SIXTY-FIVE PAINTINGS by 'THE SUNDAY PAINTERS' Max Angus
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Catalogue of SIXTY-FIVE PAINTINGS by ‘THE SUNDAY PAINTERS’ Max Angus, Harry Buckie, Roy Cox, Patricia Giles, Geoff Tyson, and Elspeth Vaughan from the collection of Don & Maggie Row with Provenances, further details and an introductory essay, together with a Catalogue Raisonn´efor Buckie Contents An Introduction to the ‘Sunday Painters’ 3 1 Max Angus, born 1914: Eight watercolours, a charcoal portrait study, and two pen and ink drawings 7 2 Harry Buckie, 1897–1982: Eighteen watercolour landscapes and a photograph 11 3 Roy Cox 1898–1983: Three watercolour landscapes and a linocut 23 4 Patricia Giles, born 1932: Eleven watercolours and an oil painting 25 5 GeoffTyson, 1911–86: Six watercolour landscapes, three prints, and an ink and wash portrait sketch 31 6 Elspeth Vaughan, born 1926: Nine watercolours and an oil painting 35 7 List of Exhibitions by Angus, Buckie, Giles, or Vaughan, some- times with a few others 39 8 Harry Buckie 1897–1982: A Catalogue Raisonn´e 43 8.1 Chronology . 43 8.2 Catalogue Raisonn´e . 51 Bibliography 113 Index 115 An Introduction to the ‘Sunday Painters’ Background and general comments are based on [2], and references when not given may be found there. We have included a list of exhibitions relevant to the ‘Sunday Painters’ as an entity in Chapter 7. Other than the biography of Harry Buckie given in [2] his career is not well documented. Therefore in order to make whatever information is to hand available for public use we have included a chronology and an indexed Catalogue Raisonn´eof some three hundred and forty-six of his paintings in Chapter 8. Watercolour Painting in Tasmania in the 1950s Tasmania has a long and quite distinguished history of watercolour painting. The British colonised the island at a time when the short-lived but successful London- based Society of Painters in Watercolour had elevated watercolour to the high point of its long history. The watercolourists among the settlers brought their tradition and skills with them and aided by a congenial cool climate they taught and practised their art from the outset. Private tuition, gifted well-to-do amateurs, and Art Societies with their modest sales to the public provided the framework that maintained technical skills and a major place for watercolourists in the cultural life of the island throughout Victorian times. A gradual change from private to public art education at the beginning of the twentieth century diminished the role of watercolour in the world of the amateur Tasmanian artist. However three developments coincidentally combined to ensure that all the re- quirements were in place following World War II for a resurgence in the practice of watercolour painting. Firstly, and most indirectly, Paul C´ezanne’s influence had helped watercolour painting survive the belated flux and turmoil in Australian art in the 1930s and 40s. C´ezanne, more so than any other post-Impressionist, was known as a watercolourist as well as a painter in oils. Secondly, and most important of all, had been the role of the watercolourist Joseph Connor. The story of art in Tasmania from 1925 until the beginning of World War II was shaped by him. He participated in the changes that rocked the Australian art world, influencing others by his painting rather than political or teaching activities. Learning from C´ezanne and Matisse he achieved, working alone in Tasmania, by 1928 what many others would try for later in vain in Paris and London. The quintessential amateur, his judgement and painting nevertheless won respect across the spectrum of the Australian pre-war art world. His influence can be seen on any representative collection of Tasmanian art of the period. The only other Tasmanian who approached Connor’s brilliance in the pre-war period was Edith Holmes [1], a painter in oils. But her influence did not approach that of Connor. A different personality, filial responsibilities, and a somewhat sheltered life restricted her influence to a small circle of women who painted in Mildred Lovett’s studio. Later her standing was held back by the inability of Jack Carington Smith, 3 influenced by the poet James MacCauley, to treat a woman’s art with the seriousness it deserved. Thirdly, during the years of World War II Carington Smith and Robert Campbell occupied the two most important and influential teaching positions in the Tasmanian art world. Coincidentally during this period Campbell had turned to watercolour, and Carington Smith was increasingly sketching in the medium even though he believed it an inappropriate technique to teach. Thus in the early postwar years anyone with a prediliction for watercolour had ample opportunity to learn. The Birth, Life and Times of the ‘Sunday Painters’ The group began with a suggestion from Roy Cox to Max Angus in 1958 that the two paint together on Sundays, this being Cox’s only regularly available free time. Angus had painted with Harry Buckie and found him congenial company, and in 1959, on his return from a 1958 [10], [14] [not 1957, as in [3]] painting trip to Central Australia, Buckie was invited to join the pair, followed in turn by Patricia Giles in 1961 and Elspeth Vaughan later in the 60’s. GeoffTyson joined them on occasion when visiting from Launceston on examining duties during his tenure as Head of the Art Department at the Launceston Technical College from 1960 to 1975. Robert Barnes, John Traynor, and Harry’s daughter Joan, among others, also painted with the nucleus of five on occasion. Cox had been the driving force that kept the group painting in all weathers and his death in 1976, coinciding with a broadening of the commercial Tasmanian watercolour-painting scene, is perhaps a convenient point from which to look back and examine the effect that their communal painting had on individual members. The core members Roy Cox had studied with Lovett and Dechaineux during the period when Connor succeeded internationally with his strikingly bold landscapes, and it was possibly with Connor’s help that he exhibited with the Australian Watercolour Institute in 1946. His early lino-cuts and the work of his proteg´eKeith McNeil show the attraction that Connor’s simplicity of wash and composition had for him. Cox was secretary of the Tasmanian Group of Painters and teaching part-time at the Hobart Technical College in the mid-1950s at the time he was appointed chairman of the Cox Kay firm of printers. Max Angus, on his return to Hobart from Melbourne and wartime service, had enrolled for a three year course leading to a Diploma of Fine Art at the Technical Col- lege. He had long been interested in Chinese calligraphy and his war-time experiences had exposed him to the beauty of Japanese art. His post-war exposure to Carington Smith further strengthened the attraction that simple elegant line and wash had for him. From both Bay on the Derwent River (1957) and Winter Landscape (1959) we can see that Carington Smith’s life-long use of a restrained and muted palate of soft greens, browns and greys had been adopted by Angus by the late 1950s. Harry Buckie had been influenced by Connor and had simplified his own compo- sitions and colouring washes within the first few years of his arrival in Tasmania in 1935. He was a superb draughtsman, not needing to use pencil extensively, but often defining his colour areas precisely and confidently by brush alone when flowing the actual watercolour. He never had need of the cloisonnist technique used by some to tidy up the draughting of their work Patricia Giles had studied art part-time intermittently at the Technical Col- lege from 1948 and worked in art-associated administrative roles until completing a Diploma of Fine Art in 1967. Both she, and then Buckie, taught Adult Educa- 4 tion classes in the mid-1960s. After various teaching positions she painted full-time from 1975. She, and the older Angus, were the only ‘Sunday Painters’ to commit themselves fully to the viscitudes of a professional painting career. Elspeth Vaughan had taken every opportunity to study art as an amateur during her career as an infant teacher, and at the time that Cox, Angus and Buckie were first embarking on their long association she was overseas on study tours. The influences within the Group With shared experiences in various art societies and the Technical College the three- some of Cox, Angus and Buckie combined in the late 1950s to begin the close-knit group that was to endure and prosper. Angus was entrepreneurial, with his sense of engagement shaking up a complacent establishment. His bravura was in contrast to the steadfast Buckie, a veteran of a decade of comradeship with Connor and to the efficient Cox, who never allowed a Sunday to slip past unused. Where did they paint? The effect of Carington Smith on Angus had not been limited to technique. In the early 1950’s the list of titles in an exhibition catalogue of work by one might have come just as naturally from the other. Later Angus continued to paint adjacent to ‘city and watering hole’ as did Tyson, painting similar scenes but in the North East and on the East Coast. On the other hand, as early as 1947, Buckie under the influence of Ralph Hope- Johnstone (who later married Elspeth Vaughan) had already ventured into the Tas- manian bush, in particular to Lake Pedder. Giles and Vaughan from the beginning of the 1950s, long before they became ‘Sunday Painters’, were also each painting on bush excursions into central Tasmania. Angus, Buckie and Giles painted at Pedder in 1955 and the culmination of the group’s association in the public mind with the lake came as part of the iconic 1971 painters’ camp before the flooding.