National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Ocean to Outback: Australian Landscape Painting 1850–1950

Elise Blumann painted Perth’s Swan River and the native melaleuca trees of the region many times. Escaping the Nazi regime that devastated much of Europe, German-born Blumann came to Perth with her husband and two children in 1938. Educated at the Berlin Academy of Arts and the Royal Art School Berlin, Blumann was familiar with the modern art of the German Expressionists, Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky and Chagall. In Australia Blumann’s painting was unconventional, however her peers regarded her as a valued member of Perth’s artistic community. In Storm on the Swan Blumann uses broad sweeping gestures – strong horizontal and diagonal brushwork – to capture the power of a storm. Wind and rain beat against the limbs of the trees which appear to almost float in space. This dynamic and sensitive composition displays Blumann’s modern approach to her art and her desire to capture the ‘essential spirit’ of nature.1 Areas of the painting’s surface are blank, while others are scratched with the end of her brush to indicate sharp, fast, rain. This is a vigorous, physical and quickly executed work, a powerful response to the speed in which a storm can approach and pass. 1 John Scott & Richard Woldendorp,Landscapes of Western Australia, Claremont, Western Australia: Aeolian Press, 1986, p. 17.

By 1882 a railway had been constructed between Melbourne and the township of Box Hill, and in 1885 Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and Louis Abrahams first visited the area to paint. The artists set up camp on land owned by a local farmer and friend to the artists, David Houston.1 Along with other artists, including Arthur Streeton and Jane Sutherland, the group painted the local bushland. Roberts made a number of works in this area, such as his well known The artist’s camp 1886, while Streeton painted Evening with bathers 1888 (both in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne). In A Sunday afternoon Roberts depicts an intimate picnic. Framed by spindly gums and bathed in dappled light, a young couple relax in the bush, the woman reading to her companion from a newspaper. A belief in the health benefits of the country air was becoming popular with city dwellers who sought recreational activities in the bush or by the ocean. Roberts’s observant eye has resulted in such small details in this scene as the trail of smoke from the man’s pipe, the dark wine bottle on the crisp white cloth and the light falling softly on the leaves of the eucalypts. 1 Leigh Astbury, ‘Memory and desire: Box Hill 1855–88’, in Terence Lane (ed.), Australian impressionism, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2007, p. 51.

For German-born artist Eugene von Guérard the Australian landscape represented a real, lived experience and a vehicle for evoking personal and contemplative ideas. His remarkable image of a fern-tree gully in the Dandenong Ranges, some 40 kilometres east of Melbourne, conveys a sense of the landscape as a spiritual sanctuary. In this painting von Guérard showed the landscape as a rejuvenating life force, untainted by human interference. When he first visited the Dandenong Ranges the area was a dense bushland of temperate rainforests and cool fern gullies. We know from sketchbooks held in the collection of the Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, that von Guérard visited the region twice between 1855 and 1857 and again in 1858.1 The pages of these books contain a number of drawings which document the lush and largely unexplored forests. This natural resource of high-quality timber was rapidly logged for the growing industries and settlement in Victoria. Painted on return to the artist’s Melbourne studio, Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong Ranges is a work that combines von Guérard’s meticulous observation of local plant species with his artistic interest in compositional arrangement and the creation of a ‘mood’ particular to this environment. In this case we are privy to the magical world of a bower – an enclosed gully of natural foliage created by towering tree ferns. A pool of light on the forest floor leads us to two male lyrebirds cast in shadow, one with its characteristic tail feathers raised – a natural mimic of the arch of the fern fronds. The theatrical activities of the lyrebird were one of the early drawcards for tourists to the area, who hoped to witness the singing and dancing of the male bird. Von Guérard’s painting received much positive acclaim in the Melbourne newspapers and a few years after the work was completed, ‘fern tree gully’, located close to the Fern Tree Gully Hotel, became a popular tourist destination, especially during the summer months. The residents of Melbourne sought the sanctuary of the cool green gullies and active birdlife for their leisure. The work was exhibited at the 1862 International exhibition in London where it was noted as an example of the natural beauty and scenery of the colony. 1 Tim Bonyhady, Australian colonial paintings in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra: Australian National Gallery, 1986, p. 171.

Margaret Preston was used to seeing the earth from the air. By 1942 the artist had visited Europe and North America, and had travelled extensively throughout much of Asia, the Pacific Islands, Central and South America and Australia. During her travels she visited many places and sought out the Indigenous art of other cultures, yet it was the Indigenous art of Australia that inspired her most. Preston travelled extensively throughout remote areas of Australia to see Indigenous paintings and carvings. She studied the collections at the Australian Museum in Sydney and published articles and lectured on Indigenous art. From 1932 to 1939 Preston lived in the bush at Berowra, close to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park north of Sydney, where her great passion for the natural environment of Australia was reinforced. During the Second World War, Preston, like many others, developed a strong nationalist sentiment and in 1942 published an article titled ‘The orientation of art in the post-war Pacific’. In this article she argued for the development of a ‘National Australian Culture’ through an exchange of ideas between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists. She also suggested that Australians should actively exchange ideas with their Asian neighbours. In Flying over the Shoalhaven River Preston combined her knowledge of Indigenous Australian, Asian and western art with a modernist aesthetic. The linear quality of the composition and the flattened areas of colour reflect her skills in woodblock printmaking. Using an earthy palette of browns, greys and ochres, Preston suggested the bush with dabs and dots of paint. She mirrored the overcast sky in the silvery stretch of river and depicted a number of low-lying clouds casting shadows on the earth. While the aerial perspective displays Preston’s knowledge of Indigenous Australian and Chinese methods of representing the land from above, the experience of flying over the Shoalhaven River was her own.

In 1934 Elioth Gruner made one of several visits to the Canberra region where he painted Murrumbidgee Ranges, Canberra. In 1928 Gruner had purchased a car, which gave him the means to travel throughout the countryside on painting trips. He first visited Yass and Canberra in 1929 and was impressed by the crisp, clear light of the area. Over the next ten years he returned several times and completed some of his major late works in the district. Murrumbidgee Ranges, Canberra is an arrangement of several views looking south-west from Canberra towards the Tidbinbilla and Brindabella ranges. While there are no Murrumbidgee Ranges as such, the Murrumbidgee River runs between Canberra and the Tidbinbilla Range. Gruner would have painted this work outdoors, and possibly in one sitting. Through his use of colour he has captured the sharp light of the Canberra region and the cool velvety softness of the surrounding mountains. He has also depicted signs of settlement, including sheep grazing quietly near the ‘bush capital’, distant trails of smoke and a car heading west towards the Murrumbidgee River. Murrumbidgee Ranges, Canberra was awarded the 1934 Wynne Prize for landscape painting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Indeed, Gruner won the prize seven times between 1916 and 1937. In 1937 Murrumbidgee Ranges, Canberra was exhibited in London in the Artists of the British Empire overseas exhibition at the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists.

In Girl in forest, Mount Macedon Frederick McCubbin revisits a central theme in his oeuvre: the activities of children in the Australian bush. He had previously painted scenes of children lost in the bush – narratives of innocence and vulnerability within the landscape. McCubbin also explored the magical worlds invented by children through storytelling and imagination. In works such as What the little girl saw in the bush 1904 (private collection, reproduced p. 28) he sought to capture ideas of creative freedom and expression that children unselfconsciously bring to their surrounds. In Girl in forest, Mount Macedon a young girl wanders through the bush carrying a basket, possibly collecting wildflowers or berries. She is small beside the large trees and thick growth, her white dress setting her apart from her environment. McCubbin has paid close attention to the study of dappled light through trees and foliage. Areas of the canvas appear abstracted and flecks of colour are layered over each other using a palette knife. Moving back from the work the scene comes into focus – a glorious image of gold, pink and violet; bracken, bark and gum. Girl in forest, Mount Macedon depicts the bush close to ‘Fontainebleau’, the McCubbin’s residence at Mount Macedon about 60 kilometres north-west of Melbourne. The child in the image is the artist’s youngest daughter, Kathleen, who posed for her father numerous times.

The selector’s hut (Whelan on the log) is an iconic image of the ‘pioneering spirit’ that underpinned Australian nationalist attitudes of the late nineteenth century. Although most Australians lived in coastal cities and towns, it was the bush that was used as a symbol of Australian sentiment. In The selector’s hut (Whelan on the log) Arthur Streeton depicted these iconic elements of the land. The ‘blue and gold’ of sky and earth are encapsulated by the great scale of the sky, the golden grass and shimmering light, a slender silhouetted gum tree and a bush pioneer. By 1888 a railway had been constructed between Melbourne and the suburban fringe at Heidelberg. Towards the end of that year Streeton had set up ‘camp’ in an old house on Eaglemont estate, which was located close to Heidelberg at Mount Eagle. Mr C. M. Davies, part owner of the estate, had offered the house to the artist.1 Early in 1889 Streeton was joined by Charles Conder and Tom Roberts. The camp provided the perfect working environment–a reasonably isolated bush location that was still close to the city. Streeton found much inspiration in the area, nicknaming Eaglemont ‘our hill of gold’. Jack Whelan was the caretaker and farmer of the Eaglemont estate and shared the house with the artists over the summer of 1888–89. In The selector’s hut (Whelan on the log) Streeton has presented Whelan as a bush selector–a type of pioneering ‘hero’ who farmed the large properties of landowners. 1 Terence Lane, ‘Painting on the hill of gold: Heidelberg 1888–90’, in Terence Lane (ed.), Australian impressionism, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2007, p. 123.

We leaned over in our seats and straining down, our foreheads pressed against the glass windows, found our own land and heard its voice alone. Cynthia Nolan 19621 Between 1947 and 1950 Sidney Nolan spent months travelling through remote areas of Australia. Using money he had made from a successful exhibition of Queensland Outback paintings held at the David Jones Gallery in Sydney in March 1949, Nolan, accompanied by his wife Cynthia and stepdaughter Jinx, travelled through Central Australia, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia. This trip, from June to September 1949, inspired a body of work, including a series of paintings that depict inland Australia from an aerial perspective. Inland Australiais an extraordinary image of the heart of the continent, possibly of the Durack Range. The undulating shapes and intense colour of the red earth evoke an ‘otherworldly’ sensation – a feeling of the land’s inherent grandeur, timelessness and mystery. Nolan painted the work quickly, with the composition board lying flat on a table. Using sweeping brushstrokes he has pushed the paint around the surface of the work. In some areas the paint has been wiped back, exposing the white undercoat of the composition board. Nolan won the inaugural Dunlop Australian Art prize of £250 for Inland Australia.2 He described the work as ‘a composite impression of the country from the air’.3 Using photographs he took from the plane as a visual aid, Inland Australia is an example of Nolan’s technique of fusing elements from existing locations with a landscape remembered from experience. 1 Cynthia Nolan, Outback, London: Shenval Press, 1962, p. 206. 2 Arnold Shore, ‘Dunlop prize won by Sidney Nolan’, The Argus, Tuesday 6 June 1950, p. 7. 3 ‘Sydney artist wins big prize with landscape’, Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday 6 June 1950, p. 1.

Inspired by the South Australian copper-mining town, Wallaroo is an atmospheric and mysterious painting. Located on the Spencer Gulf coast, Jeffrey Smart visited Wallaroo in 1951 and made a number of watercolour studies of the town’s buildings, beach, mining sites and breakwater. Returning to his studio, Smart ‘began mixing all the sketches together, trying them this way and that, seeing how they could agree in a large composition–a painting in oils’.1 In Wallaroo two young men carry a boat ashore, one figure stepping out of the water and swinging his arm out to balance himself. The entire composition is an exercise in balance–the stretch of sand meeting the curve of the breakwater, the height of the chimney balancing the weight of the figures. Each element is carefully placed to direct the eye around the painting. There is an eerie stillness to the image, created by the long shadows and abandoned environment. The rusty ochres and greys of the earth and sky contrast with the bright strip of sand and the building. In discussing the painting Smart said: I tried all sorts of skies, ones with huge clouds, those with strata clouds, a stormy sky and so on. Finally I settled for one which graduated, light at the horizon and becoming darker near the top. But then it looked too dull. It wasn’t interesting enough. So a moon–which you often see at evening, was brought in, just to make a note against the plain surface.2 1 Jeffrey Smart, ‘An edited version from the artist’s explanation of how he painted Wallaroo. ABC Children’s Hour 1956’, published in Edmund Capon, Jeffrey Smart, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1999, p. 78. 2 Capon, p. 79.

For almost three decades the landscape of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia provided inspiration for Hans Heysen. Known for his imagery of Australian gum trees, the artist was forty-nine when he first visited the Flinders Ranges. The scenery of this country had a deep impact on Heysen, and between November 1926 and April 1949 he made many painting trips to the region. In the Flinders–Far North is an example of Heysen combining the two great motifs of his oeuvre in one composition: the Australian gum tree and the view of the Flinders Ranges. The mightiness of the gum dominates this work, set deep in the arid amber and lilac landscape of the Ranges. The work was commissioned by the Commonwealth Government to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Federation and was displayed in the Australian Embassy in Paris for many years.1 In discussing the impact of the Flinders Ranges on his work and the contrast it provided with the landscape of his hometown of Ambleside (also known as Hahndorf), South Australia, Heysen said: … I go to the north, to the Flinders, where I find an entirely new landscape, quite divorced from anything that surrounds me here at Ambleside, and it gives me the fresh impulse to create the bare bones of our landscape in South Australia. It is an old country, very old, and it is that very age you feel in your surroundings, that spaciousness and those rugged peculiar shapes in the hills, that fascinate one, and the dry quality of the colour and the infinity of the vast distances have a fascination which this country surrounded by foliage and trees doesn’t give you. You feel freer.2 1 Colin Thiele, Heysen of Hahndorf, Australia: Rigby Limited, 1968, pp. 264–65. See also Alisa Bunbury, Arid Arcadia: art of the Flinders Ranges, Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2002. 2 Hans Heysen, interview by Hazel de Berg, 1960, Canberra: National Library of Australia [deB 27].

In 1951 Russell Drysdale spent a number of months travelling throughout northern Queensland and the Cape York Peninsula. In response to this trip he painted Boy running, Cooktown. This painting combines a number of characteristic Drysdale motifs: a long street leading to a vanishing point on the horizon, a building with veranda in profile and a dramatic sky balanced by a vast foreground. There is an inherent drama in this image of a young Indigenous boy running across the street, his action rupturing the stillness of the picture. Drysdale depicts the boy in dynamic movement, yet he seems suspended in time and space. His activity in the isolated street begs the question: where is he running? In his paintings of Australia’s remote towns and settlements Drysdale conveyed a sense of life lived in connection with the land. He explored the spatial, environmental and personal elements that contribute to our experience of place. As in so many of Australia’s remote country towns, the main street in this painting includes the iconic structure of a war memorial. In contrast to the youthful potential of the boy, the memorial is a reminder of history and the loss of many young Australians in wartime.

Gouty stem tree, Adansonia Gregorii, 58 feet circumference, near a creek south-east of Stokes Range, Victoria River is an extraordinary image of an enormous water-yielding baobab tree. These trees are native to the north-west of Australia and are easily recognisable by their swollen trunks. The sheer scale of this tree, which dominates the picture, is further emphasised by the two figures at its base. The artist has depicted himself in the lower right-hand side of the painting, sitting underneath a makeshift shelter sketching the scene. British artist and explorer Thomas Baines was one of a group of eighteen people who formed the 1855 North Australian Expedition party. The purpose of the expedition was to ascertain the existence of natural resources for settlement in the north-west of Australia and to determine if there was an inland river or sea. Under the command of Augustus Charles Gregory the expedition lasted from August 1855 to November 1856, the group reaching the mouth of the Victoria River on the upper north-west coast of the Northern Territory on 15 September 1855. Baines’s official role in the party was as artist and storekeeper – he made hundreds of sketches, recorded weather conditions and kept a detailed journal of daily life. Along with ensuring stocks and stores were managed appropriately, he was expected to ‘record’ important sites, species, and events encountered on the journey. He did so with the English ‘home’ audience in mind: the scientific fraternity and the British government who had funded the expedition and were eager to invest in Australia and to encourage the expansion of the Empire. Gouty stem tree, Adansonia Gregorii, 58 feet circumference, near a creek south-east of Stokes Range, Victoria River was painted in London in June 1868, thirteen years after the expedition. (A sketch for the painting of the baobab tree, held in the collection of the Royal Geographical Society in London, was made on Thursday 10 January 1856.) It is likely that Baines produced these paintings for the purposes of reproduction in the publication Australia illustrated.1 1 Tim Bonyhady, Australian colonial paintings in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra: Australian National Gallery, 1986, pp. 6–9.

Charles Conder would have sat right by the water’s edge when he painted this joyous impression of Melbourne bay-side activity. Much of the scene is dominated by water – the reflective shallows of the foreground comprising a significant portion of the composition. Behind the strip of sand and rock a band of ocean stretches to the horizon.1 In this scene Conder explores the elements of light and colour and depicts the activity of visitors to the beach. Women in long dresses search for seashells, a small group watches a sailboat travel across the bay and a child paddles in the foreground. Working primarily in Sydney and Melbourne between 1884 and 1890, Conder suggested in much of his work the subtle moods and poetic qualities of nature. He painted with the energy and enthusiasm of a young man, delighting in the visual world around him and spurred on by the friendly rivalry of his painting companions, Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton. In Ricketts Point, Beaumaris his bold composition and free application of paint combine to form a picture that still looks fresh almost 120 years after it was completed. 1 Mary Eagle identifies this location as Ricketts Point. See Mary Eagle, The oil paintings of Charles Conder in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1997, p. 61.

Trees is one of a number of works in egg tempera that Howard Taylor painted from around 1950. The work is a disciplined study of line, light and shape combined to create an overall shimmering effect. In this work Taylor explored the ephemeral qualities of light and colour and the rich and subtle surfaces he observed in the Australian bush. He said that: ‘painting the Australian landscape involved a big change for me, and another change was that I soon got more involved in tempera painting … if you paint in tempera you become engaged in a highly disciplined technique … you’ve got to plan right from the beginning.’1 In Trees the composition is divided into distinct planes, the horizontal bands set against a vertical cluster of trees. Positioned in the centre of the work is the apex of a circle. This circle is filled with light from an unknown source. Around its perimeter are eight trees, the trunks of which create long shadows stretching to the bottom right-hand corner of the composition. The tree foliage resembles a three-dimensional structure, carefully constructed by lines and subtle tonal variations. The shape of a figure 8 defines this arrangement, symbolic of infinity and the cyclical patterns of nature. Trees is a dense picture, yet the overall effect is one of lightness. The meticulous repetition of line suggests both the complexity and ethereal delicacy of the natural world. 1 Howard Taylor, interview by James Murdoch in 1986 for the Australia Council Archival Art Series. See Gary Dufour & Allan Watson (eds), Howard Taylor: phenomena, Perth: Art Gallery of Western Australia & Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2003, p. 61.

… it is continually exciting, these curious and strange rhythms which one discovers in a vast landscape, the juxtaposition of figures, of objects, all these things are exciting. Add to that again the peculiarity of the particular land in which we live here, and you get a quality of strangeness that you do not find, I think, anywhere else. Russell Drysdale 19601 In 1944 Russell Drysdale was commissioned by the Sydney Morning Herald to accompany journalist Keith Newman to western New South Wales to document the effects of the drought. This experience significantly changed the way Drysdale looked at the Australian landscape. The photographs and sketches he made on the trip informed much of his work in the following years. In Emus in a landscape Drysdale has explored the strange and surreal qualities of the Australian outback. The native birds move quietly through the landscape, passing a precariously arranged structure of wood and corrugated iron. This sculptured mass of refuse represents the remains of a previous settlement. It could be an abandoned dwelling or a wrecked ship on a dried inland sea. In Emus in a landscape Drysdale has created a sliding space between reality and imagination, fact and myth, and has captured the vast space and timelessness of the Outback. 1 Russell Drysdale, interview by Hazel de Berg, 1960, Canberra: National Library of Australia

Arthur Boyd’s paintings during the Second World War reflect the personal turmoil he experienced at the time and his deep opposition to violence. Boyd was conscripted into the army in May 1941 and discharged in March 1944. His paintings from the war years include expressionistic images of human dislocation and suffering; images of crippled, grotesque figures in the streets of St Kilda and South Melbourne. In 1944 he completed a series of dark, dramatic paintings of figures in the Australian bush. The landscapes in these paintings, including The hunter I, were inspired by places in Victoria that Boyd had visited while on leave from the army, including the upper reaches of the Yarra, Launching Place, Warburton and Woods Point.1 In The hunter I Boyd has used private symbols to create an image of personal despair and anxiety. He portrayed the hunter as an exposed and vulnerable figure, naked with closed eyes. As if trapped or lost in the dense, straggly bush the hunter appears to be both part of the landscape and alien within it. Approached by the horned ram (a symbol of lust and corruption in Boyd’s work) the hunter attempts to flee, his extended arm a seemingly futile gesture. 1 Barry Pearce, Arthur Boyd retrospective, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1993, p.16.

Fuelled by a keen interest in travel, Nolan’s personal experiences of the land are closely linked to the development of mythology within his work. The Burke and Wills paintings from 1949–50 emerged after a journey to Central Australia in 1949. Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills were explorers who died in an attempt to make the first organised crossing of Australia from south to north in 1860–61. In Burke at Cooper’s Creek the ghostly appearance of the ill-fated Burke compounds the notions of isolation, displacement and tragedy relating to the expedition. On leaving the Cooper’s Creek depot on 16 December 1860, Burke told his party that if he had not returned within three months he could be considered perished. Four months later he returned to the empty site, only nine hours after the rest of the party had departed. He died from exhaustion, south of the camp.1 Writing about the series some years later, Nolan said that: … wanting to paint Burke and Wills really comes from a need to freshen history and to make these remote happenings really belong to us now … There seem to be three elements in the paintings: the actuality of the landscape, which for Australians is intensified to the point of a dream; the strange conjunction of a man on a camel, from which he surveys the landscape as if he were walking on giant stilts; and always the birds, which make everything vivid … I doubt that I will ever forget my emotions when first flying over Central Australia and realising how much we painters and poets owe to our predecessors the explorers, with their frail bodies and superb willpower.2 1 Felicity Johnston, ‘Sidney Nolan’, in Anne Gray (ed.), The way we were 1940–1950s from the University of Western Australia Art Collection, Perth: Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, 1997 p. 24. 2 Sidney Nolan, letter to Geoffrey Dutton, London, 28 April 1967, Cynthia Nolan Papers. See Geoffrey Smith, Sidney Nolan: desert and drought, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2003, p. 66.

Harry Garlick painted The drover in response to the ‘Federation drought’, which began in 1895 and reached its climax in the summer of 1901–02. Officially lasting until 1903, the drought had a devastating effect on the sheep, cattle and wheat-farming industries throughout much of Australia. Garlick had painted earlier responses to the drought, such as Drought stricken1902 (present whereabouts unknown). It is possible that The drover was painted in the Orange or Bathurst regions of western New South Wales where Garlick was born and lived until 1896. In the heat of the midday sun a drover leads his flock along an arid stock route, the artist’s use of perspective emphasising the distance between the drover and his flock and the hills on the horizon. The drover is indicative of Garlick’s interest in pastoral scenes. As a young man he travelled each week from Orange to Bathurst to attend painting classes with Sydney painter Arthur Collingridge. After relocating to Sydney from Orange in 1896 he attended night classes with Julian Ashton, worked as a clerk and occasionally published drawings and cartoons in the Bulletin. Garlick was one of a number of artists, including Julian Ashton, Sydney Long, Charles Conder and Arthur Streeton, who visited Griffiths’s farm on the Richmond side of the Hawkesbury River on outdoor painting trips.

Clarice Beckett’s Sandringham Beach is a dynamic and modern composition of sand, bathing boxes and beach walkers. Beckett depicted the scene from an unusual perspective–from a cliff looking down onto the beach. Captured in the glare of a summer day, the smooth body of sand appears to shimmer with ‘white heat’. Backing onto scruffy vegetation, the bright stripes of the bathing boxes are the most solid aspects of the composition. While these beach shacks were a key motif in the artist’s oeuvre, it is the perspective Beckett explored and the use of colour that transform this image. She recorded her unusual view by even including a craggy ti-tree branch that sprawls across the centre of the picture. Sandringham Beachis one of Beckett’s largest paintings; she generally chose to work on smaller panels. In contrast to Charles Conder’s Ricketts Point, Beaumaris1890, the ocean only occupies a small portion of Beckett’s view. Painted around forty years after Conder, the beachgoers in Beckett’s composition are shown strolling along the water’s edge and a game of beach cricket is captured taking place between two young boys. The bright modern swimsuits and exposed skin of the walkers has been brushed onto the canvas with soft dabs of colour. The playful atmosphere of Sandringham Beach encapsulates Australia’s love affair with the beach as a key site of recreation and relaxation.

Grace Cossington Smith’s The Bridge in building is a dynamic image of one of Australia’s most iconic landmarks under construction. One of a number of artists who recorded the development of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Cossington Smith transformed the scene into a synthesis of industry and nature – of modern construction observed through radiating colour and bands of light. In The Bridge in building Cossington Smith has used contrasting colours of purple and orange to depict the angular structures of the bridge and crane. The sky is formed by concentric bands of luminous yellows and blues, with each brushstroke carefully placed on the canvas. Between 1928 and 1930 Cossington Smith made a number of sketches of the bridge from Milson’s Point on the northern side of Sydney Harbour. She created ‘map-like’ drawings, carefully annotated with notes on colour and form. These studies were used to develop paintings of the bridge, such as The Bridge in-curve c.1930 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne). Cossington Smith delighted in depicting the structure of the bridge, its formal architecture, and the counterbalance of steel and sandstone. In The Bridge in building she adopted a low viewpoint, accentuating the dramatic scale of the sandstone pylon and the arch of the bridge. She further emphasised the scale of the structure by including a group of workers on the top of the arch, the small figures appearing almost ant-like in contrast to the bridge’s large form. A truly modern artist, Cossington Smith celebrated the Sydney Harbour Bridge as a work-in-progress, documenting what was for many Sydney residents a symbol of energy and hope during the years of the Great Depression. Indeed, The Bridge in building is a celebration of modernity – a modern subject approached in a modern style. 1 Grace Cossington Smith, interview by Hazel de Berg, 16 August 1965, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, transcript, p.1484.

The wreck of the George the Third depicts the aftermath of the shipwreck in 1835 of the George the Third off the coast of Tasmania. Following a four-month voyage from London and bound for Hobart, the 35-metre convict transport ship entered D’Entrecasteaux Channel on the evening of 12 April 1835. Less than 200 kilometres from its destination, the ship struck submerged rock and in the catastrophe that followed 127 of the 220 convicts on board died.1 Survivors’ accounts said the ship’s crew fired their weapons at convicts who, in a state of panic, attempted to break from their confines as the vessel went down. Painted by convict-artist Knut Bull, this image is dominated by a huge sky, with the broken George the Third dwarfed by the expanse. Waves continue to crash over the decks of the ship, while a few figures in the foreground attempt to salvage cargo and supplies. This is a seascape that evokes trepidation and anxiety. The small figures contribute to the feeling of human vulnerability when faced with the extremities of nature. In 1845 Norwegian-born Knut Bull was tried in London Central Criminal Court for the attempted forgery of a 100-dollar Norwegian bill. He was sentenced to fourteen years transportation and arrived in Norfolk Island in 1846. After nine months Bull was transferred to the Saltwater River probation station in Van Diemen’s Land. From 1849 he was permitted to work as an artist in the colony under a certificate of general good conduct and by 1853 had received a conditional pardon. He went on to work as a professional painter and teacher and relocated to New South Wales in 1856. 1 Michael Roe, An Imperial disaster: the wreck of George the Third, Hobart: Blubber Head Press, 2006, p. 12.

I find a strange island sometimes where ghosts of ancient glories linger, where the winds and the flowers are sweet and the people are still gentle and smiling, where man is conscious of his grandeur and is content to live simply in harmony with the forces around and within him. Yet if we found this island we would destroy it in a month. Ray Crooke 19491 ‘Kingfisher’, Thursday Island marks the beginning of Ray Crooke’s longstanding interest in painting the people and landscapes of Far North Queensland and the Pacific. The work was painted after Crooke’s 1949 visit to the Torres Strait where he stayed for several months on Thursday Island (Waiben) working as a cook, labourer and trochus-shell diver. Crooke first visited the Torres Strait and Thursday Island in 1943 as a soldier with the Australian Army. The artist enlisted in 1940 and during the war travelled extensively throughout Far North Queensland and the Pacific. For his first stay on Thursday Island soldiers were billeted in the abandoned Federal Hotel that was built around 1903. This building is identifiable in ‘Kingfisher’, Thursday Island by its arched veranda and red roof. An abandoned lugger sailing vessel dominates the image: a connection between land and sea, humans and the environment, past and present. From the 1860s the region was a centre for the risky activities of pearl and trochus-shell fishing, however the industry fell into decline after the Second World War.2 Lugger sailing vessels, such as the one depicted in this painting, were used by fishermen to explore the tropical waters of the Darnley Deeps. 1 Ray Crooke, journal entry, quoted in Ray Crooke & Peter Denham, Island journal, Brisbane: Bede Publishing, 2000, p. 28. 2 Regina Ganter, Mixed relations: Asian-Aboriginal contact in North Australia, Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2006, pp. 62–66.