Dresden Portrait Re-Identified as a ‘Lost’ portrait of Augusta Großherzogin von Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1822-1916) by F.X. Winterhalter

Dresden Portrait Re-Identified as Winterhalter’s ‘Lost’ portrait of Augusta Großherzogin von Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1822-1916)

The recent catalogue of Victorian Miniatures in the Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has helped me to shed light on the portrait in the collection of Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, known hitherto only as Damenbildnis [see no 321, Works by Franz Xaver Winterhalter 1846-1850]. 

The painting can now be fully identified as a portrait of Augusta Großherzogin von Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1822-1916), née Princess of Cambridge, painted at Windsor Castle between 7 and 16 October 1846.

 

The following research information backs up my suggestion:

• A miniature enamel copy of this portrait (5.0 x 4.0 cm) by John Simpson (1811-aft 1871), signed, dated, and identified as a copy after Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s portrait of Princess Augusta of Cambridge, Hereditary Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, of 1846, is in the collection of HM Queen Elizabeth II (RCIN 421918).
• A further copy of this portrait by Henry Melville (fl 1846-86) (oil on canvas, 61 x 50.8 cm, oval), is also in the collection of HM Queen Elizabeth II (RCIN 406676).
• Both copies were commissioned by Queen Victoria after the original portrait by F.X. Winterhalter, which was given to the sitter’s husband, Friedrich Wilhelm Großherzog von Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1819-1904).

There are numerous references to confirm the dating of the portrait from October 1846:

• The portrait was commissioned by Queen Victoria from Franz Xaver Winterhalter, who was in England from September 1846 to February 1847 [Oliver Millar, Victorian Pictures, 1: 284]
• One of Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting, Hon. Eleanor Stanley, wrote in a letter from Windsor Castle, dated 7 October 1846: “I was on the whole day with some Royalty or other, as the Grand Duchess [of Mecklenburg] sat for her picture from eleven till two to Winterhalter, and desired [me] to go and sit with her… After lunch she had another sitting, and I attended again till four o’clock, when she went out driving with the Queen…” [Eleanor Stanley, Letters (London: 1916), 136].
• The portrait is mentioned in Queen Victoria’s diary in an entry for 16 October 1846, where the portrait is described as ‘quite beautiful & so boldly, as well as finely painted’ [Oliver Millar, Victorian Pictures (London: 1992), 1: 326].
• It was given as a joint present from Queen Victoria and the Dowager Queen Adelaide to the sitter’s husband, then the Hereditary Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, on 17 October 1846 [ibid].
• The portrait is mentioned on the list of portraits by F.X. Winterhalter, published posthumously by the artist’s nephew, Franz Wild, in 1894, where it appears among other 1846 portraits by the artist [Franz Wild, Neckrologe…, 38].

A confirmation has been recently received from the Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, accepting this identification.

© Eugene Barilo von Reisberg, 2012

National Gallery of Victoria (Part V) – Dobell’s Portrait of Helena Rubinstein

Friday, 13 January 2012

… continued from the previous entry …

National Gallery of Victoria (Part V) – Dobell’s Portrait of Helena Rubinstein

Little prepares you for the visual and mental leap from the playful exuberance of the early 20^th-Century Australian art to the austere sobriety and psychological re-examination of the human condition by Australian artists from the 1940s onwards. Paintings by Nolan, Tucker, Boyd, Blackman, and Hester provide a striking and almost violent contrast to those by Lambert, Bunny, and Fox. The landscapes and still-lives of the 1920s and 1930s could not be more dissimilar than abstract compositions by Crowley, Balson, Miller, and Hirschfeld-Mack. The nature of avant-garde Australian portraiture undergoes a similar metamorphosis, and I spent a long time gazing at William Dobell’s portrait of Helena Rubinstein.

Rubinstein was a Polish/Jewish-born cosmetics entrepreneur, who had a good eye for niche marketing as much as for men who were able to support financially her growing enterprise and social ambitions (one of her husbands was a prince). She was also a well-known philanthropist, who established a travelling fellowship at the Art Gallery of New South Wales enabling a number of young aspiring Australian artists to travel and study overseas.

At first glance, Dobell is able capture in his enthralling vision this larger-than-life character. Everything in this portrait is over the top – Helena’s extravagant red and orange patterned dress with puffed sleeves and crinoline skirt; a tight corset that barely contains her expansive bust; and oversize jewellery the blue stones of which are dripping from her ears and weigh down her milky-white arms. Dobell chose to portray Rubinstein from a low view-point, which visually increases the stature of the physically diminutive woman, and relates to the viewer her forceful, ebullient, and formidable personality. The swirls of a rich brocade in the background add to the sensation of movement, drama, and – if you will – majesty within the portrait.

But subtly and slowly the artifice within the composition becomes increasingly apparent. It is known that before sitting for the portrait Rubinstein exasperated Dobell by changing her choice of jewellery and dresses umpteen times, and the way in which they almost overwhelm the sitter emphasises the vanity. The awkwardly drawn prominent black brow is almost a caricature; and the bulbously-aquiline nose exaggerates Semitic features of Dobell’s octogenarian sitter.

Like with many of his portraits, Dobell strives to combine the individuality of the sitter with the creation of a character stereotype. He painted Rubinstein at least eight times, and in a later portrait of Helena seated in a green interior Dobell captured her as the personification a genteel grand dame she purported to be, rather than a vision of a formidable personality, over-emphasised vanity, and exaggerated femininity that comes forth from this striking and highly individualised portrait.

[© Eugene Barilo von Reisberg 2012. Where applicable, images are courtesy of the artists and their galleries.]

National Gallery of Victoria – Australian Collections (Part IV)

Thursday, 12 January 2012

… continued from the previous entry …

National Gallery of Victoria – Australian Collections (Part IV) 

The Edwardian Rooms feature a number of flamboyant and large-scale creations by Rupert Bunny, Emanuel Phillips Fox, and George Lambert that celebrate the elegant and indolent lifestyle of the of the bourgeoisie, forever lounging by a seashore and taking endless cups of tea in the shade of their stately gardens. Noticeably absent from this vision of Arcadia is Norman Lindsay’s Spring Innocence, for which the National Gallery shelled out nearly half a million dollars about five or so years ago.

The art of Hugh Ramsey, that most promising Australian painter whose untimely death at the age of 29 is regretted by art historians to this day, is explored in some depth within the gallery, including his portrait of a student of the Latin Quarter. I always found it to be a covertly sexy picture, as even the thick woollen sweater and baggy pants cannot disguise the muscular armature underneath. The youthful determination is reflected in the strikingly handsome and masculine face with the prominent nose and square jaw; and yet there is also something elegantly romantic about his outstretched sinuous arm and a languorously limp long-fingered hand.

In a totally different spirit is George Lambert’s Hera. As most of Lambert’s female protagonists, she is posed coquettishly, twisting her body, with a hand on her hip, and a come hither tilt of her head. She is wearing a diaphanous bright pink dress; a blue shawl edged with golden fringe is thrown over her shoulders, and its rich patterning shimmers in the rays of light. Multi-coloured flowers, that favourite device of the artists who wish to further emphasise and emblematise the exuberance of youthful femininity, burst forth from a glass vase on the left hand side. There are no hints of struggle or privation as one can detect in the humble still life in the right foreground of the Ramsay portrait with its crumpled napkin, hunk of bread, and dusty pewter and glass ware: everything in Lambert’s portrait is about youth, exuberance, and joy.

The collection of the early 20^th-Century Australian art is remarkably rich in sculpture. Bertram Mackennal’s life-size study for the Eton College’s War Memorial in the middle of the gallery bears shades of Leighton’s Sluggard, while Web Gilbert’s marble The Sun and the Earth is as close as one could possibly get to the spirit of Auguste Rodin. The sculpture encapsulates the essence of Art Nouveau with its flowing and sinuous lines; the embracing figures slowly emerge from the roughly hewn lump of marble; the tactile plasticity of their naked bodies visually defies the cold and firm sensation of the lifeless stone.

… to be continued… 

[© Eugene Barilo von Reisberg 2012. Where applicable, images are courtesy of the artists and their galleries.]

National Gallery of Victoria – Australian Collections (Part II)

Tuesday, 10 January 2012 

… continued from the previous entry …

National Gallery of Victoria – Australian Collections (Part II) 

The current hang appears to be tighter, with the Heidelberg School occupying only three rooms in the north-eastern galleries on the second level. Numerous other works by Conder, McCubbin, Streeton, and Roberts are displayed in abundance, including the iconic 9 x 5 works and Roberts’ enchanting Sunny South, arguably the first Australian painting to feature a male (non-Aborignal) nude. It is also delightful to see the curatorial acknowledgement of other concurrent nineteenth-century art movements, notably that of Art Nouveau as seen in Arthur Loureiro’s Spring of 1891.

Few portraits of the period are in my opinion as striking as that of Madame Pfund (1887) by Tom Roberts. The Swiss-born Elise Pfund ran Oberwyl, an exclusive girls’ school in St Kilda, and together with her husband was among important patrons of the Heidelberg circle artists. She is effectively silhouetted in the portrait against a darkened background, accentuating her late-Victorian tightly-laced corset and an extravagantly-oversized tournure at the rear of her black dress. Roberts imbues her figure with a spirit of authority by selecting a low view-point, and as the result Elise Pfund appears to tower above the spectator. A strong light source, streaming from the left hand side of the picture, illuminates her transcendent, stern, and yet benevolent gaze, and picks out the red silk detailing of her feathered head-dress. The same colour is echoed in the folded fan, visible in the lower centre of the portrait, thus making an overall colour gamut of an otherwise sombre and restrained palette of the composition balanced and contained.

[© Eugene Barilo von Reisberg 2012. Where applicable, images are courtesy of the artists and their galleries.]

National Gallery of Victoria – Australian Collections (Part I)

Monday, 9 January 2012 

National Gallery of Victoria – Australian Collections (Part I)

I haven’t been through the rooms of the National Gallery of Victoria’s permanent displays of Australian art for some time now, and the balmy summer afternoon seemed as good as any to spend a few hours within its air-conditioned comfort. I must confess that I had admired the National Gallery’s building in Federation Square from the moment I saw it. In my opinion, it is as much a monument to the late 20^th-Century architecture as its former home, the Neo-Classical temple in Swanston Street, is to the mid-19^th-Century; or Roy Grounds’ modernist bastion in St Kilda Road to the prevalent architectural style of the 1960s. However, I was always puzzled by the absence of a grand – or at the very least an easily identifiable – main entrance: one entry is tucked away at the end of the Atrium off Flinders Street; another is facing the rail yards at the dead end drive to a car park in Russell Court.

From the moment the new gallery opened its doors, I was equally befuddled by the sheer expanse of depressingly empty, grey-wash walls in the foyer and escalator areas. Some of my clients, in order to accommodate their increasingly growing art collections, are building extra walls and home extensions. Here, on the other hand, we had a brand new, purpose-designed gallery which brazenly featured that anathema to every serious art collector: feature walls!!! I cannot possibly relate my elation when I saw, upon entering the gallery today, that some of these walls have been repainted in white, and others feature signature wall paintings and light installations by Brooke Andrew. I am cautiously optimistic that this re-design heralds a gradual reversal of the erstwhile trend.

Immediately upon entering permanent Australian art rooms, I noticed two things: the sobriquet of Colonial (used to describe Australian art prior to 1901) has been dropped in favour of a more general (and politically correct) descriptor 19^th Century Australian Art; and the rooms begin with a vast display of Aboriginal shields, some of which date back to the nineteenth century – a very elegant and thoughtful acknowledgement of artistic traditions that existed on this continent prior to 1788. John Glover’s monumental River Nile of 1837, depicting Aborigines, is hung adjacently to the display of shields. Its detailed execution, careful brushwork, and subtle light effects bear witness to the artist’s high standing, which he attained prior to his arrival in Australia in the British artistic circles where his landscapes were considered comparable to those of Constable.

Among the display of early Australian portraits, that of an Unknown Lady attributed to Henry Mundy of c. 1834 is as good as anything that would have been exhibited same year at the Royal Academy. Showing a clear indebtedness to the spirit of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Mundy poses the lady out of doors, on the terrace of her Italianate mansion, with an obligatory column and landscape in the background to underscore the ‘landed’ status of the sitter. The woman’s lively face is painted confidently in fresh and fleshy colours; the eyes sparkling; corners of her mouth caught in a knowing, superior aristocratic smirk. The textures of gauze head dress and flowers are expertly handled; the dark green of her shawl is echoed in the elegant parasol with a jewelled ivory handle seen in the foreground of the picture.

… to be continued… 

[© Eugene Barilo von Reisberg 2011. Where applicable, images are courtesy of the artists and their galleries.]

NewNorth Prize for Photography 2011

Wednesday, 19 October 2011

I worked today on the NewNorth Prize for Photography 2011, processing innumerable entry forms and cataloguing details of photographs entered into the competition.

Now in its third edition, the Prize is taking place annually at the specialist photography space, New North Gallery, in Fairfield. Although it is slightly more modest as compared to the Bowness Prize at the Monash Gallery of Art, it guarantees that all entries will be displayed, and the winner receives, as a part of the Prize, a free, all-expenses-paid, fully curated exhibition at New North Gallery the following year.

It accordingly attracts a wide cross-section of photographers from across Australia, emerging and professional, artistic and documentary, who are working in a variety of photographic processes and styles, and who are looking to gain a wider exposure through their participation in the Prize. Talking to the prize entrants makes one realise how special it is to see one’s works presented and hung in a gallery environment, and increase one’s visibility and profile beyond the confines of a studio or a  website.

Given my passion for portraiture in all its forms, I have instituted from the very inception of the New North Prize a modest cash award for Portraiture, which is matched dollar-for-dollar by the management of Prize. My very first ‘award’ went to Sean O’Carroll, who went on to produce striking and widely-publicised bodies of work, including Boys, Guns, Etc and Ritalin (the winning image illustrated above); and the last year’s winner was the talented Jenny Hodge (the winning image illustrated below).

As more photographic portraits have marched through the doors of the gallery today, I am thrilled to witness that in my own modest way I am contributing to the continuous discourse on portraiture in contemporary art and photography. The judging is taking place this weekend, and the awards will be announced and presented on Sunday afternoon. I can’t wait to see who the judges choose as the next recipient of my little portraiture award. Good luck to all!!!

[© Eugene Barilo von Reisberg 2011. Where applicable, images are courtesy of the artists and their galleries.]

Abbey McCulloch @ Helen Gory Galerie

Thursday, 22 June 2011

Abbey McCulloch @ Helen Gory Galerie

I am always fascinated by the dichotomy between commercial success and lack of institutional recognition. Abbey McCulloch, whose exhibition is closing at Helen Gory this weekend, is among the artists that illustrates this trend in Australian art. Her exhibition, at $11,000 a pop, is sold out; she’s been named among the “50 Most Collectible” artists several years in a row; and her works have been profiled in numerous fashion, lifestyle, and interior design magazines. However, this is counterbalanced by the fact that to date her works have not been included in important curated exhibitions in major public galleries; she has not won major or prestigious prizes (despite being a finalist in a few); and her works have not been covered in serious art journals; or acquired by any public institutions.

I must confess that I went in determined not to like it. But when I gave myself benefit of the doubt, and examined her works up close and in detail, I was nothing short of astounded by what I had discovered. Each of McCulloch’s works is underpinned by excellent draughtsmanship which is visible beneath the thinly applied layers of pigment, and especially noticeable in her works on paper (these are not shown in the exhibition, but can be viewed on the artist’s website). Her line is assured and flowing, and her sophisticated knowledge of figure drawing allows the artist to delineate a pose, capture a stance, and convey demeanor in a few confident strokes. Even though the figures are highly abstracted, the body proportions are always correct; the foreshortenings are masterfully convincing; and the synergy between the bodies in her multi-figure compositions is palpable.

Eyes, teeth, and mouths are always drawn expertly and then defined in paint in greatest detail, thus becoming the focal point of an otherwise abstracted composition. The rest of the work is covered in large expanses of liberally applied slabs of pigment. Bright reds and turquoise greens, fleshy pinks and vibrant violets, and various shades of blues and purples coexist with each other, complement or contrast when necessary, and more importantly bring out each other without muddying the spectral qualities of the neighbouring pigments.

There is a fashionably affected darkness to her ‘horned’ figures, but I couldn’t help but think that they have more in common with Picasso’s women in Dutch bonnets. It has to be admitted that there is a certain sameness to the works stemming from a repeated visual vocabulary and the preference for bright pastel colours. However, the resulting joyousness, girlishness, and femininity of her works, confident drawing skills, and knowledgeable handling of the medium cannot be denied.

[© Eugene Barilo von Reisberg 2011. This article is copyright, but full or partial use is welcome with proper acknowledgement. Where applicable, images are courtesy of the artists and their galleries.]

Lewis Miller @ Australian Galleries

 

Sunday, 19 June 2011

Lewis Miller @ Australian Galleries

Lewis Miller is undoubtedly among this country’s most outstanding portrait painters. His gifts in this genre are self-evident, and one hardly needs to list his Archibald and Moran accolades to appreciate his talents in this difficult metier. Therefore, I rushed over to see his current exhibition at the Australian Galleries, and like many of his previous shows, it features a cross-section of genres, in which Lewis excels – portraiture, nudes, and still lives.

Lewis’s favourite model is – has been, and by the looks of it will be in the foreseeable future – Hazel. They must have established a symbiotic relationship, for she has been appearing in his paintings for at least a decade. He must have painted her by now in every conceivable position and from every conceivable angle; he is probably so familiar with every curve of her body, every crevice and every cranny, that perhaps the actual act of modelling is no longer necessary, as he is probably able to recreate her form purely from his memory.

But one cannot blame Lewis’s attachment to Hazel: she is generously endowed with a model’s body, with perfect curves of her hips, sinuous lines of her limbs, generous mounds of her breasts. Not having had the privilege to see the model in such intimate state of deshabille, it is also highly possible that by the time she makes it onto Miller’s finished canvas, her features have been regularised and idealised by the artist. She is superbly executed in every picture. Her limbs and torso are masterfully foreshortened in the ‘upside-down’ paintings; and delineated in assured and confident charcoal outlines that flow and undulate around the landscape of her body. Her skin tones are accented with broad brush strokes of skin-coloured pigments, from deep ochres to most delicately effervescent pinks. Large expanses of linen, left exposed by the artist, superbly recreate the textures of her skin as well as of the sheets on which she poses.

Lewis’s still lives could not be faulted either. Lemons, peaches, quinces, pomegranates, and apricots; pilchard, oysters, molluscs and all kinds of fruits de mer, chops and steaks and other cuts of meat are arranged in groups, combinations or by themselves, on canvasses and copper plates of various shapes and sizes, many a painting reminiscent of a Grecian thin and elongated decorative frieze. Lewis’s nature mortes still show a significant influence of Lucian Freud, of whom he is perhaps the most devoted disciple in this country. Freud’s style is perceptible in the thickly layered paint and richly textured surfaces, which, until a decade or so ago Miller also applied to the depiction of his models, though since then he developed his own pared down and raw style which shows off most advantageously his drawing skills and technical abilities.

There’s also a smattering of portraits by the entrance – an obligatory self-portrait or two, a couple of studies of Tom Alberts, and a portrait of a child, all predominantly painted en face, their gaze communicating directly with the viewer. Looking at these portraits, I was struck by the realisation that for at least a decade or so Miller retained the same format for every exhibition. It is always a smattering of nude, still life, and portrait studies. His portraits are frequently worked into larger finished compositions, which wow audiences when shown in Australia’s premier portraiture prizes. However, his nudes and still lives have never breeched that prime essence of being a study. One does begin to wonder whether the works of these genres – like his portraits – would ever lead to a crescendo, a seminal work, or a large scale masterpiece. His superb facility with the brush, colour, drawing, composition, foreshortening notwithstanding, it would be a pity for an artist of such obvious talents to spend the rest of his career on studies, sketches, and preparatory drawings.

[© Eugene Barilo von Reisberg 2011. This article is copyright, but full or partial use is welcome with proper acknowledgement. Where applicable, images are courtesy of the artists and their galleries.]

Kristin Headlam @ Charles Nodrum Gallery

Sunday, 19 June 2011

Kristin Headlam @ Charles Nodrum Gallery

Kristin Headlam’s current exhibition at the Charles Nodrum Gallery is perhaps one of the most honest shows I’ve seen of hers in years. For the better part of the last decade Headlam’s paintings were inspired by media photography. They gave the artist an opportunity to participate in issues affecting domestic and international affairs. With subtle manipulation of images she commented or critiqued the media, society, and governmental policies. Most importantly of all, she was able to experiment with new paints and pigments, reduce her colour palette to a monotone, and develop new painting techniques which became more fluid and unrestrained in the process. However, the locus of her identity during this period was internalised.

In the current exhibition, Kristin once again concentrates on her own environment – her studio, her garden, her backyard, her pot plant, her Chris. She is seemingly picking up where she left off around 2000-2001, the last time she shared with the audience the intimacy of her space. Headlam revisits her previously tighter and controlled brushwork, though the fluidity of previous years is preserved towards the outer edges of the canvas.

However, the last body of work on this subject was flooded with sunlight; the backyard was dominated by bright green and golden plants, and the blossoming purple wisteria carefully edged its way along the fence line. In this exhibition by contrast her canvases are permeated by a subdued silvery atmosphere of winter’s afternoon. Everything is in a state of decay and disrepair. Fences are falling; the lattice is buckled; unruly wisteria branches snake their way around the garden; a little Roman head lies cracked and overturned; and even her favourite chair has a spring sticking out underneath, standing on the studio floor strewn with autumn leaves. The last time Kristin shared her studio environment with us, she showed herself – with an obvious nod to Velasquez – in the midst of creativity, engaged in an artistic process. Here by contrast her studio is empty, bathed in cold and impersonal neon light. Canvases are turned against the wall. The single canvas on the easel remains blank.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s bon mot, every painting by an artist is a portrait of the artist. Headlam’s ubiquitous presence is conspicuous despite her physical absence from the canvasses. I left the gallery feeling that instead of seeing an exhibition of landscapes I have just seen an exhibition of the most intimately revealing self-portraits of an artist in the autumn of her life.

[© Eugene Barilo von Reisberg 2011. This article is copyright, but full or partial use is welcome with proper acknowledgement. Where applicable, images are courtesy of the artists and their galleries.]

Sue Ford @ MGA

Thursday, 12 May 2011 

Sue Ford @ MGA

The exhibition of works by the late photographer Sue Ford spans a period of nearly forty years, and contains at a glance nearly 100 works by the artist, encompassing several periods, genres, and photographic streams within her oeuvre. The exhibition opens with a set of eight pairs of portraits taken by Sue of the same individuals (including herself), although several years and even decades apart. It is an interesting exercise, very much along the line of the Seven Up series. It is quite remarkable in the way it reflects the changes not only in fashions and aesthetics of the respective eras within which these photographs were taken, but also, very frequently, the changing personal and socio-political environment of her subjects.

The next section is solely devoted to an extensive display of Ford’s self-portraits. Ford pictures herself either alone, or with children and friends; at home, or within her studio environment. The photographs veer between artistic and documentary approaches, some of them no more than casual snapshots. It is an intriguing and intimate insight into her life, an illustrated biographical narrative that makes words virtually unnecessary. I was a bit perplexed to read the accompanying wall text, which basically posited that Ford’s interest in self-portraiture reflects the fact that she was a woman, wife, and mother; and as such, given her domestic commitments, was stuck for time and subjects, and therefore resorted to photographing herself.

Not having known the photographer personally, I do not know whether the statement is true or false. However, when we consider this body of work against the background of current scholarship, which examined the genre of self-portraiture within psychological and psychoanalytical contexts, not to mention the stand-alone validity of the genre as profiled in numerous publications and exhibitions (including the recent one at the NGV), such simplistic dismissal of the intent behind Ford’s numerous self-portraits is baffling to say the least.

The wall text to the third section of the exhibition emphasises Sue Ford as the feminist photographer. I carefully looked at the images within this section, and came away baffled once again. The word ‘feminism’ emphasises a certain ideological, almost militant stance regarding gender inequality and women’s rights issues. As hard as I looked, I could not see an expression of feminist theories in her photographs. The women in her photographs enjoy shopping for dresses and nick-knacks; they expose their beautiful bodies; wear  fashionable clothes; and attend to their beauty routines; they raise children and grandchildren, and proudly display their pregnant bellies. I suggest that the curators confused the words feminist and feminine, for Sue Ford definitely focuses on femininity rather feminism.

Of course, every exhibition, especially the one in a public gallery space, has to justify its curatorial choices. Unfortunately, in many cases, it seems that public galleries cannot leave the recognition of the importance of this or that artist or photographer to its visiting public, who might be able to make an informed judgement for themselves, based on the quality of the works on display. The point about the perceived importance has to be drilled with a verbal hammer-head. The MGA’s wall text boldly proclaims Sue Ford as “… one of Australia’s most important,… a leading feminist,… key role, … highly significant,… major legacy”, and so on and so forth.

Unfortunately, after such a bombastic marketing preamble, the exhibition falls rather short. I acknowledge the fact that it is the first important posthumous survey of Ford’s work (the photographer died in 2009), but it is by no means a block-buster type of exhibition, filled with iconic images. It eschews any of Ford’s colour photography; or anything completed within the last decade or so, when she produced a number of important bodies of work. The show is about quiet contemplation, an intimate dialogue between the photographer and the viewing public through the medium of her camera, rather than a challenging, ground-breaking, earth-moving experience, or a veritable call to arms for women’s rights the wall text would lead you to believe.

And this is what I have done in the end: stopped reading the marketing spin on the walls, and lost myself in Sue Ford’s silent images, the most magnificent of which to mind’s eye is Marlene at Cottes Bridge of 1964, a beautiful and soulful portrait of Clifton Pugh’s wife seated in profile in a chair in front of one of her husband’s (?) portraits. The image is beautifully composed. Marlene’s slim silhouette virtually blends with the darkened atmosphere of the picture. She is unaware of the camera, and faces away from the viewer. She is lost in contemplation of her thought, or perhaps of the featured portrait, the sinuous hands within which echo and interplay the outlines of her own limbs emerging from the darkened sweater.

[© Eugene Barilo von Reisberg 2011. This article is copyright, but full or partial use is WELCOME with the full and proper acknowledgment]