Sydney Morning Herald Saturday 19/09/2015 Page: 10 Section: Spectrum Region: Sydney, AU Circulation: 114634 Type: Capital City Daily Size: 855.00 sq.cms. press clip Secrets of the Sunday set One woman’s allure entranced a group of artists and changed ’s cultural landscape, writes ANDREW STEPHENS.

unday Reed was at the heart of it all: narrative, lush with relevant artworks and a crop brilliant, bohemian and fragile, as well as of newly discovered black-and-white S generous and full of vitality.No one could photographs. It was, after all, the age of free love rival her.She has been a source of public and experimentation, an atmosphere that burns fascination for decades, the focus of the enduring through the pages. In uncovering many new facts mystique of the talented circle that helped shape about their romantic entanglements and early from the 1930s. histories, the pair have produced the most She and her husband, , drew thorough view of the Heide set yet compiled. Australian artists to live and work at their It is no wonder the aura of the Reeds still property on the ,which became glows. There in the book is Sunday at her 1932 known as Heide. What happens, though, when wedding, in a still taken from a film that recently new material comes to light about a person came to light. She looks magnificent and happy whose life has been under the microscope for so long? How does the reputation of these with her new,handsome husband – why wouldn’t celebrated arts patrons stack up against fresh she? – and yet, that moment was followed by revelations of infidelity, jealousy and the fate of years of complications and stresses, as well as the adopted son who committed suicide in his great successes and wild joys. early 30s? There were so many complex relationships, Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan write in lovers and personalities to be handled at Heide, it their new book Modern Love about sexual liaisons seems incredible the Reeds got anything much between Sunday and the artist , else done. Yet,as great arts benefactors – a term between and poet Barrett Reid, they eschewed – they did. and the extent to which John enabled Sunday’s Harding and Morgan, curators at the Reeds’ affairs, participating as a sort of voyeur. great legacy,the Heide Museum of in Little wonder the Reeds were shy of public , have naturally centred their attention on their private lives. research around the buildings, library and For Harding and Morgan, the new material – archive. Sometimes they have paused at certain and revising all that has been written about the locations on the six-hectare grounds to imagine the spirit of those two strong personalities, to Reeds – has been about fact-finding without conjure certain scenes they now know to have judgment. ‘‘We had one subject who said to us, ‘I transpired. just want the truth to be told’,’’ Harding says. In one of those rooms, Sunday ended her life in ‘‘What is the truth?’’ It boils down, she says, to the 1981, 10 days after John – her husband of almost 50 views of about 40 interviewees, along with years – died of cancer.‘‘Sunday wasn’t ill when she information gathered from a huge variety of died, but she couldn’t live without John,’’ Morgan other primary source materials. says. ‘‘It is a story of enduring love but it is a story Writing Modern Love was like constructing a of great heartbreak and loss. We didn’t intend to jigsaw,with friends of the Reeds taking the write the book like that, it was just how it was.’’ authors into their confidence to share personal During their work on two earlier books – Sunday’s information in the interests of the full story being Kitchen (2010) and Sunday’s Garden (2012) – the told. The authors withheld some sensitive curators found themselves accumulating many material and say they will need to revise the book additional facts and anecdotes. They wryly dubbed once certain people have died. this third project Sunday’s Secrets. Solid amounts of What they have produced is a thorough new information came from reel-to-reel interviews biography of the Reeds, with the urgency of great kept in an attic, ageing interviewees who were illi l h h d k i d

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intensely involved. willing to revealeventsthey hadkeptquiet,andrare ‘‘She needed to be personally attached to all the access to otherwise restricted papers and letters. artists as a friend or as a lover,’’ Morgan says. ‘‘She The cover of the book is poignant, showing the thrived on shared experiences. She couldn’t do Reeds and Nolan on the beach at Point Lonsdale anything by herself. Those expectations were why in 1945, during the height of their menage, two so many people were ambivalent about the Reeds. years before the final break when Nolan could They had many people they were close to – and on take no more of the entanglement and left for the flipside there were many people who were Queensland. Sunday,deeply in love with him, was jealous of them and their resources and would do devastated. Soon after,he married John Reed’s all they could to talk behind their backs.’’ sister,Cynthia, who, the authors note, was Even so, both authors are adamant the Reeds physically very similar to Sunday and who, it has were always interested in a greater good, been observed by more than one person, was in especially in seeding a modernist sense of many ways like ‘‘Sunday and John fused into one national creativity.They really wanted to make a person – physically,emotionally and sexually’’. difference and their legacy at Heide – which both If that sounds a bit creepy,there were many women deal with daily,curating exhibitions on other aspects to their lives, as revealed in the various aspects of its heritage – has been book, that might raise eyebrows. The complex extraordinarily rich. love lives of Sunday,Nolan, Cynthia and painter ‘‘They were,’’ says Morgan, ‘‘always thinking Sam Atyeo, for example, involved overlapping beyond themselves.’’ amours (though not at the same time). There was, too, the tryst between Sunday and Hester, Modern Love: the Lives of John & is as well as Nolan and Reid. As Morgan says, published by Miegunyah Press on September 26. everyone wanted to have their cake and eat it too. Then there was the child, Sweeney.Sunday had had a hysterectomy when she was young and in her desperation for a child, approached a number of other couples. ‘‘Her wish to adopt a child of creative parentage was known within the and beyond in the early 1940s and Sunday is said to have broached the idea with a number of couples, including Arthur and Yvonne Boyd, and probably John and Mary Perceval, none of whom were willing to relinquish any of their offspring,’’ they write in Modern Love. Hester,famously,gave over her son, Sweeney,to the Reeds – but sharper light is also cast on that significant event, which occurred when she left Albert Tucker for fellow artist Gray Smith. Tucker and others always maintained that when Hester made these choices, she didn’t know she had Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The book shows that, in fact, she had been told she was likely to live for only two more years just before she relinquished Sweeney. ‘‘In that context, her decision to hand Sweeney over to the Reeds, where she knew he was going to be safe, made an incredible amount of sense,’’ Morgan says. ‘‘She had no money,she had this new love affair,she had run off to Sydney to get the treatment she needed for her cancer,and she knew they [the Reeds] had the money and the resources ... she trusted them to bring up her child. She was a realist.’’ The Reeds were undoubtedly incredibly generous to artists and others in their orbit, especially proteges such as Nolan. Was there a catch? Harding describes a tacit contract: the trade-off for the Reeds’ largesse was that Sunday, who loved to be close to the art-making, would be

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SMH.COM.AU

Clockwise from main: Agnes Goodsir’s portrait of Sunday Reed; John and Sunday Reed on their wedding day in 1932; Sunday Reed and Joy Hester in 1945; Adrian Lawlor’s portrait of John Reed; Sweeney at the front door of Heide, circa 1947.

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Heide Museum founders’ bizarre love triangles Andrew Stephens between the 1930s and their deaths in Revelations about the complex love 1981, and its contribution to the develop- entanglements of high-profile arts ment of modern art in Australia. patrons Sunday and John Reed are set to The authors said they had many mo- > revise views of the Heide founders. ments when they would look at each oth- New book Modern Love: The Lives of er and say ‘‘We didn’t see that one com- Spectrum John & Sunday Reed explores in part how ing’’, or ‘‘That’s stranger than fiction,’’ Art & infidelity the Reeds were involved in a menage a but they felt a responsibility to write it in trois with young painter Sam Atyeo, us- the interests of truth. ing it as a ‘‘framework’’ for the very sim- ‘‘We realise there are things in this ilar situation they later shared with book that are going to make some people painter Sidney Nolan in the 1940s. feel uncomfortable because it is bringing And when Sunday and Nolan were up memories they might not want to together during that period, it is re- return to,’’ Ms Harding said. vealed, they took other lovers on and off. Their research included the use of Political journalist Michael Keon was one taped interviews that had been ‘‘sitting of them, finding himself embroiled with unheard in an attic since the 1980s’’, plus the Reeds as a ‘‘stand-in’’ for Nolan, as material the authors gleaned from their the famous painter of the rare access to a variety of papers and series prevaricated over whether to letters from other sources. leave his wife for Sunday. The curators were also entrusted with Modern Love also explores how John personal information by friends of the enabled Sunday’s affairs and to an extent Reeds. They did about 40 interviews and participated in them as a voyeur. things ‘‘kept falling into our laps’’, they The book, to be released next week said. ‘‘It was more of a bohemian lifestyle and written by Heide Museum of Mod- than we had anticipated, more experi- ern Art curators Lesley Harding and mental,’’ Ms Morgan said of the story. Kendrah Morgan, reveals sexual liaisons Among extraordinary new stories, between Sunday and painter Joy Hester, Modern Love helps explain circum- and between Nolan and poet Barrett stances preceding the suicide of Sween- Reid. Sexual intrigues aside, Modern ey Reed, the son of Hester and (nomin- Love’s focus is a re-assessment of the ally) Albert Tucker,who was adopted by Reeds’ significant cultural contributions the Reeds when Hester found out she in Australia and their unwavering com- was dying of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. mitment to supporting young artists. The new research is likely to change Modern Love: The Lives of John & Sunday perspectives on the Reeds, who have Reed (Miegunyah Press, RRP $45) will be in long been admired for the artistic milieu stores on September 26. The exhibition at they established at their Heidelberg Heide opens today. property on the banks of the Yarra,

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Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan (inset top) wrote Modern Love on John and Sunday Reed (bottom right), pictured (main) with Sidney Nolan.

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Saturday 31 October Ian Smith's Heide Swing Band 'Heide Footsteps' playing at the Jazz Supper Dance at the 31 October – 1 November Point Lonsdale Bowling Club. Tickets - Point Lonsdale Newsagency. Tussock Upstairs Gallery and the which altered the course of art in Saturday & Sunday Point Lonsdale community invite you Australia." Pasquinis Deck - Soul Sister Swing, to be part of their latest exhibition 3pm - Q & A style art discussion Josh McCrimmon, Matt Davis and 'Heide Footsteps' featuring archival with Geoffrey Edwards, Director of the Southern Light photographs of the Heide group Geelong Gallery, Sigmund Jorgensen, Point Lonsdale Lighthouse tour holidaying in Point Lonsdale in 1945, Monsalvat Eltham , Lesley Alway 9am-1pm. archival films featuring Joy Hester, former Director of Heide MOMA and Ocean Grove Rotary Club Art Albert Tucker and , currently Director of Asialink Arts Show at the Point Lonsdale Comm- music performances, historic walks, a Melbourne University and Katrina unity Hall over the weekend. light show and interesting displays by Strickland, Editor of the Australian More information - gallery@ traders along the Point Lonsdale Financial Review Magazine. tussockupstairs.com.au shopping strip. The photographic exhibition runs till 15 November. Sunday 1 November 11am - Opening Guest Speaker, former premier of The Honorable Ted Baillieu at Tussock Upstairs. 2pm - The launch of 'Modern Love' by Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan about Sunday Reed and Sidney Nolan. "… a story of a bohemian existence marked by extra- ordinary achievements, intense heart- break and enduring love. John and Sunday Reed's was a remarkable part- nership that affected all those who crossed the threshold into Heide and Sunday Reed and Joy Hester travelling by train to Point Lonsdale in 1945.

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Andrew Stephens Art& infidelity between Sidney Nolan and poet Barrett Reid, Elusive and alluring, and the extent to which John enabled Sunday’s Sunday Reed was the key affairs, participating as a sort of voyeur. Little wonder that Sunday was shy of public to the philanthropic and attention and imposed an embargo on public sexual liaisons of a group commentary regarding herself, while John was equally reluctant about exposing his private that changed Australia’s highlights and sorrows. cultural landscape. For Harding and Morgan, the new material – and revising all that has been written about the unday Reed was at the heart of it all: Reeds – has been steadfastly about fact-finding, brilliant, bohemian and fragile, as without imposing judgments. well as generous and full of vitality. ‘‘We had one subject who said to us, ‘I just S No one could rival her.She has been want the truth to be told’,’’ Harding says. a source of public fascination for decades, the ‘‘What is the truth?’’ It boils down to the views focus of the enduring mystique of the talented of about 40 interviewees, she says, along with Heide circle that helped shape Australian art information gathered from a huge variety of from the 1930s. other primary source materials. What happens, though, when new material Writing Modern Love was like constructing comes to light about a person whose life, along a jigsaw,with friends of the Reeds taking the with that of her husband, John, has been under authors into their confidence to share personal the microscope for so long? How does the information in the interests of the full story reputation of these celebrated arts patrons being told. The authors withheld some stack up against fresh revelations of infidelity, sensitive material and say they will need to jealousy and the fate of the adopted son who revise the book once certain people have died. committed suicide in his early 30s? What they have produced is a thorough Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan write biography of the Reeds, with the urgency of in their new book, Modern Love, about sexual great narrative, lush with relevant art works liaisons between Sunday and Joy Hester, and a crop of newly discovered black-and-white

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LITBITS RON CERABONA GRAHAM DOWNIE Former Canberra Times religion reporter Graham at 5.45pm for 6pm. RSVP: 6295 6723. Downie’s book, Servants and Leaders – Eminent Laura Tingle talks about her new Quarterly Essay, Christians in their Own Words, was launched on Political Amnesia, at the Auditorium, China in the Thursday at the Australian Centre for Christianity World Building, Fellows Lane, ANU, at 6pm. Free. and Culture by former Canberra Times editor Ian Bookings: 6125 8415. Mathews. It features candid interviews with November 22: Political journalist Latika Bourke figures such as Cardinal George Pell, Peter Jensen, talks about her memoir, From India With Love,at Joy Bartholomew and Desmond Tutu. Published Muse Canberra at 5.30pm. Tickets, $10, include by Halstead Press ($28.95), it is available from a drink. Bookings: musecanberra.com.au. bookstores or from Downie (phone 6161 1901). November 24: Queensland author Inga Simpson discusses her second novel, Nest, with writer CALIBRE PRIZE Rosanna Stevens at Muse Canberra at 8pm. Australian Book Review seeks entries in the 10th Tickets, $10, include a drink. Bookings: Calibre Prize for an outstanding non-fiction essay. musecanberra.com.au. Essays must be between 3000 and 7000 words, and must be written in English. Deadline: January ● Contributions to Litbits are welcome. Please 18, 2016. First prize: $5000 and publication in email [email protected] by COB ABR. See australianbookreview.com.au/prizes/ on the Monday before publication. Publication calibre-prize/calibre-online-entry. is not guaranteed. WHAT’S ON November 15: Australian writer Matthew Condon and journalist Paul Bongiorno discuss Condon’s All Fall Down, about the Fitzgerald Inquiry and its aftermath, at Muse Canberra at 3.30pm. Tickets, $10, include a drink. Bookings: musecanberra.com.au. Poet Timoshenko Aslanides and other local artists feature at Reflections, a free event celebrating the life and culture of Woden Valley.Woden Hellenic Club Aegean Room, 2pm-4pm. November 16: Geraldine Brooks talks about her latest novel, The Secret Chord, in which she traces King David’s journey from obscurity to fame, at the National Library of Australia Theatre at 6pm. Tickets $20. Bookings: 6262 1271 (weekdays, 9am-noon). November 17: Heide Museum of Modern Art curators Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan discuss Modern Love, about the marriage of Heide founders John and Sunday Reed, at the National Library of Australia Theatre at 6pm. Admission $10. Bookings: 6262 1271 (weekdays, 9am- noon). In the SpringOUT season, Maria Katsonis discusses her memoir, The Good Greek Girl, at Muse Canberra at 8pm. Tickets, $10, include a drink. Bookings: musecanberra.com.au. November 18: Senator Katy Gallagher launches the book The Drug Law Wars: Twenty Years of Families Fighting at the Front at 12.30pm in the Reception Room at the Legislative Assembly. Inquiries: 6169 7678. November 19: Geoff Pryor launches Manuka: History and People 1914-2014, by Nick Swain and Meryl Hunter, at Paperchain Bookstore Manuka

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photographs of the Reeds, their inner circle anecdotes. They wryly dubbed this third and sundry lovers. It was, after all, the age of project Sunday’s Secrets. Solid amounts of new information came from reel-to-reel interviews free love and experimentation, an atmosphere kept in an attic, ageing interviewees who were that burns through the pages of Modern Love. willing to reveal events they had kept quiet, In uncovering many new facts about their and rare access to otherwise restricted papers romantic entanglements and early histories, and letters. the pair have produced the most thorough view The cover of the book is poignant, showing of the Heide set yet compiled. the Reeds and Nolan on the beach at Point Both authors are adamant that the Reeds Lonsdale in 1945, during the height of their were always interested in a greater good, menage, two years before the final break when especially in seeding a modernist sense of Nolan could take no more of the entanglement national creativity.‘‘They were,’’ Morgan says, and left for Queensland. Sunday,deeply in love ‘‘always thinking beyond themselves.’’ The with him, was devastated. Soon after,he Reeds really wanted to make a difference and married John Reed’s sister,Cynthia, who, their legacy at the Heide Museum of Modern the authors note, was physically very similar Art in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Bulleen to Sunday and who, it has been observed by has been extraordinarily rich. more than one person, was in many ways like Harding and Morgan are senior curators ‘‘Sunday and John fused into one person – there, and deal with that legacy daily,curating physically,emotionally and sexually’’. exhibitions on various aspects of its heritage If that sounds a bit creepy,there were many and say it is little wonder the aura of the Reeds other aspects to their lives, as revealed in the still glows. There in the book is Sunday at her book, that might raise eyebrows. The complex 1932 wedding, in a still taken from a film that love lives of Sunday,Nolan, Cynthia and painter recently came to light. She looks magnificent Sam Atyeo, for example, involved overlapping and happy with her new,handsome husband – amours, although not at the same time. There why wouldn’t she? – and yet, that moment was also the tryst between Sunday and Hester, was followed by years of complications and as well as Nolan and Reid. As Morgan says, stresses, as well as great successes and wild everyone wanted to have their cake and joys, that surrounded their bohemian lifestyle. eat it too. There were so many complex relationships, Then there was the child, Sweeney.Sunday lovers and personalities to be handled at their had had a hysterectomy when she was young Heidelberg property that it seems incredible and, in her desperation for a child, approached a number of other couples. ‘‘Her wish to adopt the Reeds got anything much else done. Yet, a child of creative parentage was known within as great arts benefactors – a term they the Heide circle and beyond in the early 1940s, eschewed – they certainly did have many great and Sunday is said to have broached the idea achievements. with a number of couples, including Arthur Harding and Morgan have naturally centred and Yvonne Boyd, and probably John and their research around the buildings, library Mary Perceval, none of whom were willing and archive. Sometimes they have paused at to relinquish any of their offspring,’’ they write certain locations on the six-hectare grounds in Modern Love. simply to imagine the spirit of those two strong Hester,famously,gave over her son, personalities, to conjure certain scenes they Sweeney,to the Reeds, but sharper light is also now know to have transpired in what they cast on that event, which occurred when she describe as a living museum. left Albert Tucker for fellow artist Gray Smith. In one of those rooms, Sunday ended her life Tucker and others always maintained that in 1981, 10 days after John – her husband of when Hester made these choices, she didn’t almost 50 years – died of cancer.‘‘Sunday know she had Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The book wasn’t ill when she died, but she couldn’t live shows that, in fact, she had been told she was without John,’’ Morgan says. ‘‘It is a story likely to live for only two more years just before of enduring love, but it is a story of great she relinquished Sweeney. heartbreak and loss. We didn’t intend to write ‘‘In that context, her decision to hand the book like that. It was just how it was.’’ Sweeney over to the Reeds, where she knew During their work on two earlier books – he was going to be safe, made an incredible Sunday’s Kitchen (2010) and Sunday’s Garden amount of sense,’’ Morgan says. (2012) – the curators found themselves ‘‘She had no money,she had this new love accumulating many additional facts and affair,she had run off to Sydney to get the

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Modern Love: The lives worked there, producing his Ned of John & Sunday Reed Kelly series on the dining-room Lesley Harding & Kendrah Morgan table, but Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, and , s curators of the Heide with whom the Reeds formed a AMuseum of Modern Art in publishing company, also took up Melbourne, the authors were well residence. placed to write this biography of Modern Love This is not just the story of art patrons John and Sunday Reed, Tk. Li... .1 J.I. & S..J., R..J the Reeds' lives, but also that of who lived at Heide from 1934 to successive generations of Australian 1981. -mmmum artists and writers, detailing their With the financial means to act as catalysts artistic achievements as well as their passionate and benefactors, they helped revolutionise art personal entanglements. in Australia. Their relationships with many Together for 50 years, Sunday and John famous artists — particularly Sunday's affairs Reed took their own lives in late 1981. with several of them, including Sidney Nolan It was a tragic if unsurprising end to — have sometimes overshadowed their huge tumultuous lives that had enriched, enraged contribution to modern art and literature. and engaged artists and art lovers in Australia The authors have used primary sources in and beyond. an effort to verify some of the assumptions ••• * Miegunyah Press $45.00 about life at Heide. Not only Nolan lived and Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville

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treatment she needed for her cancer,and she knew they [the Reeds] had the money and the resources ... She trusted them to bring up her child. She was a realist.’’ The Reeds were undoubtedly incredibly generous to artists and others in their orbit, especially proteges such as Nolan. Was there a catch? Harding describes a tacit contract: the trade-off for the Reeds’ largesse was that Sunday,who loved to be close to the art making, would be intensely involved with the artists. ‘‘She needed to be personally attached to all the artists as a friend or as a lover,’’ Morgan says. ‘‘She thrived on shared experiences. She couldn’t do anything by herself. Those expectations were why so many people were ambivalent about the Reeds. They had many people they were close to, and on the flipside there were many people who were jealous of them and their resources and would do all they could to talk behind their backs.’’

Modern Love: The Lives of John and Sunday Reed (Miegunyah Press, $45) is published on September 26. The accompanying exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art opens today. heide.com.au

Itisastoryof‘‘ enduring love, butitisastory of great heartbreak and loss.

KENDRAH MORGAN „

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theage.com.au See a gallery of images from Modern Love.

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(Clockwise from main) Agnes Goodsir’s 1939 portrait of Sunday Reed; Sunday and Joy Hester in 1945; Sunday and adopted son Sweeney in 1957; a portrait of John Reed (1940) by Adrian Lawlor; a film still of John and Sunday Reed on their wedding day in 1932. PHOTOS: COURTESY OF THE HEIDE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, (WEDDING SHOT) SARAH McKAY

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