Sydney Interiors

The Artist's Wife, 1913

      As a devotee of the Arts and Crafts movement, Bernard Hall was always
      interested in architecture. He was an active participant in the design of his
      own house in Malvern, built in 1901, under the supervision of his good
      friend, William Tappin, of the Melbourne architectural firm of Bates, Smart
      and Tappin. A notebook Hall kept in the late 1890s anticipated many of
      the features of this house, from its distinctive joinery to the delightful entry
      window created by another good friend, the stained glass artist, William
      Montgomery.

     It is not surprising then that interiors – at least those that met his exacting
     aesthetic standards – became a favourite subject for Hall’s work.  Many
     were painted at home, evidence of of his pride in his modest residence. The
     Art Gallery of New South Wales has one of these domestic interiorss, titled,
     as were several others, simply Chez Moi.  
    (http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/613/) 

 Chez Moi is a fascinating picture, as much for its representation of a bygone lifestyle as it is for its artistic qualities. Hall was a discriminating collector of finely crafted furniture, porcelain, glass and metalware, and several choice items here command the viewer’s admiration. In 1936, some of his most cherished pieces were displayed at a retrospective exhibition of his unsold work, reported by Argus columnist, Joshua McClelland. McClelland’s description, which includes several of the pieces in the Sydney Gallery’s painting, confirms the excellence of the artist’s taste.

Chez Moi c. 1924

Chez Moi, however, is not the only interior painted by Bernard Hall in the Sydney Gallery’s collection. There is another - one so very important that I find it difficult to understand the curatorial mind-set that leaves it in storage, while others, like Clewin Harcourt’s much less remarkable One Summer Afternoon have been given a place on the walls.

Hall’s Interior (http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/835/), was painted in 1926, in the house then occupied by the parents of a close friend, architect, Rodney Alsop. This was ‘Mayfield’, the homestead designed by Georgiana McCrae in 1842 and built to overlook the Yarra at Studley Park. There is little question that Hall, who had counted Georgiana’s children and grandchildren among his  friends since his earliest days in Melbourne, knew of its history.

‘Many years earlier (in 1907), the artist had challenged his colleagues’ obsession with the landscape, asking plaintively that  ‘If light be the subject of every picture, does it matter greatly where it falls, or what it illuminates?’ Few pictures could illustrate the validity of his contention more evocatively than his Interior (Mayfield), in which the legendary antipodean sunlight takes on a new significance.

Under its spell, polished floors gleam, their sheen reflecting the subtly shaded creams of walls and ceiling. Light touches and calls attention to a vase of flowers and the surfaces of pictures; it frames rugs and cushions and glances off handcrafted furniture; it gilds and thereby celebrates the sculptural massing of Georgiana’s architectural vision. A brass lamp by the foreground desk adds its own wry commentary to the composition. Slanting light from the window burnishes its shaft and casts a defined shadow on the adjacent wall. The shadow draws the viewer’s eye to the floor, and a power cord, untidy, unlovely and also ineffectual, as its plug lies disconnected on the floor.

The subtle irony of this vignette in a study where natural light has been exploited to such expressive effect is perhaps too easily overlooked. Throughout his life Hall asserted the importance of the Arts and Crafts ideal as a buffer against the aesthetic decline he believed to be related to the encroachment of modern technology. His Interior (Mayfield) participated in this discourse.’

One of the jewels of Australian architecture, ‘Mayfield’ was extended, altered and renovated several times before being demolished in 1962, a victim perhaps of the same outlook that consigns Hall’s painting to the obscurity of the storage racks. If for no better reason than its celebration of the achievement of one of the fledgling society’s most influential women, it deserves a more prominent place

As no black and white photograph of Interior could do this painting justice I will not include the one I have. A colour reproduction can be found on the Gallery’s website or in my biography of the artist, although nothing of this sort can match the impact of a personal encounter.  You only need to ask!


Do you know this picture?

Mayfield is, of course, not the only important residence to have been lost to the interests of developers. The picture here was painted at another: ‘The Moorings’, the Toorak home of South Australian grazier, George Logue Dickson and his wife Ida. After Dickson’s death, the couple’s daughter, Viola, took it and other cherished possessions back to her own home in South Africa, where it vanished from the record.  If it has survived I would love to know where it is.

Bernard Hall in Sydney

Some say you should never begin any communication with an apology – a rule that too often begs to be broken. This blog began with the best of intentions – a weekly, or at the very least, a fortnightly post that would fill out the story of L. Bernard Hall, the man Australian art historians had overlooked for far too many years.

No sooner had I started, however, than an entirely unexpected move from country Victoria to inner suburban Melbourne threw everything into chaos. Files that should have been informing the blog were packed for transport and the writing itself was brought to a sudden and regrettable halt. For this I can only apologise.

Now re-established, and with a great view from my desk over old Melbourne rooftops, I am more than ready to take up where I left off - with the Hall paintings in the collection of Art Gallery of New South Wales. There are, of course, many other reasons to explore this institution. The vast light-filled chambers that house nineteenth and early twentieth century art are themselves, as Grace Hall remarked in 1913, deserving of a leisurely inspection.

Among the artists represented in these ‘Grand Courts’ are several of Hall’s British friends, including Luke Fildes and Hamo Thornycroft, both of whom were unstinting in their praise for their younger colleague. The work of Australian contemporaries, Walter Withers, Rupert Bunny, Frederick McCubbin, Clewin Harcourt and John Mather can also be found here, alongside of that of Hall’s one-time students Gordon Coutts, Hugh Ramsay, Max Meldrum, Margaret Preston and Violet Teague. Paradoxically, it seems, you will probably have to visit the Gallery’s storage areas to see the work of the man who, in their own time, stood tall among them.  

This Gallery holds five of Hall’s paintings. First to be purchased (in 1910) was The Model, an early example of the genre for which he is best known in Australia. The black and white photograph on the left  below was commissioned by the artist after the work was finished, but the picture itself can be seen in full colour on the Gallery’s website at http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/636/

The Model was among the earliest of a sequence of similar paintings, which culminated with The Model and the Picture (on the right) in the late 1920s. As with any of Hall’s series, comparing the works offers some insight into the way he manipulated his ‘props’ so that no two versions of a theme were ever the same.  (For any one in Melbourne, a reminder that the later picture can still be seen at the exhibition ‘Free, secular & democratic: building the Public Library 1853–1913’ at the State Library of Victoria – at least until the end of January 2014.)

There is another late nude in the New South Wales Gallery collection. The Glass Bottle, http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/618/ was painted for exhibition in 1930, when the artist was seventy years old. Although small in size, it showcases the technical achievement for which he was justifiably applauded.  The manipulation of contrasting shapes, surfaces, textures and even brush-strokes to realise a satisfying whole, and the play of light that sculpts the girl and glances off the great demijohn for which the picture is named, are all characteristics of Hall’s most admired work.

Some nine years after buying The Model, the Sydney Gallery Trustees purchased Coyness, http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/6061/, a quaintly old-fashioned portrait that confirms Hall’s fascination with the work of the seventeenth century Delft School. When I last saw this painting it was hanging on the storage racks next to another of his portraits.  The subject of Coquetry, http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/7060/, painted at much the same time as Coyness, is a vibrant young woman who would not have been out of place on the lawns at a twenty-first century Derby Day. Hanging side by side, as they were then, these paintings witnessed another of Hall’s strengths. His ability to discern and exploit traits beyond the purely physical gave his each of his simpler head studies a noteworthy individuality. 

As with much of Hall’s work, these portraits warrant a leisurely personal encounter. For those without access to Sydney, however, its Gallery’s website offers a reasonable introduction. And, before I move on to discuss the two interiors in its collection, some more examples of this genre, in private hands, may be of interest. Unlike the images in his themed series, every small portrait stands alone.

Juanita

Bath Portrait

Encounters in Adelaide

Bernard Hall always had close ties with Adelaide, and was a regular exhibitor at its annual Federal Art Exhibition. His connection with the city was cemented by the friendship of two influential men, Harry Pelling Gill, the honorary curator of the Adelaide Gallery from 1892 until 1907, and the eminent architect and connoisseur, Walter Hervey Bagot, who did his best to ensure that Hall’s connection with the Gallery remained strong in later years.

The Art Gallery of South Australia holds three of Bernard Hall’s pictures.  As is the case with other state galleries, you will probably have to ask if you want to see them all, although if you are lucky you may find an early still life and a late nude on display in the Elder wing. 

The Adelaide Advertiser, Thursday 6 November 1902

The 'picture in question', After Dinner, was acquired in 1902 from the Federal Art Exhibition. An accomplished study in the Dutch manner, it provides a captivating hint of the principles underlying the Edwardian art of entertaining. In 1916, in a lecture given at the Adelaide Gallery, Hall said that ‘Art is no hot-house plant flourishing only in art galleries and museums, or art schools and studios. Art permeates the whole field of human activities and is of a piece with life’.  If you can find time for a leisurely encounter with After Dinner, you may reach a better understanding of the man and his philosophy.

In 1905, the Gallery purchased another of Hall’s paintings, also from the Federal Exhibition. The Gardener’s Workshop has a more complex history; one that creates its own problems for the critic. With limited time to explore new subjects, Hall had begun to rework several that had already proven popular, sometimes from sketches and photographs, but also from paintings he had chosen to retain for this purpose.  His first ‘Workshop’ or ‘Toolshed’ was one of these, painted at Nazeing Hall in Essex before he left England. This version remained in his possession until 1935 at which time the artist and Hall's ex-student, A. M E. Bale purchased it for her own collection.

Left: L. Bernard Hall, The Gardener's Workshop, c. 1890, Above: Label on reverse.
The current whereabouts of this picture are unknown.

Hall was to continue painting 'duplicates' throughout his life, justifying the exercise in later years by noting that one such  [The Cheese Kitchen, first painted in Bavaria] is a precious little subject just suited – so I think – to my hand and treatment and I have attained ... facility in rendering its detail that otherwise had not been possible. There is absolutely nothing to prevent an artist doing this – varying or bettering his results – I suppose I have done so in about half a dozen cases out of my many pictures. He added that ‘From the Old Masters down to the present time [reworking a theme] has continually been done’, citing several pictures in the Melbourne Gallery to support his claim. And, despite being labeled duplicates, the differences arising from ‘varying or bettering’ rendered each version distinctive, ensuring a ready and appreciative market.

The third Hall painting to be found in Adelaide is a large scale nude, The Model and the Mirror, painted in the late 1920s, at which time the artist was approaching his seventieth birthday. I find this one particularly interesting in that it illustrates, perhaps more clearly than any other, the development of Hall’s style over the years. The most cursory comparison of The Model and the Mirror and The Sleeping Beauty/A Colour Medley from around 1910 (find it in my June posting) should show you what I mean. 

Many years later, Sybil Craig wrote about the girl who posed for The Model and the Mirror. ‘Miss D--- was of Irish extraction and was very lonely out here. She was Mr Hall’s model and we were lucky to get her. She had rich red hair, lovely skin and large blue eyes. I loved the quality of her skin and her charming profile.’ Somehow this description adds poignancy (at least for me) to the picture in Adelaide

If you can’t make Miss D’s acquaintance in person, you will find the picture in my book and on the Gallery’s website: http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home/Collection/detail.jsp?ecatKey=4261

Do you know this painting?

L. Bernard Hall, study for The Model and the Mirror

Like many of his contemporaries, Hall often worked on several studies or oil sketches before he was satisfied with the way a concept was developing. This is one of the studies that paved the way for the final Model and the Mirror, and gives some idea of the way the artist experimented with furnishings and accessories in the early stages of his work.  In the finished picture, the foreground is less cluttered, while the background has been changed to identify the setting as Hall's studio.

There is some evidence that this picture, which would have been much smaller than the Adelaide Gallery’s Model and is only known from the photograph above, was sold in the years after the artist’s death. If you know where it is now I would love to hear from you.