Uncommon Australians

Portraiture

Portraits offer a promise of immortality, and that was certainly the intention in the elegantly idealised depictions of rulers of the ancient world. In Egyptian art, however, the lower classes (when depicted) were shown with greater realism, and these might be considered the first real portraits. Greco-Roman funerary portraits are more personalized, and are more moving and evocative as a result, but the finest of Republican Rome's portrait busts, with their combination of realism and technical brilliance in control of medium (whether carved or cast), are truly arresting.

Traditionally, portraits were symbolic representations of role and function, long before they revealed the individual, but the Renaissance in Italy produced remarkable human studies by Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and Lotto, and in the north by van Eyck, Durer, and later, Holbein. In seventeenth century Holland, subtle, intuitive portraits were created by Rembrandt and Vermeer, in Spain by Velazquez, in England by van Dyck and in Italy, Bernini.

Ingres' portraits with their balance of realism and insight have become nineteenth century icons. But in the same century, with the advent of photography, and perhaps as a reaction against it, later portraiture attempted to evoke the subject, rather than literally show it.

Edward Lucie-Smith (in his study 'The Invented Eye') comments that ‘a portrait produced by a painter or sculptor is always a synthesis of impressions, and we assume that the artist is attempting a definitive view of the sitter - a verdict’. By contrast, with a photographic portrait only one impression is recorded, and the viewer is left to wonder about other possible aspects, facets and views of the sitter.

The fascination with self is further focused by the attention given to the human face. Much of our social communication is based on facial expression, our everchanging ideals of beauty focus on it, and it symbolises humanity for almost all cultures, ancient and modern.

Portraiture usually attempts to encompass the physical and the spiritual - the objective realism of Roman portraiture, the spirituality of Byzantine art, the almost photographic realities of the early Dutch, Flemish and German masters, the idealism of the Renaissance humanists, the dissected geometry of the Cubists, and the expressionistic, illuminating exposes of van Gogh, or Dix and Grosz. But finally, regardless of medium, great portraits have a special quality that transcends time and place.

Public portrait collections

Given that history from earliest times is told largely through portraiture, whether in tomb frescoes or monumental commemorative sculptures, it is a surprise to realise that few public portrait collections have been established, and then only relatively recently. Gripsholm Castle in Sweden houses an important and historic collection, and Louis Philippe established another at Versailles, when the great palace ceased to be a royal residence and became the people's property. However, apart from those much smaller collections, London's National Portrait Gallery and Scotland's sister institution existed virtually alone, and it was not until 1962 that the American equivalent opened in Washington, D.C.

Australians have long had an interest in portraiture - the more affluent colonists brought out reminders of forebears and their old cultural roots, the rest enjoyed paintings, drawings and engravings of their social superiors in the burgeoning colonial galleries, or had themselves recorded by the new-fangled medium of photography. Portrait competitions were established (and continue to be), and most know of the Archibald Prize (endowed in 1919) which annually generates great interest, usually splits artistic camps, and on occasions gives rise to great public controversy - in 1943, William Dobell's prize-winning portrait of Joshua Smith caused such uproar that a four-day court case ensued to establish its validity.

It is also something of a surprise that with such a wide and deep national interest, this should be the first major touring portraiture exhibition. Equally surprising is the lack, at present, of an appropriate national institution to house and display such material permanently, to generate such exhibition tours, or to continue acquiring these remarkable records of major contributors to (or important participants in) Australian life.

There is the belief this exhibition will create such interest that a permanent institution may be established in the national capital, and this cultural omission finally corrected.

The Exhibition

'It doesn't matter how many generations pass, great numbers of people will flock to portrait exhibitions because of their interest in humanity and the interpretation of one human being by another...We all become great critics when it comes to portrait painting!'

This telling quotation from Lloyd Rees (represented in the exhibition by a self-portrait of 1950) was made - very appropriately - during his opening speech at a portrait exhibition of works by his old friend, Joshua Smith and Yve Close in Canberra, in 1983. His comments encapsulate the ongoing interest that society has in representation of self, particularly if the subjects (or their treatment artistically) should be in any way unusual.

Titled 'Uncommon Australians: Towards an Australian portrait Gallery' the one hundred and sixteen portraits include paintings, drawings, prints, photography and sculpture by over seventy artists. They acknowledge not just those Australian-born, or who took citizenship, but those who by some special contribution to - or close association with - Australia's early history also merit inclusion. Hence, the portrait of Abel Tasman, his wife and daughter keeps valid company with other adventurous explorers, including mountaineer Tim Macartney-Snape, photographed in 1990 at his Mt Everest base camp.

The exhibition and its catalogue are divided into five categories embracing 'Exploration and Development', 'Government, Law and Order', 'Creative Australia', ‘Research, Education and the Media' and 'Sporting Australia'. While the majority of the works have been loaned by thirteen national institutions, many portraits have also come from rarely-seen private collections.

Many of the artists are as well-known as their famous (or occasionally infamous) subjects - Barry Humphries (in the character of Edna Everage) painted in 1969 by John Brack, the aviators Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm painted by Sir William Dargie, Ned Kelly portrayed by Sir Sidney Nolan, Lord and Lady Casey photographed by Cecil Beaton, and the friendship portrait of Arthur Streeton done by Tom Roberts, in 1891.

Portraiture has always occupied a special place in the Australian artistic tradition, and our finest artists, cartoonists, photographers and sculptors have helped bring our history to life in this particular genre - the educational importance is obvious, and it ranges across all curricula from Art and Australian Studies, to History and Social Education.

Beyond the educational institutions, the public are reminded (often entertainingly, and sometimes pungently) of past achievements, and of the very different kinds of contributions that are required to advance a new society. As Alan Fern, Director, National Portrait Gallery, Washington. D.C. observes - 'A national portrait gallery can be a place of celebration, but it may also serve as a centre for reflection on some of the awkward turns of the national past'.

Exploration and Development

This first section commences with the remarkable seventeenth century Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman, who first charted and named Van Diemen's Land in 1642. (It was to be renamed Tasmania, in tribute to his bold and intelligently-commanded voyages of discovery to our southern and northern shores).

He is portrayed (in oil on canvas) with his second wife and daughter by his first marriage, and the work (painted by Cuyp in Amsterdam c. 1637), is a dramatic counterpoint in colour, composition and mood with the much later self-portrait (c. 1815) of Col. William Light (see cover).

Light, the first Surveyor-General of the South Australian colony, selected the site for Adelaide and planned the city. He not only had a successful naval and army background, but was a talented engineer, musician and (obviously) artist. He has chosen to depict himself in army uniform, languorously posed in a rocky wilderness, like a Romantic, late eighteenth century portrait by Gainsborough or Reynolds.

By contrast, the photographic portrait of Sir Reginald Ansett, transport entrepreneur and aviation pioneer, shows him confident, in his later years, literally and metaphorically casting his shadow across the entire country.

Others, who have developed Australia through agriculture and mining are included, and so, too, are philanthropists who, having derived great wealth from the country, are returning it to encourage further development.

Government, Law and Order

Grouped here are vice-regal representatives, state and federal political leaders, key government advisers, the legal and diplomatic fraternities and, in one case, their antithesis, the outlaw Ned Kelly, portrayed symbolically by Sidney Nolan. Order in society is represented directly by key figures in the armed forces - Monash, Cutler and Blamey - but also represented (in a more subtle way) by religious leadership.

Included also are those whose great achievements were in the physical care and comfort of the sick and wounded - Simpson and his donkey, Sister Bullwinkel and the Rev. John Flynn. "Flynn of the Inland" whose great compassion, foresight and practical skills created the Royal Flying Doctor Service for outback Australia, is shown as he would have wished to be - in an unpretentious snapshot taken by an admirer and colleague, the Rev. Fred McKay, in 1937.

By contrast, 'Dining At The Table Of Power' is a tableau of the satirical sculptures 'Rubbery Figures' (from the ABC-TV program of the same name) that includes Fraser, Hayden, Hawke, Keating, Peacock, Howard and Bjelke-Peterson. Their creator, Melbourne-based cartoonist Peter Nicholson also sketched this unlikely dinner party in an equally acerbic pen and watercolour wash drawing, which is illustrated in the exhibition catalogue.

Creative Australia

Actors, architects, artists, authors, conductors, dancers, designers and fashion figureheads, models and musicians are gathered here, from a marble bust of Melba to a photograph (very appropriately) of top photographic model, Elle Macpherson.

Show business legends, old and new, are shown Martin Sharp's 1978 poster for the Nimrod Theatre (echoing Japanese woodblock prints of Kabuki actors) celebrates one of our great 'larrikin' comedians, Roy Rene, who until his death in 1954 was best known as ‘Mo’.

Similarly, John Brack's lurid, leering Barry Humphries/Edna Everage portrait of 1969 acknowledges, as the journalist Janet Hawley notes, the artist's (and, indeed, the sitter's) ‘preoccupation with artificiality and things in a state of precarious balance’.

Helena Rubinstein, who launched her cosmetics empire in Melbourne in 1902, was a business genius whose global empire began with selling a few jars of face cream in rural Victoria.

Dobell's work brilliantly conveys his sitter's great strength and authority - she was already eighty-six years old when he painted her in 1957, and the portrait's power belies her tiny stature (she was less than five feet tall, in high heels).

A great contrast is statuesque, Adelaide-born businesswoman and media personality, Maggie Tabberer. One of Australia's most beautiful models in the 1960s (as this 1981 photograph still shows), she continues to dominate her more recent professions in the publishing, television and design worlds.

Research, Education and the Media

World-famous scientists like Adelaide-born Howard Florey (later the Lord Florey), who discovered a low-cost production technique for penicillin, and Sir Macfarlane Burnet (whose work in certain areas of virology led the world) are grouped here with historians and educators like Professor Manning Clark and Professor Geoffrey Blainey, the pioneering anthropologist, Daisy Bates and the media giants, Sir Frank Packer and Sir Warwick Fairfax.

When Peter Mayoh photographed Sir Macfarlane Burnet still at his research in 1981 , this remarkable scientist had already been knighted, elevated to the Order of Merit in 1958, and awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1960 for his life-saving discoveries.

Sir Edward Dunlop and Lady Cilento have long been admired and acknowledged for their untiring work as medical specialists. In Sir Edward's case, his work done for his fellow prisoners-of-war (labouring under appalling conditions on construction of the Burma-Thailand railway) made him a legend.

Lady Cilento painted by John Rigby at her desk in the family study, has devoted her life as a practitioner and advocate in the fields of maternity, childcare, nutrition and vitamin therapy. For more than fifty years, she wrote a weekly medical advice column, translating medical facts into language that all could understand. Rigby's choice of calm, cool colours and the careful, deliberate but deft application of paint mirror his sitter's characteristics perfectly,

Sporting Australia

This final section showcases the national sporting idols, from a very young Hubert Opperman with his cycle, snapped in the backyard by a doting uncle in 1922, to Bill Leak's 1990 portrait of Sir Donald Bradman (see cover), arguably the greatest cricketer of all time, and certainly the sport's greatest statesman. 'In a country where religion has largely been replaced by sport' commented an admiring Leak, with singular irreverence, 'it was easy to see my responsibility as capturing the likeness of the Almighty'. Other champions in the arenas of athletics, billiards, golfing, horse racing and motor racing, swimming, tennis and yachting are also represented.

Evonne Cawley, one of the best but also most graceful of tennis players (as Geoff Bull's action shot clearly demonstrates) is a very different photographic essay from David Moore's Dawn Fraser, taken in a moment of post-victory exultation. This tough little Balmain kid fought on to overcome physical and bureaucratic handicaps and become the finest swimmer of her time, while her larrikin streak and healthy dislike of petty officialdom struck another responsive national chord. As her biographer, Harry Gordon, noted ‘she developed into a folk hero...she stopped being just a champion and qualified as a bona fide legend’.

1992-1993

• National Gallery of Victoria, VIC
  7 May 1992 – 29 Jun 1992
• Queensland Art Gallery, QLD
  26 Aug 1992 – 4 Oct 1992
• Art Gallery of New South Wales, NSW
  22 Oct 1992 – 22 Nov 1992
• Art Gallery of South Australia, SA
  4 Dec 1992 – 31 Jan 1993