Capital and Country

This touring exhibition is supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia and the National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach Program, an Australian Government program aiming to improve access to the national collections for all Australians. The exhibition is also supported by the NGA Council Exhibitions Fund and Media Partner ABC Local Radio.

• Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, NT
  4 May – 29 September 2013
• The Art Gallery of Ballarat, VIC
  26 October 2013 – 19 January 2014
• Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, TAS
  13 March – 11 May 2014
• Riddoch Arts and Cultural Centre, SA
  13 December 2014 – 22 February 2015
• Newcastle Art Gallery, NSW
  7 March – 31 May 2015
• Canberra Museum and Gallery, ACT
  21 November 2015 – 21 February 2016
• UQ Art Museum, QLD
  25 July – 1 November 2015

Nation Making

On 17 September 1900, following almost two decades of heated debate, Queen Victoria proclaimed that on 1 January 1901 a federation of the six British colonies would come into being to form the Commonwealth of Australia. On New Year’s Eve 1900, Federation was welcomed with enthusiasm and merrymaking around the country. Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin were two of many Australian artists moved to respond to the significance of this time, and produced lively sketches inspired by the opening of Australia’s first Federal Parliament on 9 May 1901. 

One of numerous nation building acts that took place following Federation was the development of Australia’s diplomatic mission in central London. The embassy, known as ‘Australia House’ was constructed between 1913 and 1918, and was the first official building designed to represent Australia after Federation. It was symbolic as Australia’s first international presence, yet also represented a continuation of British–Australian ties.

The search for a permanent site for the Federal Capital also played out over this same period of time. After almost eight years of often-controversial discussions, in 1908 the Federal Parliament agreed upon a site in farmland near Yass, in New South Wales. A competition to paint the Federal Capital site on a grand scale was announced in 1912. The large panoramic vistas by Penleigh Boyd and W. Lister Lister show the view towards what is now the centre of the Capital, where the foundation stones for the city of Canberra were laid on 12 March 1913.

Federation Landscapes

During the Federation years the Australian landscape played an important role in the excited imagining of a national identity. From the late nineteenth century Australians had begun to seek out imagery, ideas and ideals that seemed characteristic of their surroundings, and with Federation this quest took on greater purpose and meaning.

Key artists of the era, such as W.C. Piguenit, Hans Heysen and Frederick McCubbin, drew on the traditions of European landscape painting to offer Australians poetic visions of their surroundings. They helped Australians to fall in love with the distinctive qualities of the bush, from a ‘typically Australian’ colour palette to the effects of sunlight and representations of native flora, particularly the gum tree. Similarly, the popularity of images of drovers, shearers and the trials and triumphs of life on the land appealed to the egalitarian ideals of city-dwelling Australians, who then made up almost two-thirds of the population.

As Australians sought out images of their nation, Federation landscapes began to replace nineteenth-century British pictures as public favourites. Spaces dedicated to the display of public collections and exhibitions of Australian art were expanded, and large national exhibitions provided artists all over the country with the opportunity to paint major works. The increase in scale of many works by Federation landscape painters reflects both a sense of national pride and the growing interest in Australian art, generating a veritable boom in the market by 1907.

Travel Impressions

Despite the excited nationalism of this time, Europe still beckoned Australian artists as the centre of Western art. A pilgrimage to Europe was considered a rite of passage for many Australians. London and Paris were two of the most fashionable destinations, attracting artists from all over the world. Young artists were encouraged by teachers, patrons and colleagues to further their study in Paris, and senior artists also left Australia to establish themselves within a much larger market.

Figure compositions and portraiture dominated the art scene within which most Australians sought acceptance. Mastering the human form was the major focus of the Academies, and from the turn of the century, portraiture and aesthetic figure studies had replaced history painting as the prominent genre accepted into the large prestigious annual exhibitions of the Old and New Paris Salons and the Royal Academy in London.

Expatriate Australians were predominately influenced by the society portraits and sophisticated figure paintings of artists such as London based American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Expatriate painters also looked to the art of the past, stimulated by the rich collections of European art museums. The works of seventeenth-century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, in particular, had achieved a cult-like following, inspiring numerous homages and quotations.

Paris & London

While studying in Paris, most students painted continually and energetically. A number of works in this exhibition are student pictures, completed with whatever visual material these eager young painters had at hand, from their dimly lit, poorly heated live-in studios to views of the river Seine.

Most expatriate artists also travelled around Europe while abroad. Arthur Streeton, for example, embarked on artistic pilgrimages through Italy and rural Britain. Richard Hayley-Lever was one of a number Australians who worked in the popular Impressionist artists’ colony at St Ives, on Britain’s Cornish coast. From a base in Paris, Hilda Rix Nicholas, like E. Phillips Fox and his British-born wife Ethel Carrick, travelled extensively, capturing lively, high-key impressions of modern life and leisure from Paris to Morocco.

Fox and Carrick also visited Australia briefly, in part inspired by reports of the booming art market. Carrick’s works such as The quay, Milsons Point reveal her delight in the clear bright sunlight of this Australian coastal urban centre, in the manner of her European impressions. Until the founding of the Federal Capital in Canberra, all major urban centres (home to almost two-thirds of the Australian population) were located on the coast. While the beach subsequently became a key symbol of an Australian identity, during the Federation years representations of the city and the beach reflected more modern, less ‘characteristically Australian’ ideas of life and landscape.