Hugh Ramsay Symposium - Varco Cocks (NGV) - looking within the works

This paper will examine a group of works from the National Gallery of Victoria's collection that help record Hugh Ramsay's technical development and his pursuit for an independent style and artistic identity. As a student at the National Gallery School, Ramsay's early methods were strongly influence by the then Director and Master of the school of painting Bernard Hall. Two works in the NGV's collection, Anxiety (c. 1899) and Conciliation (1899-1901), typify this stylistic influence that was built on a reserved use of colour and dark applications of heavy resinous paint applied to a laboured surface. Consolation (c. 1899) was the rising artist's major Australian composition and although begun in Melbourne was finished in Paris two years later. The canvas traversed not only geographical borders but also the transition to a mature artistic practice. In Paris Ramsay placed greater importance on self-portraiture of which the NGV has five examples. Although the self-portrait provides a convenient and cheap model, the volume of production and investment in studio materials suggests a deliberate enquiry into the representation of the artist's identity that simultaneously explored form, composition and a freedom of expression offered by immediacy. The technical achievement of Ramsay's brief career will be illustrated through the materiality of these two groups of works.