Charles Sargeant Jagger II: low reliefs

All the works of Jagger that I had previously seen were monumental sculptures, at least until the V & A accepted Scandal 1930. Had Jagger created low reliefs before 1930?

It seems that Charles Jagger really was apprenticed as a metal engraver with the Sheffield firm of Mappin & Webb, when he was a young teen­ag­er. That might explain his interest in British New Sculpture and his concentration on naturalistic surface detail.

It also might explain why Scandal 1930 was far from the first low relief work that Jagger had done in his career. He honed his tech­nical skills on reliefs as early as 1918, just as World War One was finishing. His early reliefs, therefore, had focused on military themes.

The First Battle of Ypres at Horse Guards Parade was completed in 1918. Here Jagger created a view of combat where soldiers of both sides lunged at each other with grim, fixed expressions. The Deco expressiveness in the relief has almost a Soviet poster feel to it. The German helmets and the Tommy uniforms were realistically distinguished but the space was unrealistic – perhaps a dozen soldiers crushed together.

The Fine Art Society said that the reliefs were a testament to Jagger’s ability to create an image simultaneously heroic and harrowing.

Jagger, First Battle of Ypres, 1918

No Man’s Land 1919 was low relief in bronze of a soldier hiding among the dead bodies, broken stretchers and barbed wire of No Man's Land. Presumably he was staying in that horrible location in order to hear the enemy's conversation. No Man's Land relief is in the Tate.

Jagger, No Man's Land, 1919

Cambrai Memorial 1928 in the Louverval Military Cemetery, France was erected to the memory of 7,000 British and South African soldiers who died without a grave. Jagger created two low reliefs in stone. In one, a wounded soldier was lifted from a trench and in the other a soldier looked through a periscope. The memorial was unveiled in August 1930, in front of British military dignitaries.

Jagger, Cambrai Monument in Louverval, 1928

Clearly Jagger had honed his technical skills in low reliefs long before Scandal. The only surprise that Scandal created for the viewer was Jagger's content, not his technique.

Charles Sargeant Jagger I: war and sex

Charles Jagger 1885-1934 was born in Yorkshire and studied art in Sheffield before moving to London to study sculpture at the Royal College of Art for some years. He was just starting to develop his career when World War One broke out in 1914. So Jagger joined a regiment that was made up of performing and visual artists. The following year he was commissioned and quickly served in horrendous battle fronts. Jagger survived, but was damaged physically and probably psychologically.

The first work that Jagger did, after returning to civilian life, was a series of war memorials. I am not sure if that was a good idea (because only a soldier would understand the true meaning of war memorials) or a bad idea (because he'd be forced to relive the tragedies he saw in the trenches). However some of his works from this period went on to be treasured by bereaved parents and communities in post-Armistice Britain. First Battle of Ypres at Horse Guards Parade was completed in 1918 and Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner was completed in c1923.

Royal Artillery Memorial London, c1923

Jagger’s Artillery Memorial in the blog Great War Fiction showed the enormous impact he had on British memorial sculpture after WW1. This giant stone howitzer was covered in low reliefs, capturing the night­mare of war. The soldiers on the memorial were so realistic, they could have been the neighbour’s boy or the lad who delivered news­papers. Jagger’s dead soldier was particularly realistic and particularly harrowing.

And there is even a Jagger connection to Melbourne, as the blog Airminded · London noted. The Drivers and Wipers statue, located in Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance reserve, commemorated the many thousands of Australian lives lost during the fighting at Ypres. The bronze sold­iers were recast by Jagger from the London figures, and shipped to Australia for a location outside the Museum of Victoria.

Drivers and Wipers Memorial, Melbourne

By 1930, Jagger was accepting commissions for works not related to war and loss. And perhaps the mood of the nation had changed to some­thing altogether more Deco and frivolous. But I don’t think anyone expected an object as racy as Scandal Relief 1930, now in V&A South Kensing­ton.

The scand­al that the Monds commissioned was a threesome in­volving the two of them and another man who shared a studio with Gwen. Scandal Relief clearly showed a naked couple embracing, surrounded by shocked viewers in the background. No doubt the Deco angularity of the work only served to heighten the emotion of the couple and the gossipers.

Jagger created Scandal Relief for Mulberry House Westminster, home of Henry, 2nd Baron Melchett, and his wife Gwen Mond. In the drawing-room of the Mond home, in the centre of the end wall, was a large marble fireplace. Over the fireplace, there was a panel left specifically (161 x 149 cm) by the architect Darcy Brad­dell, to be filled by Jag­g­er’s fine bronze relief.

I have no doubt it was meant to scandalise polite society and sat­irise their hypoc­risy, but how would polite society have got itself into the Mond drawing room? Therefore we have to assume that the Monds were having a great laugh about the gossip that had surrounded them, laughing at their own expense and laughing at “decent people”.

Scandal Relief, 1930, now in the V & A

It may seem bizarre that Jagger was best known for his ultra-sombre, ultra-respectful war memorials. Perhaps he would have moved on to more decorative works in the 1930s, had he lived long enough, and may have pushed his oeuvre in new directions. We’ll never know; he died in 1934. Undoubtedly Jagger’s racy work will now bring people to the museum – Scandal Relief was bought this year, specifically for the V & A and funded by National Heritage and another fund.

Australian Bandstands in the Federation Era

Who in the blogging world might be interested in Victorian-era bandstands? Leaves of Grass blog has the most amazing coll­ection of Brasil’s bandstands I've seen. They had various shapes, colours and building materials, one more splendid than the next. Alas she did not include any building dates. Carol­ine's Miscellany examined the source of Taunton (1895) and Bridgwater (1908)’s late C19th bandstands. Her examination of British sites inspired my search for Australian equivalents. Clueless in Boston presented a truly lovely image of Parkman Bandstand 1912 in Boston Common.

The best collection of British Edwardian band stands is in Rose C'est La Vie blog. Rose loved the bandstands because "they're whimsical in design, sometimes oriental, sometimes wedding cakey, and evocative of the innocent pleasures of promenading on a fine day and settling down on a deckchair to listen to a very jolly brass band, a military orchestra, local musicians."

In my state, Victoria, Johnstone Park Geelong was created in March 1872. In December that year, the first band concert was held by a local military band. Then an octagonal wooden bandstand was built right in centre of the park as early as November 1873. As soon as WW1 ended, a war memorial was built in the centre of the park as a memorial to the fine young men killed in battle, and the old bandstand was modernised.

Geelong, Johnstone Park

The late 1870s saw the discovery of deep leads of gold in the Creswick region and these underground mines brought further wealth to the town. This enabled solid public buildings to go up, as well as the development of public open spaces, like Park Lake. Creswick Jubilee Bandstand 1879 was erected to celebrate Queen Victor­ia's Diamond Jubilee. It dominated the town's open area in the centre.

Creswick Jubilee Bandstand

Oppos­ite the Beaufort gardens was an octagonal band rotunda 1903, build to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Reign. The Beaufort rotunda was crowned by an octagonal lantern with iron-grille décor­ation and a four-faced clock. Queen Victoria’s death created a virtual cottage industry. The rotunda built as her memorial and opened in Buninyong in 1901 was the earliest memorial in this state, and preceded the band­stands built in Beaufort 1903, Bendigo 1903, Geelong 1904 and Melbourne 1907.

An attractive and slightly differently shaped bandstand was built in Burra in 1911. This small South Australian town wanted to honour King Edward VII.

Beaufort Rotunda

Sturt St Ballarat already had beautiful blue gums, grown for 45 years before the first bandstand was designed. By 1905 the cent­re of Sturt St looked like an interlinked group of lovely gardens. The position was perfect. Queen Alexander Bandstand 1908 was named by the Duke of York after his mother, wife of King Edward VII. It was an innovative band stand de­sign, using a polygonal form topped by a Moor­ish onion dome. The bandstand had very fine wrought ironwork that, approp­riat­e­ly, included musical motifs. Built during the heyday of the band move­ment, it is now one of the few remaining examples of Edwardian band­stands in Victoria and reminds us of a popular form of outdoor entertainment.

Examine in Your Brisbane blog for an amazing New Farm bandstand that looks like a small Edwardian house. The park was taken over in 1913 by the Council, and they added this handsome bandstand and a kiosk. It has more gables and more timber lace work than my grandmother's house.

Ballarat's Titanic Memorial Bandstand 1915 was unusual example of creative bandstand design in rural Australia, an exotic composition with orientalist roofs. Designed by local architect, GW Clegg and man­u­factured at a local foundry, the Titanic Bandstand has survived well. It was created as a memorial to the SS Titanic disaster, particularly to those musicians who heroically continued playing as the unsinkable ship sunk.

Ballarat, Queen Alexander bandstand

Ballarat, Titanic Memorial bandstand

Since the royals were 15,000 ks away and there were very few Australians lost on the Titanic, we might ask why there was a rush to spend community money on bandstands? Listening to music played by the town band was a popular form of amusement in the Edwardian era and most councils thought the money would be well spent. And perhaps there was a pride in nationalism, in quietly and democratically uniting the Australian states into one Federation.

Or the connection to WW1. The Port Melbourne war memorial is an octagonal brick band stand with a metal roof and steps on the north side. An inlaid marble tablet from the Port Melbourne Women's Welcome Home Committee honours the gallant Australians who fought in the Great War 1914 - 1918.

The only bandstand and park image I have from the turn of the century was taken in Hyde Park Sydney.

Sydney, Hyde Park

These late Victorian and Edwardian structures, within their well-developed gardens, have now been given heritage protection. At the time, the bandstands, iron seating and garden displays must have given great pleasure to ordinary families, every summer.

Melbourne's iconic trams

Melbourne’s first form of public transport from the suburbs into the city centre, and vice versa, were the railways; they had started in 1854. This was impres­s­ive since Londoner Robert Hoddle had only arrived in the Port Phillip settlement in Mar 1837 and was appointed senior surveyor for the town.

Another serious public transport system started up in 1885 when the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company grabbed a 30-year monopoly franchise for Melbourne’s new cable tram network. The first non-horse service ran from Spencer St/Flinders St in the centre of town, out to Haw­th­orn Bridge. It was a simple mechanism. The grip man/driver would grab one of the levers connected to the cable which in turn pulled the tram along the tram lines. When he want­ed to stop the tram, he’d let go of the grip on the cable and applied the brake.

First cable tram, 1885

The network grew quickly and within six years of the first cable tram being on the road, 1891, the cable tramway network consisted of spoke lines running from the city out into all inner suburbs. However, as the population moved further away from the centre of town, it became clear that the cable tram system became could not reach further and further out, without any limit.

In 1906, the first electric trams were being built, not to replace cable cars but to extend the cable tram lines to distant suburbs. They topped up the cable car system. The initial monopoly ended in 1916 and the cable network was appropriately taken over by the State government. The newly formed Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board was now fully responsible. Immediately the MMTB started converting the old cable tram lines and the most famous of the new electric trams was the W class. From 1923 the W class was truly an Australian design, with compartments at either end closed by sliding doors and an open space in the middle. It was green, quiet, clean and wonderful.

Melbourne's archetypal green tram

The final cable tram bowed out in 1940, only a year after WW2 broke out. In time the entire population was serviced by tram lines that all started in town and extended as far as the outer suburbs. When most other cities in the world ripped out their trams and substituted smelly, smoke-filled buses, Melbourne kept her elegant, green ladies that were able to glide graciously through the tree-lined streets without petrol.

Of course Melbourne bloggers are very proud of their trams. I recom­mend “Review: Time-line history of Melbourne's Government Cable and Electric Trams and Buses” in melbourne on transit: April 2006. And the beaut High Riser blog. Even foreigners unfavourably compare their own tram system to Melbourne's eg Poneke who wrote Bumblebee trams roll proudly through Melbourne while Wellington bumbles timidly on.

Today Melbourne's trams are still petrol-free, but they are no longer green and are alas both ultra-streamlined and privatised. It feels like our city was taken over by foreign trams. In any case, there are other important public transport issues to be considered, as discussed by Hailing From Georgia blog in Guidelines for Effective Mass-Transit, discuss. However my favourite place to take overseas visitors is still a 3-hour tour in the splendidly refurbished 1927 Colonial Tramcar Restaurant.

Colonial Tramcar Restaurant

Commodious Georgian furniture

In times when flushing toilets were rare and indoor plumbing even rarer, people used a close stool instead. This was an enclos­ed cab­in­et at chair-height with a hole in the top; then the entire unit was covered on top by a hinged outer lid. A ceramic chamber pot sat inside the close stool.

17th century close stool, oak

The close stool gave way to the night table or night commode, Vict­orian terms that readers will be more familiar with. The night commode, however, had two advantages over the close stool. Firstly it was a closed cabinet and chamberpot that sat next to the bed. This would have been particularly important in winter. Second­ly its marble or timber top served as a washstand for a basin and water pitcher. By Victorian times, hygeine was seen to be more important, as well as more pleasant.

Presumably families with access to good quality furniture in the rest of their home would have selected top quality close stools and commodes.

Georgian close stool, mahogany with leather book lid.

I have seen many close stools and night commodes over the years, but I have never seen one like a night stool that was on offer at Sotheby’s London in April 2009 (Classic English Furniture: The Norman Adams Legacy 1923-2009). The mahogany stool and hinged lid had a large, shaped apron on all sides to hide the enclosed pot, and stood on cabriole legs with pad feet. But the lid wasn’t timber or tapestry as we'd normally expect. Instead it had been crafted in the form of a large leather book with marbled pages.

Country Life, reviewing the piece 6/5/2009, said it "was perhaps intended for a bibliophile too immersed in his studies to leave the library for relief". I thought it was the most wonderful literary reference I've seen in furniture.

Victorian night table, walnut and marble top

A Connoisseur’s Corner discovered an 18th century chair that was originally the toilet of a cashed-up Philadelphia gent. The deep side panels along the seat frame concealed the chamber pot that would have been inserted in the well of the wood platform. The upholstered seat was placed on top, partially to hide the chamber pot and partially, I would imagine, to look attractive. In the inter-war period a dealer converted the object into a proper drawing room chair by reducing the length of the apron around the seat frame and by eliminating the platform into which the chamber pot would have been inserted.

Saving Australia's Maritime Architecture

The preservation of late 18th and early 19th century lighthouses is urgent for two reasons. Firstly Australia’s maritime history was what connected the New World with the rest of the world. It was the sole source of convicts, free population, finished prod­ucts in one direction and raw materials in the other. Secondly a nation that loses its own architectural past is in danger of losing its way. Australia has already destroyed too many of its precious architectural relics, and needs to protect what is left.

Wilson's Promontory was first sight­ed by Bass and Flinders in 1798, and was named by Gov. Hunter in honour of the trader Thomas Wilson. The promontory marks the southern-most point of mainland Australia, and overlooks the narrow shipping channel in Bass Strait between Tasmania and Victoria. Uniquely, from its 100m cliff on the peninsular, the lighthouse site has almost 360° views of Bass Strait - an ideal location for its task: to protect shipping in Bass Strait.

Wilson's Promontory and Bass Strait

Although Victoria had no convicts, this Victorian lighthouse was built by convict labourers. Thus, we must assume, the convicts were shipped in from NSW or Tasmania, to complete the project. The Wilson's Promontory Lighthouse (19 ms tall) and keep­ers' cottages were built from 1853 to 1859, using granite that was quarried locally. The works were supervised by the Public Works Department, and contracted to a North Melbourne company. The building costs were shared between the Victorian and NSW governments.

English master mariner and adventurer Captain Thomas Musgrave was one of the first head keepers of the Wilson’s Promontory Lighthouse, moving to the site in 1869. He and later keepers kept the oil lamps burning, recorded weather details and signalled ships. The white light, 119 metres above sea level, was visible for 40ks at sea.

Keeper's cottage

granite lighthouse, Wilson's Promontory

There were four keepers' cottages, built out of local granite as the lighthouse was, but with roofs made of corrugated iron. One of the cottages was rebuilt in 1924, and two others rebuilt in 1952 after being destroyed during a bushfire.

The parabolic mirrors were replaced in 1975 by a generator-powered electric lamp array when the light was converted to electricity, which in turn was converted to solar power in 1993. The light-house was then fully automated; staffing & regular maintenance were no longer seen as necessary. Even though the rough sea weather ruins every exposed surface, funding was withdrawn.

2009 is the 150th anniversary of the lighthouse’s opening for business in 1869. The lighthouse and keepers' cottages are located within the Wilson's Promontory National Park, so funding for all repairs and maintenance now comes from a new source. The tower has been completely restored to the original granite finish and the surfaces of the out-buildings are all sparkly white again.

There's no road to the lighthouse. Visitors hike the 18k walk from the nearest town, Tidal River. Now accommod­ation is available at a reasonable price, in the buildings clustered around the light-house. Australia was fortunate to protect this amazing part of its maritime history.

I found many excellent blogs on lighthouses (eg Keeper's Blog, Old Salt Blog, Shed Some Light on Lighthouses Blog, New England Lighthouse Treasures, Montauk Point) but few talked about heritage protection, de-manning, funding.

Vanitas Paintings: the meaning of life and death

Histatic blog wrote a very interesting piece on Victorian memorial art called Art or a little morbid?. Tammi felt the post-mortem photographs were popular with Victorian families who, for whatever reason, did not have any portraits of the parents and children painted or photographed in life. I imagine that with peri-natal mortality being so high, with young men going off to soldier so often and with disease being largely uncontrolled, death was a common visitor in many Victorian homes. But how morbid was it to hang these post-mortem images on the lounge-room wall? I suspect not morbid at all.

Pieter Claesz, Vanitas Still-life, 1630

I was reminded of vanitas paintings from a much earlier era and wondered once again how morbid was it for devout Dutch burghers to hang these images on their lounge-room walls.

Vanitas was a type of still life painting that was very popular in C17th Netherlands. So popular was it that Charlotte Herczfeld said that over a hundred painters focused solely on vanities and other still-lifes in the Netherlands. And another thing. Intelliblog suggested that still life paintings gave the artist freedom of expression, as well as allowing much leeway in selection of subject matter, colours, composition and technique than did most other genres of painting

The word vanitas referred to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity, so vanitas painting were full of symbols reflecting this depressing world view. Vanitas paintings reminded the viewer of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure and the imminence of death.

Common vanitas symbols included human skulls; decaying fruit that could be full of creepy bugs; watches and hourglasses marked the shortness of life; wine paraphernalia and musical instruments which suggested that even joyous experiences would end in death; and lit candles, snuffed out before their time. I am not sure if viewers now would read and understand all the symbols, but I am certain that all viewers in the C17th would have immediately understood their meaning.

Cornelis de Heem, Still-life with Musical Instruments, c1662

Pieter Claesz’s painting called Vanitas Still Life 1630 included more than one of these symbols. At a time when Italian art was soar­ing to new classical heights that celebrated Italian cul­ture, architecture, music, women and pleasure, Claesz was painting a tiny (40 x 56 cm), predominantly brown image dominated by an ugly skull and an upturned wine glass. Even the books on the table, a source of eternal wisdom, look battered.

Cornelis Janszoon de Heem painted a large (153 x 166cm) painting called Vanitas Still-Life with Musical Instruments in c1662. I am including this work because the elements were so rich that the modern viewer would be hard pressed to detect the vanitas elements. Note the viola, lutes, trumpet, flute, mandolin, violin, bagpipe, bowls crammed with luscious fruits and precious golden objects. But the snail on the ground, the half eaten fruit left to rot and the upturned objects tell of a sombre future for the family.

Nearly all Dutch still-lifes included an element of vanitas, even when a lumping great skull didn’t dominate the image. In Edwart Collier’s painting Vanitas Still Life 1697, the viewer noticed the implements that might be on any intellectual’s desk: ink-well and quill, candles, seals, wax, books and a globe, all within easy reach. Collier wasn’t criticising learning at all, but he was suggesting that even great learning isn’t eternal. If anything, this beautiful and detailed still life created a paradox in its very beauty. The message was consider the enjoyment of beautiful objects in a fine painting but at the same time be very beware of material concerns and intellectual conceits.

Edwart Collier, Vanitas Still-life, 1697

I recommend two other blogs on the subject. pre-Gébelin Tarot History blog has an amazing array of vanitas images in Homo Bulla Vanitas. And The Pond Seeker blog examined many examples of vanitas paintings, one of them being Holbein's famous Ambassadors, in Vanitas. His conclusions are worth reading.

For those interested specifically in the role of musical instruments in vanitas paintings, I wrote a guest post called "Musical Instruments and Dutch Vanitas Paintings" for Cynthia Wunsch's blog Strike The Right Note.

The Bauhaus School at Dessau

In 1925 the Bauhaus School moved to Dessau (near Berlin) where the new building was designed by Walter Gropius and completed in 1926.

The Bauhaus School Dessau, 1925-6

Marylouise Blog on Bauhaus Dessau has shown how Gropius' extensive facilities beautifully combined teaching, student housing, staff housing, an auditorium, offices, eating and other social facilities. These sections were all integrated: the school and work shops were connected via a bridge, over the Dessau Road. The administration was located on the lower level of the bridge, and on the upper level was the practice of architects, Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer. The flats and the school building were connected via a wing to the communal facilities: assembly hall, theatre and dining room/canteen.

This radically modern building complex was built of starkly rectangular glass and concrete. The construction used the latest technological developments: a skeleton of reinforced concrete with brick workoom-shaped ceilings on the lower level, and roofs covered with asphalt tiles for walking. It was considered a fine piece of architectural design at the time, and is on the World Heritage List now. iainclaridge.net has a link to the most beautiful photographs of the building interiors I have ever seen.

Canteen

One detached Director's House became home to Gropius for a number of years. Three semi-detached Masters' houses housed the masters. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Lyonel Feininger initially occupied the first semi-detached house; Georg Muche and Oskar Schlemmer lived in the centre one; Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee shared the third. Again nothing was accidental. The masters’ homes were specifically planned to be models for students. Although the building costs were not cheap, students learnt how to create functional, modern, sleek homes. The three homes were all fitted out with a veranda and roof terrace, and all had working space for the artist and his family. Only the inside could be personalised with the artists' favourite colours and fittings. All fittings were of course Bauhaus designed and made.

Masters' House

Bringing the building in on budget was possible only due to the hearty assistance of Bauhaus teachers and students. But it wasn’t their charity. Cooperation in design was explicitly viewed as an ideal means of education.

Many thanks to Bola Sociology Design who indicated that the building has become a youth hostel in Design: Bauhaus Dessau. I don’t suppose the accommodation is grand or the bathrooms private, but visitors do get to see the pared back architecture and minimalistic furniture that Bauhaus students lived in from 1925-1933. The chairs in the hostel’s bedrooms and canteen were of designed by another famous Bauhaus master from the 1920s, Marcel Breuer.

Modern hostel bedroom, using an old student room from Bauhaus days

The Bauhaus’s next very important architectural commission in 1926-7 was an experimental housing project in Dessau’s Torten estate, not far from the School. Following the master architect Le Corbusier, the Bauhaus School felt that architecture should not be tied to any one culture. Architecture should be international in its style, intentionally designed to be mass produced with simplicity and adaptable to all cultures. The rectangle had been regarded as an ideal form by the De Stijl artists, and was fully adopted by the Bauhaus at Torten.

Torten Estate, Dessau

Torten was built with standardised concrete parts, made on site. Gropius was the architect, assisted by Hannes Meyer’s students. The initial construction of each house took only three days. They weren’t the most beautiful homes ever built; the mass produced interiors in particular were very austere! But 314 ordinary families suddenly found that they afford to buy a house and garden for the first time. The estate also contained a block of flats with shops beneath, the Konsum building.

PRESERVE THE MODERN  and SBeige blogs visited Torten Estate and found several units were open to visitors. I wish these blogs had provided some internal and external photos. It would be amazing to visit Torten now, some 83 years after Gropius and the students completed their project.

Traditional Vs Modern Art: 1930s Australia

In "Addled Art" by Lionel Lindsay and "Addled Art": dishonest art dealers, I noted that James S Macdonald and Lionel Lindsay were not the only fiercely anti-modernists in the Australian art world of the 1930s and early 40s. However they were definitely the most powerfully placed, thus influencing important public decisions. Jane Hunt’s 'Victors' and 'Victims'?: Men, Women, Modernism and Art in Australia in J of Australian Studies, 80, 2004 was useful in explaining their fear of modernity, so I will quote her extensively.

In the years between the two world wars the Australian art estab­lish­ment was run by a band of traditionalists who were at first irritated and later ser­ious­ly threatened by a bunch of critical young innovators. The story of the emergence of modern art in Australia seems to be about the vict­ory of the innovators. It is the victors who write history. Four key art histories present this story of victory: Australian Painting by Ber­nard Smith; Rebels and Precursors by Richard Haese; The Innovat­ors by Geoffrey Dutton; and Black Swan of Trespass by Humphrey McQueen. Smith argued that after WW1 'the old men of the tribe, their years of exile over, began to lay down the law for the guidance of the young'. Their chief objective entailed the prot­ection of the health, sanity and vitality of Australian art from the madness of Europe. In their day the Heidel­berg painters were regarded as innovative and modern. But many of them were in fact realists who mellowed with time and event­ually became art critics, publishers and trustees.

Their law-making coincided with the emergence in Sydney of small group of artists who, following European trends, exper­im­ented with a range of stylistic and technical innovations collect­ively thought of by many as modern art. By the 1920s a few artists had begun to ex­periment with modern aesthetic ideas. In 1926 two artists formed the Sydney Contemporary Group with a large proportion of modernist women artists. Two artists opened the Modern Art Centre in 1932. In 1932, two Melbourne art teachers formed the Melbourne Contemporary Group.

In the political and economic uncertainty of the early 1930s, the modernist move­ment gained sufficient scale to pro­voke the established experts to bellig­erence. By the late 1930s these tensions erupted in a series of cris­es in the Melbourne and Sydney art worlds. They re­volved around a dichotomous relationship between ideologically and artistically con­servative forces and aesthetically modern, politic­ally radical ones. The moments of greatest interest to art historians include the formation of the Academy of Australian Art in 1937 and the subsequent founding of the Contemporary Art Society in 1938; a series of challenges to the authority of the conservative art estab­lishment in Sydney; and the 1943 Archibald Prize to William Dobell.

Modigliani, 
Portrait of Morgan Russell, 1919. 
Displayed at the 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art

When Robert Menzies (later Prime Minister) proposed the form­at­ion of an Australian Academy of Art, Melbourne modernists were con­cerned that their departure from conventional artistic practice would be marginalised. Their fears seemed confirmed when Menzies opened the Victorian Artists' Society show in April 1937 and singled out for attack a wall of modernist paintings. A deb­ate ensued in the press: Adrian Lawlor compiled the resulting copy in a booklet entitled Arquebus. Leaders of the modernist group, inc­lud­ing Lawlor and George Bell, formed the Contemporary Art Society 1938.

Herbert Vere Evatt M.P (later Leader of the Labour Party) be­came involved as an approving observer and occasional public advocate. At an exhibition opening in June 1937 Evatt urged Australian galleries to show more modern paintings. He drew a strong rejoinder from James MacDonald, a cultural conservative who had served as art director in New South Wales before moving to the National Gallery of Victoria; “Australian art galleries simply did not like modern art, and it should not be hung in public at all”, said MacDonald (11).

The Looking Glass blog recorded something very similar in The art of Mary Alice Evatt. The NSW Chief Librarian W.H. Ifould was also a trustee of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales. Ifould told people in the mid 1930s “there are no books on modern art in the Country Reference Section … because to the best of my knowledge no one in the country is interested in modern art”.

In March 1937 George Bell led an anti-Academy vote in the Vic­tor­ian Artists' Society on the grounds that the Academy would recognise only a lim­ited range of art­istic practices. Was it coincidence that mod­ernist exhibition entries were on prominent display when Menzies con­demned modernism at the opening of the Victorian Artists' Society exhibition? Evatt’s speech at the first Contemporary Art Society exhibit­ion, in June 1939, echoed the polemic of the debates.

Art historical accounts of the Sydney story draw on rich anti-labour, anti-Semitic, anti-modernist polemic, with the result of sketching neat divides that were more complex in real­ity. In particular, the art histories draw on the writings of Lionel Lindsay, member of the board of trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The main confrontations centred on the public display of the Herald Exhibition of French and British Art from late 1939, the award of the 1943 Arch­ibald Prize to William Dobell, and the nomination of modernist sym­pathisers to positions on the board of trustees. Lindsay and other trustees complained to James S Macdonald in Melbourne, and to a politically embat­tled Robert Menzies, over the travesties being wrought in the name of art.

Embedded in modernism is a sense of ambivalence concerning the reality of late C19th and C20th society and politics. While some creative intellectuals may have revelled in The Modern, others were deeply troubled by it. In writing on the metaphysics of modernism, Michael Bell captures the anxiety that the spectre of modernity evoked in some, in his discussion of the Coll­apse of Idealism. It appears that anxiety, anti-modern loathing, racial suprematism and fascist inclinations on the one hand and the open embrace of urb­an­isation, mass production and new aesthetic possibilities, on the other, may both be regarded as characteristic of modernism.

Stanley Spencer, 
Parents Resurrecting 1933. 
Displayed at the 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art.

While signs of modernity were apparent in Australia by 1913, modernism was something that, due to cultural lag, the highly liter­ate public only knew about European developments via newspapers. Modernism, in both its negative and positive strains, came late to Australia. It was only during WW1 that artistic modernism emerged in Australia, and in the wake of the war that the Lindsay brothers, state libraries and galleries and most newspaper critics and politicians, acting on a nostalgic isolationism, began to attack modernism in art and literary forms.

There was contradictory response to the modern. Lind­say's taste combined a conservative cultural nationalism with an isolationist horror at all the 'revolutionary manias of a rotted world', as he described modern Europe in 1923. Lionel Lindsay's views epitomised the fascist-leaning, anti-modern loathing described by Blair as one side of the possible intellectual response to modernity. However, as the William Dobell Archibald Prize nomination by Lindsay demonst­rat­ed, his rejection of modernist innovation was not absolute.

Artistic conservatives reasoned that art should serve as an educator in higher ideals, but did so in a way that justified their rejection of modernism in art in favour of idealised nature. The Lindsays genuinely believed that modernism threatened the Canons of Beauty. To James Macdonald, the New School set out 'to prove the innate ugliness of all that seems beautiful'. Modernists not only perverted beauty, but were 'unconcerned with and only affected infinitesimally man's search for truth'.(59) Only nationalist land­scape paintings were concerned with permanent things like Love, Truth and Beauty. It appears that artistic allusions to a set of eternal values, or lessons drawn from great traditions of the past were comforting in the uncertainty of the present, whatever the type of art that was seen to convey them. Idealism and nostalgia were both characteristic intellectual and artistic responses to modernity.

Edward Wadsworth, 
The English Channel 1934. 
Displayed at the 1939 Herald Exhibition of British and French Contemporary Art.

Conclusion
In all of Hunt’s excellent analysis, two thoughts stand out. In the political and economic crises of the early 1930s, the modernist move­ment gained sufficient scale to pro­voke the establishment to fear-based respon­ses. James MacDonald, for example, assured the public that modernism was 'gangrened stuff which attracts the human blowflies of the world who thrive on putrid fare'. Hunt doesn’t explain why the traditionalists used the neo-Nazi language of Josef Goebbels, but she does explain why these tensions erupted in a series of cris­es in the art worlds in the late 1930s and early 40s.

And the flow of progressive ideas was eventually unstoppable. Lionel Lindsay was still writing with great venom in 1942, but he could no longer do any harm.
(11) Sydney Morning Herald, 7 June 1939; 3 July 1939.
(59) James S Macdonald Papers, NLA MS 430, box 1, pp 15, 27.

Excellent references:
1. Chanin, Eileen and Steven Miller The 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art, Melb, 2005
2. Haese, Richard Rebels And Precursors: The Revolutionary Years of Australian Art, Allen Lane, Melbourne, 1981 and

3.Dear Kitty. Some blog's post called Australia: modern art conflict in 1930s

Dean Spanley: a tale about reincarnation

Taken from what is rapidly becoming one of my favourite periods of history, the late Victorian-Edwardian era, I read a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle book and reviewed it in my post Victorian Spiritualism: Arthur & George. Soon after, and quite coincidentally, I saw the film Dean Spanley. I didn’t know of the Irish writer Lord Dunsany before and I had never heard of this slim novel written just before WW2.

Set in 1904, Dean Stanley was a rather bizarre story of a father-son relation­ship (Peter O'Toole & Jeremy Northam respectively) and some key people who touched their lives. Out of desperation at his father’s tetchy, critical behaviour, Fisk took his father to hear a lect­ure on spiritualism by Indian Swami Prash (Art Malik). There they met the peculiar Dean Spanley (Sam Neill) and a rough Aust­ralian call­ed Wrather (Bryan Brown). Wrather could procure anything a soul might crave, if the money was right. Since what Dean Spanley craved was rare Hungarian golden dessert wine Tokay, that is what Fisk paid for.


Fisk Snr and Jnr at the lecture on spiritualism

The film's most important scene was a formal dinner for the 4 men, well lubricated by Tokay. In the semi-gloom around the din­ner table, a drunken Dean “revealed amazing and cathartic connections from the past” that eventually intrigued the group. As a result of the group’s relationship, the father-son’s own emotional relationship was changed forever. The NZHerald thought Dean Spanley was a sweet, if somewhat sticky, tale of redemption and friendships renewed – somewhat like the Tokay. But more importantly for me, The NZHerald also thought the script made the absurd vaguely coherent.

But dream-like perceptions and drunken memories of some imagined past are not much to hang a film on. I was very interested in these educated men, living quite formal and prescriptive lives, becoming involved in spiritualism. broadcastellan blog wrote in Best in Show: Dean Spanley as Out-of-Homebody Experience that film was actually inspired by My Talks with Dean Spanley, a casual, witty discourse on reincarnation and the transmigration of souls. Even with the excruciating pain of having lost a son in the Boer War, why didn’t Fisk Snr simply refuse to go along with the irrationality of it all?

A Persistent Vision blog in Dean Spanley (2008) (SIFF 2009) put it down to a strange, wonderful clash of the absurd and coherent. I presume that meant that proper Victorian-Edwardian gentlemen could deal with rationality and spiritualism concurrently, and not see anything strange about the two themes. There seems to be no other explanation that I can see.

Medical Heritage Trail: University of Sydney

The University of Sydney has created a Medical Heritage Trail, a very informative self-guided walk that covers the medical architecture, museums, libraries and artworks of the first university to be estab­lished in Australasia. I love the idea of Australian universities analysing and publishing their own histories, but I also have a personal fascination – University of Sydney Medical School is my husband’s alma mater.

The Medical Cottage

The University was incorporated 1850 and inaugurated Oct 1852. In 1855, the Government gave the University land at Grose Farm, about 3 ks from the city. The first plans for the University's original building, the Quadrangle, were drawn up by architect Edmund Blacket. By 1862 the famous Great Tower had been completed. But a medical faculty was not thought of, at that stage.

As recorded in the University’s on-line history, Places - Faculty of Medicine Online Museum and Archive, there was an attempt upon the life of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh on a Sydney beach in 1868. The Duke was taken to Government House and attended by the surgeons of HMS Galatea and HMS Challenger. The Sydney community raised money in thanks, and the Duke asked that the money be used to build a hospital (Prince Alfred Memorial Hospital). The University of Sydney granted the use of University land, provided that a] a portion of the land was reserved for a school of medicine and b] that the hospital be open for clinical teaching to students of the medical school.

The entire medical student body 1887

*
In 1882 Royal Prince Alfred Hospital opened and became the Faculty’s first teaching hospital. That same year, the government agreed to finance a medical school. The Faculty of Medicine was largely shaped by the hard work and brilliance of Sir Thomas Anderson Stuart, who travelled to Australia from Edinburgh. Anderson Stuart took up the Professorship at the University of Sydney in 1883 and immediately began the task of opening the medical school. In that first year, 4 students started their studies in a 4-roomed cottage built behind the Great Hall of the University.

It was a slow start. Of the 29 students who enrolled in the first three University intakes, 11 graduated in minimum time and 3 after repeating one or more years. But confidence in the quality of the medical degree encouraged increased enrolments so that by 1893, 10 years after its inception, there were 100 students.

The Sydney Hospital for Sick Children was founded in 1880 in Glebe. Dr Alfred Roberts, who already had played a key role in the founding of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and the Coast Hospital, became one of the first surgeons of the Sydney Hospital for Sick Children. By 1884, Sydney Hospital for Sick Children was already recognised as a teach­ing hospital by the University of Sydney. And the very next year, 1885, Callan Park Hospital for the Insane also became a teaching hospital. Designed by colonial architect James, Callan Park Hospital had patients’ wards, joined by a central block which contained med­ical consulting rooms, a library and a pathology museum. Typical of Australian colonial architecture, the building had high ceil­ings, wide verandas, large windows and long covered walkways. The Royal Hospital for Women Paddington didn’t become a teaching hospital for Obstetric training until 1888.

Sydney Hospital for Sick Children, Glebe, c1860

Anderson Stuart wanted a more suitable medical school and in 1887, a new building was commenced. The first part of this Tudor-gothic building, later called the Anderson Stuart Building, was designed by architect Edmund Blacket and finished in 1891. Like mid-late C19th university buildings in Britain, this building had ornate carved elements including crenellations, pinnacles and grotesques.

Anderson Stuart Medical Building, 1891

Garden Design: Cloudehill in Melbourne.

Cloudehill is a 2 hectare garden in the Dandenong Ranges, just on the edge of suburban Melbourne. Waverley Arts Society blog wrote Cloudehill Garden was a work of art. In the 1890s the Woolrich family cleared bush in Olinda to create a working fruit garden. Then in the early 1920s, they established Rangeview Nursery and developed a cut flower and foliage farm. The family prospered for many years, however in 1962 bushfires devastated the farm and the business languished.

Jeremy Francis had long sought land in the Dandenongs to create a garden. He was introduced to the owner Jim Woolrich, the last of the second generation of the family, and learned much of the history of the nursery trade. After Jim's death, the family offered the property to Jeremy and in 1992 Cloudehill was established. The new owner decided to create a Garden of Eden, based on the established design principles arising from Arts & Crafts gardens. Everything was planned: the paths, trees, flowers,  sculpture etc.

I'm not familiar with garden design principles, so Katya at Bosco Parrasio blog was super.  “Cloudehill is inspired by the famous arts and crafts gardens of England: Sissinghurst, Hidcote, Tintinhull and others. These were derived from the renais­sance gardens of Italy eg Villa D'este and Villa Lante. Our green theatre is a tribute to those magnificent Italian hill gardens. Of course Cloudehill's location, with its gentle slopes, the dramatic forest to one side and exhilarating views to the mountains, provide plenty of inspiration and the placing of art works into the gardens give a contemporary twist to a classic design”. With the daffodils, she said, we see the change from the structured to the naturalistic.

See photos of Sissinghurst gardens, created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson, in Gardens of a Golden Afternoon. Examine Bishop's Gate which connects the Tower Lawn to the White Garden - the plants are not Australian, but the vistas and garden architecture are familiar.

Intelligblog noted that Cloudehill was laid out in about 20 rooms or garden compartments, all on different levels and linked by paths. Each compartment has its own theme, but there are also integrating elements, like brick and stone work, lined by herbaceous borders and clipped hedges that make each compartment feel an essential component of an integrated whole. Water features and art pieces were the modernising highlight for Nicholas.


VARPORIUM CENTRAL blog suggested “to see the perennial borders at their best on a clear morning after rain with the mist rising and melting is nothing short of miraculous. Flora Aik blog was just mesmerised with the estate.

If there is any disagreement, it is over the sculpture. In a new experimental part of the garden where it is too steep to walk, the new owner has used C17th Italian commedia dell'arte figures by Lazlo Biro to create what he hoped would be a really bold element and a wonderful focal point. Perhaps C17th gardens in northern Italy really did have lawned spaces where commedia dell'arte troupes played. But for me they didn’t fit into C21st Melbourne. The hugs garden pots, on the other hand, were wonderful.

p.s People interested in the art of landscaping might like to look at a blog called Corporate Stay Solutions.

Huguenots and the South African Cape

With the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, French Protestants were stripped of any protect-ion they may have had in Louis XIV’s France. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the exiles' large communities in England, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland, but then people started talking about the small Hug­ue­n­ot diaspora in South Africa. I searched the other blogs and found a little eg The du Preez Family blog.

Cape of Good Hope and the Western Cape region

In fact the Dutch East India Co./VOC, under Jan van Riebeeck, had already made a permanent Calvin­ist settlement on the Cape of Good Hope. He arrived with five ships in Cape Town bay in 1652. Cape Town’s settlement was a predominantly as an interim port for VOC ships, en route from Europe to Asia. In order to fully stock Cape Town’s port, the VOC admitted good Protestant citizens who could settle as farmers and provide the food and drinks. As early as 1671 the first Huguenot refugee, Francois Villion/Viljoen, arrived at the Cape.

Clearly the Dutch East India Co. encouraged the Huguenots to emigrate to the Cape because they shared Calvinist beliefs. But they also recognised that most of the Huguenots were exper­ien­ced farmers from parts of France that specialised in wine growing. After their arrival at the Cape, the immigrants were expected to make a living from agric­ulture, business or by practicing a trade. If they decided to farm, they were allotted farm land without cost. As soon as a few families settled, they laid the first stone of the Cape’s Dutch Reformed chur­ch 1678, built and later renovated in the typical Cape Dutch style.

An agent was sent out from the Cape Colony in 1685 to attract more settlers and new immigrants began to arrive eg in 1686 the brothers Guill­aume and Francois du Toit reached South Africa. Timing was everything! With the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, many a French Protestant was looking around for a home. By 1688-9 the 201 Hug­uenot families who arrived were just large enough to leave an impression on the young settlement at the Cape, only 70 km outside Cape Town.

Franschhoek Valley, site of Huguenot vineyards

In 1688, French Huguenot refugees were given land by the Dutch government in a valley called Olifantshoek/Elephant's Corner. The name of the area soon changed to Le Quartier Francais and then to Fransch­hoek Valley. That year a group of c200 French Huguenots arrived from La Motte d'Aigues in Provence and other areas. Examine A Post-Modern Protestant in Paris; his post South African Wine a French Protestant Heritage noted how they specialised in vineyards.

When the de Villiers brothers arrived at the Cape with a reputation for viticulture, and in time, the brothers planted many thousands of vines at the Cape. They moved from the original farm that they had been granted, La Rochelle, to finally settle on individual land grants near Fransch­hoek in places they named Bourgogne, Champagne and La Brie. Lucky were the passing ships that stopped in Cape Town.

Huguenot Monument in Franschoek, 1945

Individual arrivals contin­ued on and off until the end of Company-supported emig­rat­ion in 1707. Undoubtedly these French Huguenot exiles created fertile valleys out of the tough land they had been given in the Cape. But the white pop­ulation in the Cape was small, so they soon married their children and grandchildren into the fam­ilies of other colon­ists. And it didn’t help that the Dutch East India Co. insisted that schools taught exclusively in Dutch. By the mid C18th the Huguenots ceased to maint­ain a distinct ident­ity. Within two generations even their home language largely disappeared.

What is left now? Some important surnames, today mostly Afrik­aans speaking, remain in families who had French-speaking great great grandparents eg Cronje-Cronier, de Klerk-Le Clercq, de Villiers, Terre-blanche and Viljoen-Villion. Plus a number of wine farms in the Western Cape still have French names, as do their products.

La Motte winery, named for the settlers' French home.

Then there is a large monu­ment, Huguenot Monument in Franschoek 1945, commemorating the arr­iv­al of the Huguenots in South Africa, that wasn’t inaug­urated by Dr AJ van der Merwe until 1948. The cen­tral fe­m­ale figure stood for religious free­dom, denied the Huguenots in their beloved France but offered by Dutch South Africa. A useful analysis of the Huguenot Monument can be found in the Franschhoek blog. Finally the Memorial Museum of Franschhoek next to the monument celebrates the his­tory of the French Huguenots who settled in the Cape.

World's favourite art galleries

In light of the The Art Newspaper 's annual international survey published each year on the most attended museums, I thought I would ask other art-related bloggers which their favourite art gallery was.

Bruce at Victorian History has already indicated his preferences. "My own personal favourites are Musée d'Orsay with its wonderful displays of both the impressionists and the post-impressionists, and the Musée Marmottan with its Monets, including some absolutely delightful caricatures".

Kristin at ArtEco was totally rapt in the Gustave Moreau Museum in Paris. Gustave Moreau was a symbolist painter that turned his home into a museum in 1903, so that the paintings are still hanging where he left them.

Hermes at Victorian Paintings noted that his favourites were Bristol City Galleries; Fitzwilliam, Cambridge; Tate Gallery, London; and Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool.

One of my favourites is The Wallace Collection at Hertford House in Manchester Square, London. This may seem surprising since I am not a huge fan of 18th century French paintings and decorative arts. But the idea of using the architecture of a home to amass and display that very home's own collections is irresistible. I almost expect the Marquess of Hertford to wander down the hall to do a spot of dusting.

The Wallace Collection

So what is your favourite gallery? All I need is a Comment with the name of the gallery, the city where it is located and a few lines on why you like spending time there.

My unscientific guess was that people associated with art, as lecturers/curators/collectors/artists or bloggers, would not necessarily select the world's biggest and most famous galleries - the Louvre in Paris; Centre Pompidou in Paris; Tate Modern in London, British Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Let me refer you to one quick survey. The Guardian newspaper asked the expert panel: which is your favourite art gallery? in May 2008 and their results were as follows: The Serpentine, Kensington Gardens London; Museum of Modern Art in New York; Guggenheim Bilbao; the Neue Galerie New York; Kerlin Gallery in Dublin; the Ingleby in Edinburgh; Paul Stolper, an independent gallery in east London; the Prado in Madrid. This list provided quite an interesting mixture of the world-famous and the more local.