WHAT
SHOULD AN Australian museum collect?
How should permanent collections affect
exhibition policy? Who should decide
what to buy? These are three provocative
questions raised by the current survey
of English art over several centuries
at the Art Gallery of South Australia,
an exhibition drawn exclusively from
its permanent collection.
From the third decade of the nineteenth
century, British art was collected in
Adelaide and, with the establishment
of the Adelaide gallery in 1881, found
its way into the public domain. From
1980, when he became a curator at Adelaide
(he was appointed Director in 1991),
Ron Radford built on the gallery's collection.
His exhibition opens with a version
of Hans Holbein's portrait of Henry
VIII and concludes with a lurid but
wonderful pastel-coloured painting by
Holman Hunt of the Resurrection,
Christ and the Two Marys. What is
immediately impressive is the range
and quality of the collection. Radford's
catalogue is the first serious account
of the gallery's pictures. It is sumptuously
illustrated and intensively researched.
Instead of the razzmatazz of an expensive
loan exhibition from some remote part
of the world, here is an exhibition
which seriously re-presents the gallery's
own collection. What a welcome novelty
to study the permanent collection. So
few galleries do this in Australia.
Radford has bought some sensational
paintings, often masterpieces by minor
masters, such as Cornelius Ketel's Richard
Goodricke of Ribston, Yorkshire.
It is a stunning image of a lovesick
young man with a beautiful, quizzical
and expectant white face, framed against
his black costume, delineated with refined
elegance, begilt and bejewelled, probably
for his wedding in 1578. Ketel's works
are rare, and this is one of his few
signed pictures. Leaving such considerations
to one side, the portrait is so beautiful,
so fluidly painted, it scarcely matters
who painted it or who sat for it, but
reading the catalogue entry one can
understand how such a man fathered nine
children. The author justly states that
this painting, acquired in 2004, is
one of the few Elizabethan portraits
in Australia, the others all being in
the same exhibition. Similar claims
could be made about the impressive miniatures
in the show.
The subject matter of much early British
art from the Elizabethan period onwards
was portraiture, which Radford clearly
enjoys. Then the scene changes to landscape
and marine painting, and other media
such as watercolours, prints, works
on paper by J.M.W. Turner and some sculpture.
It is in the nineteenth century that
one sees the interrelationship between
British and Australian art, notably
with such figures as Samuel Howitt and
William Glover. Holman Hunt's unforgettable
painting depicts the resurrected Christ
emerging from a never-ending white tape.
Hunt began this work in 1847 and finished
towards the end of his life, in 1897.
It conveys an intensity of feeling that
provokes questions about what happened
in British art after the climax of this
exhibition.
This survey also contains works by famous
artists: Anthony van Dyck's charming
portrait of a married couple; William
Hogarth's William FitzHerbert;
Thomas Gainsborough's Madam Lebrun;
and Joshua Reynolds's Dr John Armstrong.
The condition of all these paintings
is not always of the highest quality.
Those that are of extraordinary quality
are by lesser known figures, such as
the Mary Wither of Andwell, by
Mary Beale, England's first woman artist;
Cornelius Johnston's portrait of a woman;
and Michael von Mireveldt's ravishing
portrait of one of the greatest British
collectors, George Villiers, Duke
of Buckingham, who is dressed in
an ostentatious pearl suit. Radford
also includes a work by the great French
artist Nicolas de Largillierre (Frances
Wollascot, an Augustinian nun),
his excuse being that the subject is
British and thus germane to his survey.
Inevitably, the exhibition invites comparison
with what happened elsewhere in Australia
in terms of creating collections of
British art. The significant point of
comparison is the British collection
in the National Gallery of Victoria,
which is particularly strong in eighteenth-century
British art from the age of Reynolds
and Gainsborough. One of Melbourne's
greatest treasures, the William Blake
illustrations to Dante, is not matched
in Adelaide. The current installation
has a stunning eighteenth-century British
room of considerable distinction. In
1946 Joseph Burke, an Englishman, was
appointed the first Herald Chair of
Fine Arts, at the University of Melbourne.
His election was in part due to Sir
Daryl Lindsay, then director of the
National Gallery of Victoria. Burke
was one of the greatest authorities
on English eighteenth century art anywhere
in the world. In preparation for a lecture
that I recently gave on his activities,
I examined Burke's archive, including
the sections on his role as adviser
to the Felton Bequest, a post he occupied
for more than twenty years. It is quite
clear that Burke was responsible for
many significant acquisitions over a
long period of time, when good pictures
were to be had relatively cheaply, especially
in the postwar years. Melbourne also
profited from the Everard Studley Miller
Bequest, which was intended to augment
the English portraits in the collection.
As in Adelaide, early collectors in
Melbourne loved English art and the
gallery benefited accordingly.
The collection in Melbourne has grown
as a consequence of a series of significant
bequests. Yet one cannot fail to be
impressed by the philanthropy in Adelaide.
So many works of art have been given
by private donors and by foundations,
their names proudly displayed next to
the chosen works, in a way that is more
analogous to the US than to Australia.
Although not privy to the politics of
the Trustees in Adelaide, the reviewer
does have the feeling of a personal
individual director's taste at work
with the acquisitions in this exhibition.
Radford has the taste for a racy picture,
fluidly painted; for portraits that
convey interesting people, whom one
might like to invite to a soirée
or some such gathering. Pictures bought
by committees are often the result of
a dreary compromise, and this does not
appear to have ever been the case here.
I suspect that I am not the only one
who is curious as to what Ron Radford
will buy as Director of the National
Gallery of Australia. He has said it
will not be old masters - a pity in
view of his track record - but it is
bound to be enticing to the eye.
Catalogue
details:
Ron Radford
Island to Empire: 300 Years of British
Art 1550-1850
AGSA, $80hb, 336pp, 0 7308 3014 4
Exhibition
dates:
Island to Empire: 300 Years of British
Art 1550-1850
Closes on 13 June 2005
