Spowers & Syme

Part of the Know My Name initiative celebrating women artists, this learning resource encourages secondary school students to investigate and draw inspiration from the ground-breaking prints and paintings of Australian artists Ethel Spowers and Eveline Syme.

The resource supports the National Gallery of Australia’s touring exhibition Spowers & Syme and explores a selection of key themes, including About the Artists, Play and Games, Studio Practice, Modernity and Landscapes. Themes are accompanied by Look, Think and Create prompts, offering making and responding activities that foster critical and creative thinking.

Ethel Spowers and Eveline Syme were part of a new generation of female artists during the interwar years of 1920 to 1940. As best friends, they supported each other’s aspiration to become professional artists in a time of social and cultural change across the world.

Ethel Spowers was born into a wealthy and cultured family and lived in a mansion in South Yarra, Melbourne. She was one of six children. Her mother was a watercolour artist and her father, the owner of newspapers The Argus and The Australasian, had an interest in the visual arts and literature. After completing school, Spowers travelled with her family to Paris and studied art. On her return to Melbourne, she completed a drawing and painting course at the National Gallery School.

Spowers and Syme were school friends, attending the same Church of England Girls Grammar School. Syme was also one of six children and her father a newspaper owner, in this case, The Age. Born in England, Syme finished school and returned to study classics at Cambridge. She later completed a Diploma of Education from the University of Melbourne as Cambridge didn’t award women degrees at the time.

Syme also studied painting at art schools in Paris, notably under André Lhote. In late 1928, Spowers decided to study linocut printmaking at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London. Syme joined her there in January 1929. It was under artist and teacher Claude Flight that their styles dramatically changed.

Although it was the period leading into the Great Depression, free from the traditional expectations placed on women at the time and with family support, Spowers and Syme were able to travel and focus on their artistic careers. Together they embraced Modernist ideas in London, bringing the spirit and knowledge of modern movements and techniques back to Australia.

Look

• In the work EL Spowers [bookplate] 1927, the artist has created a decorative label, a bookplate, which is usually pasted inside the front cover of a book to indicate ownership. The subject is a familiar character in fairytales. Which character is it and how is the action or story represented?
• Spowers has used line in both a descriptive and decorative manner to produce a dramatic black and white composition. Why has she used a decorative border? Can you work out the technique Spowers used to produce this bookplate and give the reasons why?

Think

• Bookplates reveal a diversity of styles but they often say something about the owner. What does EL Spowers [bookplate] reveal about Spowers?
• Where else might you see this image reproduced? Explain how the artist has integrated a coat of arms and her name into the design.

Create

• Look at AM Knox [bookplate] 1928 by Eveline Syme below. The scene is of a chapel in Ambroise, France. Research the use of bookplates and find out the significance of the Latin term ex libris.
  Design a bookplate that identifies you as the owner. Make it decorative. Design your family’s coat of arms and include it on the bookplate with your name. Make the design reveal a particular area of interest you have.

From her first illustrations of fairies published in The Australian at the age of 15 to her final exhibition at 46, Spowers’ main source of inspiration was childhood. Spowers captured the joy and movement of childhood in pen, ink, print and paint. Fascinated by children, her work covered nursery stories, fairytales and children at play.

At the end of 1936, Ethel Spowers held her sixth and final solo exhibition at the Grosvenor Galleries in Sydney. It was a survey of old favourites and new works, spanning a decade of imagination and experimentation. Among the twenty prints and six watercolours, there were new linocuts: Kites 1936, Football 1936, School is out 1936 and Children’s hoops 1936. These works were a return to her most treasured themes: children and family.

The Sydney Morning Herald reviewed the exhibition, noting: "Few Australian exponents of the colour print can equal the gaiety, the forcefulness and the imagination shown by Ethel Spowers.”

Look

• Among the prints and watercolours in Spowers’ final solo exhibition, celebrating her much-treasured theme of children at play, was Football, above. In this work we see a moment frozen in time, similar to a sports photograph found in the sports section of a newspaper. How has this been achieved?
• The players in a game of Australian rules are reaching for the ball after the bounce. Flat areas of yellow, reddish brown, grey and black are repeated in the composition. Why is this important? What is the purpose?

Think

• Compare the poses of the figures in Football. How does gesture and posture help tell the story?
• The use of flat forms and geometry underpinned much of both Spowers’ and Syme’s work after their time in London. What effect does using this technique have in Football? What mood is Spowers primarily interested in capturing and has she achieved this?
• Line can be used to describe the volume of forms. Where does this occur in the work? Why do you think the artist used a curved line to define the ground?

Create

• Produce a Collagraph (block and card print) based on an action photograph. Select a photograph containing a group of players or performers in action and make a photocopy. Use tracing paper over the photocopy and reduce figures to essential shapes. Overlay this drawing onto card and trace. Cut out these simplified figures from card, glue onto heavy board and you have a surface on which to ink and print in the same way as a linocut. Include additional lines and shapes to emphasise motion. See the Related links below for a demonstration on creating a collagraph.
• Childhood was a constant source of inspiration for Spowers. Scenes from fairytales were often the basis of her early illustrations. Select a well-known scene from a fairytale and produce a linear illustration in black ink. Refer to the work of Aubrey Beardsley in the link below, one of Spowers’ influences, for his use of stylised, sinuous lines and decorative borders.

Inseparable friends, Spowers and Syme travelled to London and Europe and studied together in the 1920s and 1930s.

In London they attended art classes at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art. Inspired by the teachings of Claude Flight, they experimented with new techniques and ideas associated with the avant-garde art movements of British Vorticism, Italian Futurism and Art Deco. Flight’s students developed a style that combined abstraction and dynamism with geometric elements.

During this time, massive technological changes were occurring in transportation, such as the increased use of air travel and ocean liners and the availability of affordable cars. Flight’s own art practice reflected modern life, reducing his compositions to simplified forms and patterns bursting with energy.

Italian Futurist writer Marinetti had a profound influence on Flight. His idea that ‘the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed’ is evident in Flight’s Brooklands 1929 (further below).

In this print, Flight depicts a popular motor racing circuit in England. It is a celebration of speed. The curved, fragmented lines evoke a sense of frenetic energy. Warm colours on the bonnet and wheels suggest the heat of the engine and tyres produced by speed while cars race out of the frame of the composition.

Look

• In Syme’s linocut above, Skating 1929, what effect do the lines and patterns on the people and in the background have on the subject? Think of words to describe the action.
• Spowers painted a similar subject, Skaters 1931, in London. Two figures skate into view and blades scrape the ice, producing curved lines. What sounds can you hear? What do the two central figures in the colours of magenta, green and yellow provide in the composition? The woman skater appears off-balance, arching back in her yellow jumper while her partner attempts to pull her forward. What might this tell you about the two central skaters?

Think

• In Syme’s linocut, could these figures be skating on a frozen river or lake? How can we tell?
• What is Spowers suggesting with the curved line of the magenta scarf? And does it correspond to any other part of the work?
• In both works, have the artists created the illusion of depth using tonal variations of colour? Is it more apparent in one work than the other? What other aspects of the compositions give you a feeling of spatial depth?

Create

• Imagine you are Syme being interviewed about your work. How would you describe and justify the composition, the flattening of form into shape and the choice of colours?
• Experiment with drawing moving figures. Watch a dance performance and draw the dancers as they move. Respond to the sounds/music by speeding up, slowing down and making different kinds of marks. Don’t worry about being accurate—produce continuous lines and overlap figures.

Spowers set up her studio in an old loft at her family home in Toorak, Melbourne. Light flooded the room, which made it perfect for art-making. It’s likely that Syme also produced prints in this space.

Early in their careers, Spowers and Syme experimented with the technique of Japanese woodcut found in a book written by British artist Frank Morley Fletcher. The book focused on the Ukiyo-e tradition. Spowers’ early woodcut Val de Grace, Paris 1922 reveals the influence of this style. Poetic and atmospheric in style, the military hospital is framed by the silhouette of the tree in the foreground.

In 1928 Syme made an interesting discovery at the Depot Bookshop, run by the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria: a book named Lino-Cuts written by Claude Flight. She was fascinated by the bold geometric compositions representing modern city life. She showed it to Spowers, who was equally impressed by the modernist images.

Together they decided to travel to London and study linocut printing under Claude Flight, a teacher at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art. Syme recalls, ‘Here was something new and different, linocut no longer regarded as a base form of woodcut’.

Look

• Let’s compare the two 1931 versions of The gust of wind by Ethel Spowers (above and below), one a painting and the other a linocut. Immediately, we notice the same subject: a figure losing control of a stack of papers on a wet and windy day. Examining the two works, what are the distinctive characteristics of each medium?
• In the linocut print below, The gust of wind 1931, Spowers has suggested the wet pavement with a few repetitive blue lines. What approach has she taken to represent the pavement in the oil on linen painting above, The gust of wind 1931?
• The painting displays fluidity and the figures show form. The linocut combines a flattening of form and abstraction, recalling the Vorticist teachings at the Grosvenor School in London. What other differences can you see?
• The composition in the print is based on the idea of a vortex. What is a vortex? Explain how this is an accurate description of the composition.

Think

• Artists often paint the same subject numerous times. What was the key element about the subject that appealed to Spowers?
• In the print version, Spowers reduces the subject to geometric patterns, almost unrecognisable. What technique does she use to isolate the central figure from the background?
• A sense of movement is represented in the curved line created by the grouping of the papers. In the painting the curved line is fragmented, while the curve is continuous in the print. Can you think of a reason for the variation, is it linked to the medium?

Create

• If you were asked to make a drawing suitable for a linocut, what might you take into consideration, especially if including letters? Make a list.
• Photograph or draw various aspects typical of the hustle and bustle of a city street—busy intersections, neon signs and advertising. Look for interesting combinations of line, pattern and shape. Develop your composition into a design suitable for a relief print.

Like many Australian artists, Spowers and Syme travelled to Europe for inspiration. They were interested in the art of the past but also the art and ideas of modern artists, and their works depict scenes from Australia and places in Europe.

They produced landscape drawings, paintings and prints of places they visited, such as the linocut San Domenico, Siena 1931 produced by Syme. In this work, we see how the teachings of André Lhote influenced Syme in the way she created order and structure with geometric forms and tonal colour.

By contrast, it was the teachings of Claude Flight who had the greatest impact on Spowers. On her return to Australia, Spowers’ style reflects this influence, in particular in her choice of subject matter. She found inspiration in the Australian industrial landscape as a symbol of the new age and progress.

It was the interwar period from 1920 to 1940, and although Australians were experiencing hardship, Spowers’ and Syme’s landscapes reveal an idyllic world. Their landscapes remain optimistic images while other printmakers like Noel Counihan and Frank Weitzel comment on the harsh reality of the period during the Great Depression.

Look

• In their linocuts The works, Yallourn 1933 and The factory 1933, Spowers and Syme have adopted a technique influenced by Flight’s teachings: eliminating black outlines and producing colour with multiple blocks. What effect does this create in the finished work?
• In Spowers’ linocut The works, Yallourn, a curved convoy of orange-coloured hopper wagons haul coal. What is the purpose of including power poles in the composition and what could it symbolise?
• In the composition, we see two men collecting coal with a horse and cart. What comparison and comment does Spowers make by including them?

Think 

• One aim of an artist can be to create a pathway along which the viewer can travel through the artwork. Imagine you are in either of these works. Describe your journey through the image. Your description should include physical details as well as your feelings about what you encounter along the way.
• In Syme’s industrial scene The factory, the image of a factory has an almost rural quality except for the towers of smoke. How has she created this quality in such an industrial subject matter? What effect does it have?

Create

• Make a collage based on industrial images taken from magazines or the internet. Create a work in which the message is in complete contrast to Spowers’ The works, Yallourn. Consider the concept of sustainability and contemporary issues regarding coal mining in Australia in your response.
• Appropriate Syme’s The factory and change the mood of the work through your choice of colour and shape or other adaptions to the printed image.

Curriculum Connections

This resource is linked to the Australian Curriculum and is particularly relevant to the Visual Arts learning area. By engaging with the work of Ethel Spowers and Eveline Syme through making and responding, secondary and senior secondary students can extend their use of visual language.

Students can also research and analyse the characteristics of materials and processes and build on their awareness of how and why artists realise their ideas through different visual representations, practices and viewpoints. Students will have the opportunity to adapt, manipulate, deconstruct and reinvent techniques, styles and processes as they create visual solutions to selected themes and concepts.

Teachers may adapt or extend this resource for use with groups of different ages and across learning areas. There is rich potential for connections to be made in the study of English and the Humanities and Social Sciences as there are opportunities for creative writing and exploring continuity and change over time.

The National Gallery values feedback from students and teachers on the resources we produce. To share student work or your feedback, please email learning@nga.gov.au.

Themes

About the Artists, Play and Games, Studio Practice, Modernity and Landscapes