching consequences for both the world of science and the artistic and intellectual Romantic movement. It even caught the attention of the polymath Johann von Goethe, arguably the greatest European mind of the eighteenth century. Goethe wrote poetry about the clouds and became an admiring correspondent of Howard.
Howard used Latin derivatives to name the three main cloud types, cumulus, stratus and cirrus. His ten derivative cloud names have remained substantially unchanged until the present time. Latin names gave his classification priority over that of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck whose groupings were in descriptive French. Along with John Dalton (of Atomic Theory fame), Howard believed that clouds were composed of water droplets and he is remembered as the father of modern meteorology.
The Romantic poets were quick to utilize the symbolism provided by these misty images.
“I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills”.
William Wordsworth (1804)
“I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.”
Percy Shelley (1820)
The artist John Constable became preoccupied with clouds and painted them on Hamstead Heath. Between 1821 -22 it is suggested that he painted about a hundred cloud formations, of which fifty remain. Many are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, donated by Constable’s daughter. Constable sometimes painted four in a day and called this activity ‘skying’. He paid great attention to the cloud structure and the paintings often had minimal landscape or none at all.
Constable’s ‘The Hay Wain’ is perhaps his most famous painting. The clouds are a major component of this image. After 1822 his clouds are even more dramatic and strongly recorded.
John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) was the most substantial figure in Nineteenth century British art criticism. In ‘Modern Painters’ he said,
“It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of all creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more, for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her.”
Modification of clouds, 1803, Luke Howard
The Hay Wain, 1821, John Constable
Clouds, 1822, John Constable
Rainstorm over the sea, 1824 -28, John Constable
The Oxbow, 1836, Thomas Cole
The great American landscape painter Thomas Cole visited London and viewed the clouds of Constable and Turner. He met Constable in 1829 and was influenced to paint dominating skies in his dramatic new world landscapes.
In modern times ‘cloudscapes’ have roamed beyond the boundaries of figurative painting, from the eleven ‘Sky above the Clouds’ images of Georgia O’Keefe (1960 –77) viewed from an aeroplane window to the dreamlike vision of flower clouds by Odilon Redon (1903).
The Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde has even reproduced the ionosphere with smoke and water vapour to recreate clouds as a museum installation. However, the modern John Constable is the eminent German abstract artist Gerhardt Richter who has been called the greatest living artist. In the ‘Wolken Series’ between 1968 and 1979 Richter recreated cloud images from photographs which have the impact of total reality in what he describes as ‘a random slice of nature’. We might observe that while clouds play a dominant part in the landscape, in our ‘landscape painting’ they are often relegated to a bit player. We are advised that if our landscape is complex, keep the skyscape simple. I have attended courses in landscape painting where clouds were never discussed. Even great landscape
painters like Claude Lorrain diminished the impact of his skies which were subservient to the detailed activity on the ground. We might do well to follow Constable’s example and give cloud formations our continued and studied attention.
It should be pointed out that of course clouds intrude less prominently into the Australian than the English landscape.
That clouds are not a prominent feature of Hans Heyse’s images, arguably the greatest landscape painter in Australia is not surprising.
However Sam Bruere and Liz Gridley recently reminded us at VAS AOTY that clouds are constantly on our horizon.
Above the Clouds, Georgia O’Keefe
Flower Clouds, Odilon Redon
Tempestuous Clouds, Sam Bruere
New Dawn, Liz Gridley
2024 Member of the VAS Hanson Little Foundation Coterie Program
Christmas Crackers
words Anne Scott Pendlebury HON FVAS
From the early days, the Victorian Artists Society has always produced a Newsletter in various forms.
Generally the contributions and articles were worthwhile and well written. But the Christmas/December editions frequently contained the most unusual, random and quirky notices – often from the President or Secretary…
Perhaps by years end, these good folk were worn to a frazzle and not always thinking straight.
Here are a few………
Triplets, Keming Shen
1893 December Edition
A Christmas message from the Hon. Secretary Mr. Bentley Young-
“..I heartily thank the Ladies and Gentlemen of the VAS who placed their musical talents at the disposal of the Music Committee during the past year in such a graceful way. And that’s final.”
1908 December Edition
“There is a rumour that Arthur Streeton and wife are returning to Australia, and we have recently lost a number of our members unfortunately..”
1964 December Edition
Under a Heading ‘ Jobs for Artists’
“ Mr. Frank S of Worri Yallock is looking for an artist who would paint some of his dogs..”
1965 Christmas Edition
The Secretary wrote:
“ We have little news. Some of it is not good.
Member Rita M ran a garden fork through her foot. Pulling it out was the trouble.
However Nellie G has won the Art Prize at Traralgon.
A donation of 5/- Per Double is requested for our Christmas Party.”
1967 December Edition
The President’s Christmas Message began –
“..Christmas is not a time to write about art.”
And as George Bernard Shaw said, “Art is all hocus- pocus” anyway.
1968 December Edition
The Secretary stated-
“..A reminder of our Christmas Party- Theme : ”Around the Camp Fire.”
During this year there have been more than four thefts of art works from the storeroom and the police have been called each time. This is a plea to members to collect their art works at the required time. The Entry Fee for the Christmas Party is $1.
1969 December Edition
The Office Announced-
“…There is no Christmas Party this year due to lack of interest and Subscriptions have been raised to $10.”
1979 December Edition
The Secretary stated-
“ We would like to thank unsuccessful candidates for Council, WP and NM for their interest in the Society’s activities.”
And finally from the 1985 December Edition
...a Paint Out to Remember. The Plein Air Convenor wrote in his Report:
“A Day Trip to the Queenscliffe Fort”
“..the bus (which took us) was a large Mercedes Benz with all the mod cons and we were treated to refreshments…
Some members went their own way to start painting. One was Ernest M, a regular Vics exhibitor…
He quietly passed away at the Fort- doing what he loved –painting.
….the return trip was smooth and everyone agreed the day had been very relaxing and enjoyable- if somewhat sombre.”
Greetings to All,
From
The Mistress of the Archives
AI, Art and Mosaic
words Brendan Weekes
The past year has seen a mix of hype and hysteria surrounding AI and ChatGPT in particular. Headlines such as “Attack of the Psychochatbot”; “AI will replace us soon”; “We don’t know what it means, but we’re scared”; “Chat GPT banned” dominate the dinner table, staff room and tabloid newspapers. And with good reason. Several countries have banned AI, Chat GPT and image generators outright: Russia, China (including Hong Kong), North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Italy (reversed), Syria and many others are considering doing so (Australia, Canada, EU, USA). Accenture, Amazon, Apple, Samsung, Spotify and several financial institutions in the EU and US have also banned employees from using ChatGPT and other AI chatbot software systems. The Philippines Government recently banned generative images and others will soon follow.
Why panic? Well, identity theft, social engineering, and phishing attacks are real concerns. AI image generators can also be misused to create false content that can fuel the rapid spread of online disinformation. AI image generators like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E could amplify cultural biases in gender and race, leading to reinforcement of stereotypes in mass media. It is vital for artists to understand these issues and to consider the impact of AI on their work.
What is AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to the development of computer systems that can perform tasks that have evolved with human intelligence e.g. learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, speech recognition, and language understanding. AI developers aim to create machines that can emulate human cognitive functions and, in some cases, surpass human capabilities in specific domains such as education, health, robotics, security and surveillance.
Types of AI include Machine Learning (ML) that uses algorithms (mathematical equations) to learn from data on the World Wide Web. Unlike a computer program that is programmed for a specific task, ML teaches itself via configurations and patterns that emerge from all of the data stored over the past three decades or more. For
Part One
example, AI ‘deep learning’ uses neural networks for image and speech recognition after learning repetitive patterns harvested from code that is freely available (open source). Natural Language Processing (NLP) models allow computers to ‘understand’, interpret, and generate human language and is used in chatbots, language translation, and text analysis. NLP is the basis of ChatGPT. Computer vision enables machines to interpret and make decisions based on visual data without written verbal input, and is used for image and video recognition, object detection, facial recognition, and driving autonomous vehicles. Robotics allows machines to perceive objects in the environment and ‘handle’ them, thus performing manual tasks in manufacturing, healthcare, and exploration. Expert systems are AI programs that mimic the decision-making abilities of a human expert in a specific domain by leveraging databases and ‘inference engines’ to solve problems and provide advice e.g. in virtual therapy. Other platforms include Reinforcement Learning that trains software to make decisions in game playing (chess), robotics, and AI vehicles.
Artists are not the only professionals questioning whether AI will impact their work. Bankers, doctors, teachers, surgeons as well as philosophers and policy makers also worry. In finance, AI is used for fraud detection, trading, credit scoring, and risk management. It is now routine for medical image analysis, diagnostic assistance, drug discovery, and personalized medicine. Pupils and teachers routinely use AI for automated grading, lesson planning, virtual tutoring systems and personalized learning. There is also growing interest in AI ethics within the law. Is AI intelligent?
Psychologists divide AI into two categories: Narrow AI (Weak AI) that is designed and trained for one task such as playing chess, voice and image recognition (including faces and speech) and General AI (Strong AI) to explain the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks - similar to human intelligence. So far, only weak AI is functional.
Weak AI requires less intelligence than strong AI. For example, ML depends on classification of patterns in
big data; reinforcement learning that connects data to the output of the program; and training these associative connections to achieve a level of performance that is 100% correct. As with the learning of any skill, feedback and repetition is mandatory. Human (general) intelligence also requires these skills, but supersedes the basic abilities of weak AI. For example, all humans can empathize, imagine, intuit, reason, share subjective experience (called phenomenology), understand (comprehend and self reflect) and have consciousness. Consciousness is a complex phenomenon that scientists have struggled to define and explain since the birth of humanity. Since we do not yet understand human consciousness, it cannot be classified as weak or strong. However, AI can be measured against other human abilities.
Reasoning involves manipulation of abstract symbols to solve a problem. The processes that we use for art, communication, language, logic, mathematics and hundreds of other abilities require this skill and, critically, humans can generate verbal explanations of their thinking. AI can do this too e.g. Chat GPT is a self-reporting question-answering algorithm. Some argue it cannot ‘understand’ abstract symbols (words) and so is not intelligent. Others contend that AI can reflect upon its own language and logic and is therefore capable of reasoning - at least at the verbal level (Kontos,
1992). Verbal refers to expression of abstract concepts in speech, algebraic symbols, notations used in music, song and literature. In nonverbal communication ideas are expressed without spoken language, signs or symbols. Although it seems obvious that visual art is a nonverbal medium, it remains an open question whether we can perceive artifacts, images and objects without symbolic knowledge and thus reasoning (Anapur, 2016; Pepperell, 2019; Todavine, 2024). Similarly, it is taken for granted that art requires a creative skill. But this poses the question: what is the creative ability that generates art and does this skill require human intelligence? This is an academic question that artists, historians, poets, philosophers, scholars and others consider to be central to understanding art. However, the arrival of AI has taught us that narrow intelligence is sufficient to generate images including paintings, portraiture and mosaics. Whether such images can be considered art is a debated issue (Danto, 2013) but that question is perennial and not at all unique for the history of art.
However, this question does raise two new questions: is AI creative and can we consider the products of AI an artform? We need to interrogate this question because the uptake of Bard, ChatGPT, Gemini and AI generative software increases in sophistication within nanosec-
onds, leading several observers, scientists and writers to argue that AI is creative e.g. the ability to produce images, music, prose and creative writing is not different to the human experience. One approach is to ask whether output from generative AI can be experienced as artforms? If the answer is negative then artists, musicians, poets, novelists and screenwriters can sleep in peace. If the answer is affirmative, the creative workers need to distinguish what their art is and what it is not (Danto, 2013). AI can then be judged as artforms against these criteria.
In the next bulletin, I will address questions specifically relevant to artists e.g. what is art? An old chestnut, but recently more prescient as we become embedded in a digital age. As I’m a mosaicist, I will discuss these questions using my own art but the issues are of interest to all. In Figure 1, I have re-produced two images. One is generated by AI and the other is my work. Which one is more authentic, creative, innovative, and unique? Which one is actually “real”.
NB. In Australia, the artist initially owns the copyright of their own work with the following exceptions: An image produced as part of the terms of employment is owned by employers.
Figure 1: An AI image generated by the prompt “AI represented as a mosaic” using DaVinci (November, 2023) and the same concept depicted by the author.
Book Review
words Bruce Baldey VAS
Charles and Barbara Blackman: A decade of art and love
by Christabel Blackman
Thames & Hudson Australia 2024, Hardback, 239 Pages Available from Amazon Prime $46.20 and Dymocks $59.99
“ … the Victorian Artists Society in Albert Street… was the last place that cutting edge artists would want to exhibit. The Society’s support of conventional, non-confrontational art was restrictive, inappropriately prudent and boring.”1
Hardly a ringing endorsement of the Victorian Artists Society you will agree. Such was the attitude of the Contemporary Art Society (CAS) when it was populated by John and Sunday Reed and their Heide coterie in the 1950s. The VAS however was the only independent art gallery available to artists in Melbourne at the time and so it was nothing if not ironic that our Gallery was chosen by the “Antipodeans”2 when the same circle of artists staged their reactionary exhibition in August 1959. Charles OBE (1928-2018), a member of that group, and Barbara Blackman AO (1928-2024) designed and printed the poster advertising that event. As the book’s subtitle suggests this is not a complete biography of the Blackmans; it is an account of the first ten years only of their romance and marriage and inspired by a rediscovery of Barbara’s diaries, photos and manuscripts by the author and her mother on
the occasion of Barbara’s 90th birthday. The author’s style can be excessively melodramatic and there is a surprising number of typos and misprints for a Thames & Hudson publication. Nevertheless it is an intimate account of the travails of lives in art. The exchange of love letters dominates the early passages of the book but ultimately it becomes the story of Charles’ rise and Barbara’s role as primary carer for their children during and after the privations of the interwar years, and Barbara’s own career as writer and professional model. Charles Blackman’s commercially successful Schoolgirl and Alice in Wonderland series comprise the majority of the more than 160 illustrations. His monochrome drawings and cartoons are peppered through the book. Visit Heide 1 at Bulleen , the original home of John and Sunday Reed at the top of the hill in the grounds of the Heide Museum of Modern Art, and discover some of the best examples of his charcoal and pencil drawings still hanging on those walls. The narrative develops further into a potted history of the Melbourne Moderns (Tucker, Brack, Nolan, Perceval et al.) and the resurgence of the modern art movement along the east coast of Australia in the 1950s. The Reeds were the first major collectors
of Blackman’s work and Heide and its circle of artists play a significant role. There is even a reference to Darwin and the brilliant Architect/artist James Birrell whose "insatiable intellectual appetite would be at a loss in a tropical outpost".3
However, setting aside such slights and the limited time scale of this book, it is still the most comprehensive account of the artistic lives of the Blackmans in print. Barbara Blackman was a writer, librettist, poet and an artist’s model who featured in many of Charles’s paintings and drawings. The Blackmans married in 1952 and divorced in 1978. Barbara was an arts patron and
philanthropist and in 2012 she was awarded the Order of Australia.
Footnote: Don’t miss Meg Davoreen-Honey’s tribute to Barbara Blackman on pages … of this issue.
References
1 Charles and Barbara Blackman Page 147
2 The Antipodeans: Challenge and response 1955-1965
John McDonald NGA January 2000
3 Charles and Barbara Blackman Page 101
Barbara and Auguste, Oil on board, NGV, 1957
March Hare, Crayon on paper, NGV, 1957 Sketch for the Alice in Wonderland series
Antipodeans Exhibition Poster, Charles and Barbara Blackman, 1959
VALE BARBARA BLACKMAN OA
1928 - 2024
words Meg Davoren-Honey OAM VAS FVAS
My dear friend Barbara Blackman died on the 4th October 2024.
She was an amazing person going blind in her 20s, but this didn’t stop her from embracing life and contributing to the world with her literary essays and writings.
She married an up and coming painter Charles Blackman and moved to Melbourne so Charles could paint. Barbara became a life model for some of the well known artists of the time, and also modelled for The Victorian Artists Society to help pay the rent and to help Charles.
To help supplement the income she also wrote essays and articles.
Barbara and Charles had 3 children and lived in London after Charles had won the Helena Rubenstein Art prize. Returning to Australia, Barbara continued her writing and
poetry eventually living in Paddington Sydney. Barbara was the inspiration for the Alice in Wonderland series and the School Girl collection.
After 27 years of marriage Barbara “resigned” from the marriage and moved to the NSW southern coast with her new French husband, Marcel Veldhoven, then to the Blue Mountains until her divorce and came to Canberra where she became a corner stone of the Art and Music Society.
Barbara was always supporting artists from all walks of life and donated very generously to the Canberra International Music Festival, ANU and the Australian art & music world.
In 2006 she was awarded the Australian Contemporary Music award for patronage and in 2012 she was honoured with an OA from the Australian Government. I had known Barbara for over 30 years and I will miss her wit and intelligence for ever.
Weaving
Their Magic words Linda Weil VAS
Down on Park Street in South Melbourne, just near the market, in the beautiful old 1885 restored Patross knitting mill building, you will find the Australian Tapestry Workshop (ATW). The only studio of its kind in Australia, it is also one of only a handful of studios worldwide that produce hand-woven contemporary tapestry. Established in 1976 at this site, ATW has created over 500 innovative and unique works hanging for nearly 50 years in significant public and private collections nationally and internationally.
Walk into the entrance shop and you are greeted by a wall of vibrant, multi-coloured yarns that have been dyed on the premises to a unique palette of 370 colours. Turn right
from the shop into one of the two dedicated gallery spaces and you will find the current 2024 Kate Derum and Irene Davies International Tapestry Award exhibition. (1 August – 18 October). This year’s exhibition displays 138 finalists of the two awards representing over 16 countries. A bi-annual exhibition, artists from around the world are invited “to submit small scale hand woven tapestries that reflect an expressive use of tapestry through material, concept, colour and design.”*
I was lucky to preview this wonderful display of small tapestry textile art and can highly recommend you visit. The variety of techniques, weaving styles, knots and creativity displayed by
the artists is amazing. Interesting shapes and forms as well as built up textures and raised areas, colours, tones and mixing materials make this exhibition a showcase for excellence in contemporary fibre arts.
Several works caught my eye – the eventual winner of the Kate Durham award, Anna Dunnill, Australia.
‘Gleanings (self-portrait)’is an outstanding work that incorporates silk, hemp, twined cotton, twined wool, waste threads, grass, hair, rice pearls, found metal loop, camelia petal bead, glass beads and a tiny stone from Williamstown beach! At 20 x 15cm this work is a gem. http:// annadunnill.com/
I really enjoyed ‘Ice 2’ by Jane Freear-Wyld of the UK which incorporates monofilament, beads and cotton weft on cotton warp, 30
Work on the two looms: “Welcome to Country - now you see me: seeing the invisible”
Beautiful colours of the yarns on sale in the shop
Ice 2, Jane Freear-Wyld, UK Gleanings (self-portrait), Anna Dunnill, Australia
x 20 cm. This work sparkles and shines like a frosty morning. www. janefreear-wyld.co.uk
Another work I delighted in is US artist Sue Weil’s ‘A Changing Landscape’ 2024, cotton, wool, tencel, 28 x 30.5 cm. I have followed Sue’s textile work for a while now, in fact, it was her works that piqued my interest in tapestry art. (Although we share a surname we are not related – as far as we know!) I enjoy the landscape feel she has achieved in this work, the sense of the ocean meeting a burnt California coastline, the subtle earth tones contrasting with the brilliant blues. Lines of earth, rivers and features are built up in raised woven areas to complete the effect. Wonderful. https://www. sueweil.com/
The ATW also features a large
workshop where you can observe ATW master weavers at work and look into the colour laboratory where the yarns are custom dyed for production. Currently on the large looms is an impressive work, “Welcome to Country - now you see me: seeing the invisible”, by the artists Maree Clarke and Mitch Mahoney. The design of this work incorporates microscopic images of river reeds from the Maribynong River and skeletal drawings of local native flora and fauna. Destined for the New Footscray Hospital, the tapestry will take a team of 10 weavers around 12 months on two looms to create the piece. The weaving team will draw from the ATW’s palette of over 370 coloured yarns sourced from Victorian farms and dyed on site.
I would encourage you to go visit this fascinating workshop, watch the weavers in action, admire the works in the Kate Durham/Irene Davies Award and enjoy this fabulous art space. All entries can be seen on their website, but you need to see them in real life to appreciate the textural delight in these works!
The ATW is in South Melbourne on 262 Park Street South Melbourne and there is plenty of street parking available, or at the South Melbourne Market.
The ATW is open to the public Tuesdays - Fridays 10am - 5pm Exhibition Dates: Thursday 1 August - Friday 18 October, 2024. You can also arrange for a tour upon request for groups of 4+ within the hours of 10am – 3pm, Monday –Friday. www.austapestry.com.au
CROSS WORD
Across
1. Art movement between WW1 and WW2, super realism (10)
7. Julian …. Art School, Sydney (6)
8. Art form that doesn’t attempt to represent reality (8)
11. Pen and … drawing (plural) (4)
12. VAS President 2008-2010, …. Waite (4)
13. Top art prize in an exhibition is …. in Show (4)
15. The ….., Rodin’s sculpture of Dante in contemplation (7)
17. Dutch Golden Age portraits often feature a high ….. at the neck (6)
19. Russian painter, Isaac Levitan, 1860-1900 (init) (2)
21. Scottish Australian artist … Fairweather, 1891-1974 (3)
23. VAS member …. Madyarova, rhymes with manor (4)
25. Art Deco came after Art …… (7)
26. London’s old fine art school is The ….., rhymes with played (5)
27. Name of one of the VAS galleries (4)
28. A ….. in Montmartre might have their portrait painted in the street (7)
30. …. at exhibitions are down at the moment, means selling (4)
31. Greek architecture has Doric, ….. and Corinthian orders (5)
32. Exhibiting a copy of someone else’s painting is ……, meaning forbidden (5)
33. Indigenous artwork is regularly displayed on the Sydney …. House sails (5)
34. Painters who have given up their art might be called …….. (2-7)
35. The name of a work of art (5)
Down
1. Picasso’s birth country (5)
2. Australian painter ….. Drysdale, 1912-1981 (7)
3. Van Gogh lost one (3)
4. VAS President …. Bagally (4)
5. The manner of an artwork (5)
6. Painting for a solo exhibition can cause a lot of ….., as in anxiety (5)
9. Klimt’s country of birth (7)
10. Colour named after an Italian Renaissance painter is ….. red (6)
13. Type of brush, means wide (5)
14. Flesh tone colour is a variety of …. tone, means epidermis (4)
16. Mexican painter, Frida ….., 1907-1954 (5)
17. Famous English landscapist, John ….., 1776-1837 (9)
18. A muse often becomes a ….., ie, a romantic friend (5)
20. A …… is a depiction of natural scenery (9)
22. Sothebys and Leonard Joel hold art …… (8)
24. VAS balcony singer Dame ….. Melba (6)
26. The posture of a human sculpture (plural) (7)
29. A deep blue colour is .….marine (5)
30. VAS identity, Anne …. Pendlebury (5)
QUIZ
1
2
3
4
5
Indigo is a hue of which primary colour?
What is added to fine pigments to make pastels?
How many stars comprise the Southern Cross constellation?
What is the shape of Pappardelle pasta?
“Warm” colours fall within which three sections of the colour wheel?
6
In what century were paint tubes invented?
7 Who painted the famous “Laughing Cavalier” (Holland, 1624)
8
The French artist Paul Gauguin is buried on which Pacific island group?
9
In modern architecture what is a dado?
10
Clarice Beckett often painted at sunrise and ….?
11
The Spanish artist Diego Velazquez (1599-1660) was born and apprenticed in which city?
12
13
Who won First Prize in the 2024 VAS Spring Exhibition
The work of which artist is exhibited exclusively on the top floor of the Prado Museum?
14 On which canal is the Peggy Guggenhiem Collection Museum located in Venice?
15 In which country did Constructivism originate?
16
What is the optical illusion whereby objects appear to diminish in size as they recede into the distance?
17
What is the name of the Japanese art of folding paper into sculptured objects?
18
Injalak Arts Centre is in which Australian State or Territory?
19 The landscape artist Hans Heysen lived and worked in which Australian State?
20 The Burrell Collection Art Gallery is located in which Scottish city?
21
What is the name of the famous Art Museum in The Hague which houses some of the best examples of the Golden Age of Dutch painting?
Answers on Page 38
Mrs Smith’s Trivia & the GBH Last Supper, Lucy Fekete
The Hylton Mackley
Artist of the Year
Docked and Loading II, Mary Hyde VAS, Artist of the Year 2024 Winner
Rendezvous at the Card Table, Sam Bruere VAS, The Udo Members' Choice Award Winner
Je Suis Qui Je Suis (I am who I am), Nathalie Anne, The Noel Waite AO Exhibitors' Choice Award Winner
FROM THE ARCHIVES
THE HAMMOND BRONZESCULPTOR OF THE YEAR AWARD 2024
During a career spanning 70 years, VAS member Stanley Hammond MBE was one of Australia’s most highly regarded and versatile sculptors. Hammond was born in Victoria in 1913 and was our esteemed VAS President in 1972. He gave to the Society several beautiful bronze sculptures which can be seen in the VAS foyer.
Among his many original designs, Hammond also left us with a number of small bronzes, mounted on marble blocks.
He designed these with the intention of them being given out as future awards.
They have been stored away for decades, and only since our recent renovations, have they been found.
For the first time since the inception of ‘Sculptor Of The Year’ an award is actually being presented to the winner – and this year it is D’arcy Rouillard. Now in 2024, it seems the right time to hand over an example of fine craftsman ship from our past, to a young emerging sculptor making her own way into our future.
Mine, D'Arcy Rouillard VAS, Sculptor of the Year Award Winner 2024
Hold You Now, Melissa Fraser
Along the Diamond Creek, Don James VAS FVAS
Osphranter Rufus, Linda Weil VAS
Dunescape Bass Coast, Adrian Johnson VAS
Morning Venice, Clive Sinclair VAS FVAS
Hammond's Bronze presented to 2024 Sculptor of the Year Winner D'Arcy Rouillard
From the VAS Collection
words Bruce Baldey VAS
Artist: Percy Alexander Leason (1889-1959)
Title: “Cape Schanck”
Cat.# 39
Date: c 1937
Donor: Max Alexander Leason (1930-2020) 1979
Medium: Oil on board
Size: 44cm W x 24cm H
Percy Leason (1889-1959) was not only a leading member of the tonalist movement of Australian painters in the circle of Max Meldrum (1875-1955 ), but also an acclaimed cartoonist and illustrator, and later, in the USA, a highly respected lecturer and writer Born in the western Victorian town of Kaniva the son of a local
Cape Schanck, Percy Alexander Leason, VAS Collection 1979
grain merchant, in 1906 Percy Leason moved to Melbourne to start a printing and engraving apprenticeship. He studied at the National Gallery School but left in 1910 to join the Victorian Artists Society. In the same year he exhibited at the VAS in the company of Jock Frater, A Bale, Fred McCubbin, Max Meldrum and Arthur Streeton. From 1914 to 1916 he served on the VAS Council. In 1916 he moved to Sydney and joined the art studio of Smith and Julius as an illustrator where he produced covers and cartoons for the Bulletin magazine. These offered a snapshot of life in the 1920’s capturing the spirit of rural Australia utilising Kaniva’s main street its social life and local characters. Among his contemporaries at Smith and Julius were William Dobell, George Lambert and Will Dyson. Leason returned to Melbourne in 1924 to work for the Murdoch press producing on average 3 to 4 drawings per week and painting plein air in Eltham and other outer Melbourne areas. By the late 1920s
the Meldrum group has established itself as a group of 25 artists including prominent members of the VAS such as John Farmer, Polly Hurry and Jim Minogue. The group was drawn together by Meldrum’s doctrine which was dismissive of all other approaches to art especially modernism. Meldrum stressed the 3 principles of tone, proportion and colour citing the essential irrelevance of line. Leason’s landscapes from this period demonstrate bold tones, a limited palette and large brushwork. “Cape Schanck”, the painting in the VAS Collection was possibly included in the 1937 Exhibition Leason held to raise funds when there was the prospect of work in America. There were 47 paintings including portraits and landscapes from Warburton, Cape Schanck and Eltham.
For personal and professional reasons Leason emigrated to the USA with his daughter in 1937 leaving behind a wife and family who were due to follow once he had established himself there. After 3 months he found freelance employment with a variety of magazines. The commission for the cover of the Wizard of Oz and the promise of more regular work was the trigger for his wife and family to depart Australia in August 1939.
Percy Leason never enjoyed a regular income in the USA moving house regularly during the war years with money a perennial problem; quite different to the 30 years of relative financial stability in Australia. Unfortunately his career in America coincided with the rise of the New York art world with its modernism and Expressionism e.g. Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning
In 1942 he held his first one man exhibition on Staten Island where the family finally had settled. His life then assumed some form of normalcy having secured an administrative role at the Staten Island Institute of Arts and
Sciences, lecturing and writing. After several years of ill health Percy Leason died on Staten Island in 1959 survived by his wife and 6 children
Postscript - The Donor: The Leason family became naturalised American citizens in 1945. The donor of “Cape Schanck” in our VAS Collection, Max Leason (Jnr) was the second son of Max Leason. Max (Jnr) was a veteran of the United States Air Force and served in the Korean War. He worked for the federal government at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and after retiring he went on to own “Rockville Art and Frame” in Rockville, MD (Maryland). In his free time, Max enjoyed painting, travelling abroad, gardening, and classical music. He died on June 22, 2020 aged 89 in Silver Spring, MD during the time of CoVid.
Source: “Percy Leason - An Artist’s life”, Margot Tasca Thames &Hudson Aust PL Melbourne, 2016 (available in the VAS Library)
Cover of The Wizard of Oz, 1939, Macmillan Publishing
Self Portrait, Oil on board, 1954, Castlemaine Art Gallery
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Answers
16. Foreshortening
17. Origami
18.
19.
20.
21.
10.
12.
13.
15.
1. Blue
2. Chalk fillers and gum binders
Five (5)
Flat and wide
Red-Orange-Yellow
19th Century
Frans Hals
Marquesas Islands (Tahiti)
The finishing of the lower part of an interior wall from floor to waist height
Sunset
11. Seville
Rodney Edelsten VAS
Francisco Goya (1746-1828)
14. Grand Canal
Russia (early 20th century)
Oenpelli (adjacent Kakadu National Park), Northern Territory
South Australia
Glasgow
Mauritshuis
Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands
Upcoming Exhibitions
8 Jan 2025 – 10 Feb 2025
VAS George Hicks Foundation
11 Feb 2025 – 24 Feb 2025
25 Mar 2025 – 14 Apr 2025
A Thousand Ways to Love – Acorn Banksia, Eucalyptus, Amaranthus, Celosia Cristata and Yellow Everlastings, Hsin Lin (cropped)
Textural Landscape with a Man and a Dog, Julian Bruere, 2024
Falco, Bird of Prey, Liz Gridley (cropped)
OUR SUPPORTERS
Eileen Mackley AM VAS FVAS & Hylton Mackley AM (HON) FVAS
The late Gordon Moffatt AM Noel Waite AO & The Waite Family
