Book review
Outlines Of Australian Art: The
Joseph Brown Collection by Daniel Thomas
Published by Macmillan, Melbourne, 1980
Victorian Treasures by Anne Glover
Published by Macmillan, Melbourne, 1980
Reviewed by PAUL LITTLE
Outlines of Australian Art is something unique in antipodean art publishing. it is the record of one private collection: that of Mr Joseph Brown, a Melbourne art dealer.
Joseph Brown's aim in gathering together the works illustrated in this book was to acquire examples of all the major Australian artists and schools since that country's art history began in the late eighteenth century. This is an objective whose broad scope can normally be countenanced only by public galleries. Joseph Brown's success will be the despair of those who can consider large private collections only with moral revulsion: and a great spur to other private collectors.
Brown has succeeded to the extent that this book is justifiably titled. From a work painted by William Hodges in about 1776, to a sculpture executed by David Wilson in 1979, there is no major Australian artist who is not present. Eugen von Guerard, Frederick McCubbin, Bernard Hall, John Russell, William Dobell, Roland Wakelin, Peter Purves Smith, Albert Tucker, Arthur Boyd, Godfrey Miller, Leonard French, Sidney Ball, Arthur Streeton, and Russell Drysdale are all represented by fine examples of their work. Lesser. though no less interesting, works by Tom Roberts, Sidney Nolan, Eric Thake and others are also included.
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GODFREY MILLER Still Life with Jug
1949-54 |
Naturally a collector who began his collection only in the 1950s did not have easy access to major works by earlier artists, most of which were already placed in public galleries. But Brown's collection does not suffer from this limitation. Rather, it has meant that many of the better-known artists are represented by works not typical of their oeuvre in general, or of mainly historical interest. This makes the book a valuable addition to the standard texts on Australian painting which are illustrated with more mainstream works.
Outlines of Australian Art often provides us with an opportunity to see the works out of which the major ones developed: an early Tom Roberts, for example, affords an interesting glimpse of that artist's immature efforts to deal with the representation of light. Likewise, an early Russell Drysdale deals with the theme of people, society and the land in a most atypical way.
In the early days of settlement in Australia and New Zealand the two countries shared a number of artists. Of these, William Hodges, William Strutt, Nicholas Chevalier and Girolamo Nerli are all in the Joseph Brown collection. Readers of this book familiar with the New Zealand works of these artists will be interested to see what slight distinctions they could make between the landscapes of both countries.
New Zealand has also given many native-born artists to Australia, as she has to the world. Godfrey Miller and Roland Wakelin (see Art New Zealand 1) both made major contributions to the course of Australian art, and the examples of their work in this book make it quite clear why.
Most of the 205 plates in Outlines of Australian Art are in colour and they are accompanied by a concise verbal outline of Australian art written by Daniel Thomas, a well-known Australian art gallery personality. He provides a good introduction to each major period of Australian art, with specific reference to works in the Joseph Brown collection. When the paintings are of inferior quality he does not hesitate to say so. Thomas also takes the opportunity to upset some of the orthodoxies established by Bernard Smith in his Australian Painting: for instance, by rating Max Meldrum very highly (an opinion which does not seem justified by the example of Meldrum's work in this book).
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| G. P. NERLI, Port Philip foreshore
1888 oil on board, 235mrn x 345mm (Collection of Joseph Brown, Melbourne) |
Generally, there is as little interest in Australian art here as there is in New Zealand art there (although the National Gallery, Wellington held an interesting Aspects of Australian Art exhibition earlier this year). Readers interested in the fascinating history of the art of our antipodean cousins could do far worse than start with a look at the collection of Joseph Brown.
Victorian Treasures is the record of a very different sort of Australian collection. The La Trobe Collection in the State Library of Victoria is a fascinating set of letters, photographs, paintings, manuscripts, medals, diaries and other items relating to the exploration and settlement of Victoria. Australian icons as diverse as a globe used by Captain Cook and a proclamation declaring Ned Kelly an outlaw are featured. The book is pleasantly presented, with an informative commentary on each of the items reproduced.