Helen Lempriere Mid-20Th Century Representations of Aboriginal Themes Gloria Gamboz

Helen Lempriere Mid-20th century representations of Aboriginal themes Gloria Gamboz The best-known legacy of the While living in Paris and London in half of the 20th century has created Australian painter, sculptor and the 1950s, Lempriere was influenced some contention, and these works are printmaker Helen Lempriere by anthropological descriptions of now being reinvestigated as part of (1907–1991) is the sculpture prize Australian Indigenous cultures, and a broader examination of emerging and travelling scholarship awarded in developed a highly personal and Australian nationhood. A study of her name. Less well known, however, expressive mode of interpretation Lempriere’s life, influences and key are her post–World War II works that blended Aboriginal themes with works provides an insight into the exploring Aboriginal myths, legends her own vision. The appropriation cultural climate of post–World War II and iconography. Twelve of these of Aboriginal themes by non- Australia, and the understanding of are held by the Grainger Museum Indigenous Australian women Aboriginal culture by non-Indigenous at the University of Melbourne, and artists like Lempriere in the first women artists. have recently been made available on the museum’s online catalogue.1 They form part of a wider collection of works both by, and depicting, Helen Lempriere, bequeathed by Lempriere’s husband, Keith Wood, in 1996.2 The collection is likely to have come to the Grainger Museum through a mutual contact, the Sydney- based curator, collector and gallery director Elinor Wrobel, who curated a series of exhibitions at the Grainger Museum in the 1990s and staged two Lempriere retrospective exhibitions in the mid-1990s at her Woolloomooloo Gallery in Sydney.3 Lempriere’s works form part of an early 20th-century revival of interest in Aboriginal culture among settler Australians, and have been described as ‘an early attempt to express [Lempriere’s] belief in the basic duality of the European-Australian artist by combining Aboriginal themes with European colours and techniques’.4 66 University of Melbourne Collections, issue 22, June 2018 Opposite: Helen Lempriere, Nimbawah lost, 1956, emulsion on board, 92.0 × 95.0 cm. 1996.5003, donated by Helen Lempriere and Keith Wood estate 1996, Grainger Museum Collection, University of Melbourne. © Reproduced courtesy Perpetual Trustees. Early influences Colquhoun had studied drawing Lempriere’s art at Montsalvat Helen Lempriere was born into under Frederick McCubbin, and was largely continued in the Meldrumite a cultured, middle-class family in mentored by his friend and tonal- tonal tradition, the influence finally the affluent Melbourne suburb of school proponent Max Meldrum. dissipating following her marriage Toorak. Her mother, Dora Elizabeth One of Meldrum’s students, Justus to Keith Wood in 1945 and their Mitchell, and father, Charles Jorgensen, also taught Lempriere, and relocation to Sydney.14 Algernon Lempriere, were prominent later became an influential figure in in business, social and sporting circles, her artistic and personal development. New horizons and actively supported local artists The post–World War II cultural such as Janet Cumbrae Stewart, Bess Montsalvat landscape in Australia was a complex Norris Tait and Archibald (A.D.) Lempriere became a pupil of and rapidly changing one, with the Colquhoun, by commissioning Jorgensen in 1930, at one time country still recovering from both family portraits.5 The family also studying alongside her mother the war and the Great Depression.15 had strong ties to the performing Dora at Jorgensen’s Queen Street Sanders and Berryman describe arts: Dora Mitchell’s elder sister, studio in Melbourne.10 By 1935 ‘a small and under-developed Helen Porter Mitchell, was the noted Jorgensen had become a ‘dissident commercial gallery system and Australian soprano Dame Nellie ex-Meldrumite’11 and was building staid national and (the few) Melba; Dora and Melba’s father Montsalvat, an artist colony in regional galleries under the control (Helen’s grandfather) was the leading Eltham, which offered painters of conservative trustee boards’.16 Melbourne builder David Mitchell, a and craftworkers an opportunity Struggling for recognition and close colleague and friend of John H. to hone their artistic skills among wider acceptance, women artists Grainger, father of composer Percy likeminded artists, and to experience were still largely viewed as proficient Grainger.6 a freer, more meaningful life, imitators, naturally obedient and Helen Lempriere was interested in ‘free of materialism, oppression disposed to conform, and lacking art from a young age, recalling ‘I can and prurience’.12 Eschewing her the intellectual faculties required never remember a time when I did not conventional upbringing, Lempriere to create artwork of significance.17 paint’,7 and in her early twenties took followed Jorgensen to Montsalvat Several prominent men, including formal lessons with A.D. Colquhoun in the mid-1930s and later used the Max Meldrum and J.S. MacDonald at his studio in Little Collins Street financial independence afforded (director of the National Gallery of in Melbourne.8 An influential teacher by an inheritance to move there Victoria), had made pronouncements and tonal painter, Colquhoun taught permanently.13 Described as one about women’s unsuitability for the pre-eminent students including (Sir) of the notorious ‘bohemians’ who life of an artist, the poor quality of William Dargie, Harley C. Griffiths, inhabited the colony, she played an their work, and their ‘tremendous Rex Bramleigh and Hayward active role in its construction, making intrusion’ into the male-dominated Veal, with an ‘unquenchable zest mud bricks for walls and carving sphere of painting.18 Work produced for attainment’ and a ‘high ideal’.9 many wood and stone decorations. by financially independent women Gloria Gamboz Helen Lempriere 67 like Lempriere was further derided Inspiration and appropriation ethnographic or scientific curiosities and dismissed. Ambrus writes: A work dated 1949, Self-portrait in ethnographic or natural-history with Aboriginal motifs,24 suggests that museums, rather than in art galleries.28 After the end of World War II Lempriere was already familiar with A noted example is the collection and during the 1950s women Aboriginal art and culture while still of Western Arnhem Land bark artists ceased to have any visible living in Sydney, although most of her paintings and artefacts acquired by presence. The era of the 1950s early references to Aboriginal themes Walter Baldwin Spencer and donated represented the lowest point the date from her Paris and London to the National Museum of Victoria status of women in Australia had years in the 1950s, with works such from 1912 onwards.29 In 1929 the descended to since Federation as Crocodile hunters (1953), Kurungal first major exhibition of Aboriginal … Morals became even more with shield (1956) and Ceremonial art, titled Primitive art, was held at conservative, and bohemianism tree (1957).25 Her exposure to the National Museum of Victoria. It was a dirty word.19 Aboriginal culture may have been included bark paintings collected by primarily through books; in 1954, the Spencer, as well as work by Victoria’s Frustrated by this parochial and Australian UNESCO Committee Tommy McRae.30 Baddeley writes: conservative art establishment, and for Visual Arts published Australia: feeling ‘stuck’ with her art, in 1950 Aboriginal paintings—Arnhem Land, For the first time, items from Lempriere left Australia for Paris which included work by prominent Aboriginal culture were admired and London with her husband. Australian artist Margaret Preston. In for their unique aesthetic She held solo exhibitions in Paris, the introduction, English art historian significance and viewed as ‘art’ London, Germany, the United States Herbert Read speculated that ‘the in the Western sense. The late and the Netherlands, establishing mythical figures of Aboriginal legend 1920s witnessed the beginnings an international reputation while were authentic relatives of the heroes of a fascination with Aboriginal remaining relatively unknown in of classical European tradition which culture in Australian art. This Australia.20 In Paris she studied echo sympathetically in our collective was reflected in the use and drawing, line and composition with conscience’.26 Lempriere’s husband appropriation of designs and Fernand Léger, and the use of colour worked for UNESCO in the early motifs from Aboriginal art in the with Fred Klein.21 Lempriere’s time 1950s;27 Lempriere may have been work of a number of Australian in Paris had a profound effect on her aware of, and influenced by, Read’s artists.31 sense of identity as an artist, and she juxtaposition of Aboriginal art with was deeply affected by contemporary European mythology. In the 1920s Margaret Preston artists who painted ‘what was inside In the late 19th and early 20th helped stimulate a new public them, not what they had been told’;22 centuries, Aboriginal culture was interest in Aboriginal art and culture. for Lempriere, the internal was largely represented by artefacts Inspired by her travels around Australia, ‘the country by which I am obtained by anthropologists during Australia, Preston wrote widely artistically fed’.23 inland expeditions, and displayed as about Aboriginal art and culture, 68 University of Melbourne Collections, issue 22, June 2018 Helen Lempriere, Eingana creating Man, n.d., oil on canvas, 65.0 × 81.0 cm. 1996.5001, donated

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