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JAMES GLEESON INTERVIEWS: ERIC SMITH 29 May 1979 JAMES GLEESON: Eric, we only have a few of your works in the collection at the moment, and one of those is a mystery one which we’ll return to presently. ERIC SMITH: Sure. JAMES GLEESON: But the one that in my opinion is the undoubted masterpiece is the portrait of John Olsen. Could you tell me, you know, something about the circumstances under which that was painted? ERIC SMITH: Well, I think the success of the painting in the sense, I think, that it has the something of the great enthusiasm and excitement of new adventures at the time we held the show Direction 1, when John, Billy Rose, Passmore and Bob Klippel and I put on that show at Macquarie Galleries. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. ERIC SMITH: John had just started his You Beaut paintings, and I liked the idea, or was developing the idea, of painting figures emerging out of the landscape. It seemed, you know, just absolutely right to paint John Olsen emerging out of the you beaut country. It gave me an opportunity to fling paint around and also paint a portrait of John that showed, I think, a lot of the enthusiasm and the sense of our relationship at the time, which was a particularly joyous one and a particularly exciting one. JAMES GLEESON: I think that comes out in the painting. It’s a most vital and joyous painting. ERIC SMITH: Yes, I think that I would still like the painting if I saw it again. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Sorry I haven’t got a photograph of it but it was in oil, wasn’t it? ERIC SMITH: Yes. JAMES GLEESON: They’re correct about that. ERIC SMITH: Yes. JAMES GLEESON: And the date is right, 1962? ERIC SMITH: Yes, well that would be—yes sure. JAMES GLEESON: Was it part of a series? You know, portraiture has been a major part of your concern as an artist for a long time, hasn’t it? 1 29 May 1979 ERIC SMITH: Yes. JAMES GLEESON: But you didn’t start off as a portrait painter? ERIC SMITH: No. JAMES GLEESON: I remember initially you were religious subjects to begin with. ERIC SMITH: Well, to go back further, Jimmy, the first picture I ever painted was a self-portrait. JAMES GLEESON: Was it? ERIC SMITH: I was doing commercial art at Brunswick Tech and I saw a chap painting there one day when I went into my room. The art master at Brunswick Tech had suggested I take up painting, but I wanted to be a poster artist and a caricaturist and all that sort of jazz. JAMES GLEESON: Were you born in Melbourne? ERIC SMITH: Yes. Oh yes, an old Melbourne man, born in Brunswick. JAMES GLEESON: I see. ERIC SMITH: Lenny French was a close associate. So I bought a box of paints and couldn’t wait to get back to school. That weekend I set up an easel and a paint box and a mirror and painted my first picture which was a self-portrait. JAMES GLEESON: I see. ERIC SMITH: I don’t think it exists any more. Then I went on and painted a number of portraits at Brunswick Tech. The war intervened. But before the war I joined the Contemporary Arts Society. I’d seen works of Cézanne and Van Gogh. Although I didn’t like them at the beginning, I gradually came to like them. So that, you know, academic painting had no more meaning for me. JAMES GLEESON: This would be in the late thirties? ERIC SMITH: That would be in the late thirties and ’36 when I began painting, about ’36, I think. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. ERIC SMITH: Just before the war when the contemporary art in Melbourne was going very strong, I exhibited a number of times in those. One artist, Vic O’Connor, was impressed with the pictures I’d painted and contacted me and we had a friendship for some time and for a little while I was leaning towards social realism. 2 29 May 1979 JAMES GLEESON: I see, yes. ERIC SMITH: Then, of course, the war intervened and I spent five years in the army. JAMES GLEESON: Were you a war artist? ERIC SMITH: No, no, no. JAMES GLEESON: No, I see. ERIC SMITH: Nothing so grand as that. I drove trucks. We were in Sydney near the end of the war and I got an old bit of tent canvas, bought some paints and painted a self-portrait that eventually the gallery bought. It was entered for an Archibald Prize and Bill Dobell told me he fought very strongly for that self- portrait at that time to win it. I was astonished that it got in. So after that, or before that, the significant event you’re talking about, the religious painting, was brought about— JAMES GLEESON: Yes. ERIC SMITH: Joy and I married after the war and we went down to Melbourne so I could find roots again. I promised Joy that we’d come back to Sydney after I’d done a rehabilitation (inaudible) or got settled, because there was something about the Sydney environment that particularly excited me, you know. I liked the tempo of things. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. ERIC SMITH: It might frighten many, but I liked it. So we came back here and I was converted to Catholicism. I think, well, naturally that started my thoughts towards religious painting. You’ve got that great history of religious art, and I was looking around at contemporary religious painters and Rouault of course was the first influence. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. ERIC SMITH: Some of my earlier pictures reflected that influence. I started to feel that there was too much of a stain glass thing about that influence though on me, you know, and I tried to break from that and started a thing of erecting a crucifixion in the Australian landscape, in that sense. JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes. ERIC SMITH: But I think it did show basically–when I think back on those paintings–it was, you know, a new religion to me in the sense that although I was Church of England before, this time I had an exciting conviction about it all. I think my enthusiasm for the redeeming Christ and so on at that time shows in the 3 29 May 1979 best of those paintings. I know the joy, and yet there was more the sense of resurrection than crucifixion in the end, I would think. JAMES GLEESON: I know you were an important exhibitor in the Blake Prize for a very long time and you won it on a number of occasions, didn’t you? ERIC SMITH: Oh, yes. JAMES GLEESON: How many times? ERIC SMITH: Somebody told me six. JAMES GLEESON: Six? You didn’t keep count. ERIC SMITH: No, I didn’t. But the thing that annoyed me was that Bill Dobell had won the Archibald Prize about three times, and I’d won the Blake about six. But they called the Archibald the Dobell Prize and they still went on calling the Blake Prize the Blake Prize. JAMES GLEESON: Not fair. Do you still paint religious paintings, or have you moved into new areas? ERIC SMITH: I moved into new areas. I don’t think it’s possible, or I don’t find it possible, to paint a specifically religious picture today. You know, everything has been brought into question. One has always had doubts and, you know, these things are biting at you. But, I mean, the faith is still there within me but I can’t express anything very concrete. JAMES GLEESON: I see. ERIC SMITH: I think that whatever you are will show in whatever subject you tackle. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. ERIC SMITH: So I don’t feel the need to paint a specifically religious subject any more. You mentioned that I was obsessed in some way with portraits. Well, I still am. JAMES GLEESON: Yes, I can see. ERIC SMITH: It’s in that area, and it’s a difficult area. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. ERIC SMITH: But I can’t move away from it. I do paint other things. We were just discussing the recent work in the studio, of animals. But the portrait is the thing I think that is absorbing me more and more. 4 29 May 1979 JAMES GLEESON: I can see that you’ve been concerned with the problem in portraiture of retaining the likeness, an identifiable likeness, of the person; at the same time making the work into a valid, viable, contemporary work of art. ERIC SMITH: Yes. JAMES GLEESON: Now, that seems to be a very central problem for the portrait painter today. ERIC SMITH: Yes, it’s a shocking problem. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. ERIC SMITH: If I didn’t have the enthusiasm and didn’t love painting, I’d soon pitch it in, I think. But I guess that challenge is there and I’ll just have to work it through. I’m starting now to paint larger heads so that the face can be treated as—how would I put it? One can become aware of the portrait as a painting more this way, by allowing a sort of–it’s very hard to put this–colour and paint movement throughout the head that’s not evident on a smaller picture. That’s not putting it very well. JAMES GLEESON: I see. No, I know what you mean. ERIC SMITH: I can move paint around and do all sorts of things within that large head, as long as I retain the form of a head.

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