MASTER OF STILLNESS Barry Pearce was born in 1944 in Adelaide, where This book on the work of Jeffrey Smart is the first he was educated, and began his art museum since his virtual retirement from painting in 2011. career at the Art Gallery of South Australia. From It illuminates the vision of the most celebrated of 1969 he lived in London, where he studied at MASTER OF STILLNESS Australian expatriate artists, from his beginnings in the British Museum’s Department of Prints and Adelaide until his last major composition painted in Drawings as a Harold Wright Scholar. On his return Italy where he has lived for the last five decades. JEFFREY to Australia in 1975 he was appointed the first Adelaide, where Smart was born in 1921, was Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Gallery of JEFFREY SMART where his essential evolution as an artist took South Australia; two years later he became Curator Paintings 1940–2011 shape. His early fascination for its grid-like urban of Paintings at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. landscape was a perfect basis for an ongoing In 1978 he was appointed Curator of Australian Art celebration of the phenomena of highways, traffic at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and later signs, trucks, transmitters and brutish modular became Head Curator of Australian Art. Over three architecture in post-war Europe; aspects of the decades there he has curated many exhibitions, SM modern world others found ugly but which he including major retrospectives of the work of Sali declared beautiful. Herman, Elioth Gruner, John Passmore, Donald Jeffrey Smart’s vision, which has altered the way ART Friend, Arthur Boyd, Brett Whiteley, Margaret Olley, we see the technologies of change that impel us Charles Conder, Sidney Nolan and Justin O’Brien, through the fabric of time, curiously searches for among others, each accompanied by publications an elusive stillness that lies at the heart of it, and which remain definitive texts in their field. He has 1940–2011 Paintings may be seen here and appreciated with a selection written many other essays on aspects of Australian of many of his most important masterpieces. art for magazines, journals and catalogues, has lectured extensively, and has acted as an ambassador of Australian art in connection with various international projects. Master of Stillness: Jeffrey Smart paintings 1940–2011 has Barry Pearce’s most recent books with been published to coincide with the twenty-first anniversary of absorption by the University of South Australia of The Beagle Press are a monograph on Michael the South Australian School of Art from which Smart is Johnson, a new edition of his book on Jeffrey Barry Pearce considered perhaps its greatest alumnus. In recognition of Smart, and a new book on Margaret Olley. He this, the University bestowed on him an honorary doctorate retired from the Art Gallery of New South Wales in in 2011 and organised a retrospective through the Anne early 2011 but remains affiliated as its inaugural & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, with works from the Emeritus Curator of Australian Art. Adelaide period shown at Carrick Hill. ISBN 978-1-74305-123-8 F ront cover: Jeffrey Smart MORNING PRACTICE, BAIA 1969 (detail) Jacket design: Liz Nicholson, designBITE Back cover: Jeffrey Smart LABYRINTH 2011 9 781743 051238 Barry Pearce MASTER OF STILLNESS JEFFREY SMART Paintings 1940–2011 Barry Pearce CONTENTS F OREWORD 1 J effrey Smart I NTRODUCTION 3 E rica Green and Richard Heathcote S EARCH FOR THE TIMELESS 7 Barry Pearce PLATES ADELAIDE 25 SYDNEY 50 ROME 64 TUSCANY 77 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 107 Barry Pearce S elected exhibitions 126 Collections 127 Catalogue of exhibited works 128 List of lenders 133 Acknowledgements 134 Opposite and title pages Selected further references 135 SELF PORTRAIT AT PAPini’s 1984–85 (details) oil and acrylic on canvas 85 x 115 cm Private collection (Cat. 58) V FOREWORD I am deeply moved by the compliment the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, under the aegis of the University of South Australia, and Carrick Hill have paid me through this exhibition. Much time has passed since I left of course, but it prompts me to reflect back to the beginning of my career in Adelaide where I was supported from the outset by a fellow artist. I remember it well, a landscape painting of the city purchased by Max Ragless in 1943 for three guineas from my show with Jacqueline Hick at the Royal South Australian Society of Arts. Then the Art Gallery of South Australia bought Water towers in 1944, when I was just twenty- three years old. These early acquisitions were such an encouragement. However, my time beforehand at the art school, now part of the University of South Australia, was crucial. I was taught tonal painting by Ivor Hele and Marie Tuck, after which it was Dorrit Black who opened my eyes to the dynamic symmetry of ‘the moderns’. She taught us about the Golden Mean and how it applied to abstract and cubist painting. All that prepared me for lessons I later received in Paris from Fernand Léger. The other influence of my Adelaide years was the voluptuous landscape of the Willunga Plains, so popular with painters like Horace Trenerry, and so reminiscent – as it turned out upon reflection – of Tuscany where I now live. The splendour of the Flinders Ranges to the north was also a great inspiration, with Hans Heysen at his best. It would be fair to say that the unique shape and light of these South Australian landscapes, together with my fascination for city motifs, formed the alpha and omega of the way I would continue to see the world through my painting. My farewell show at John Martin’s Art Gallery in 1948 sold out to supporting Adelaideans. That was when I worked my passage to Europe. No art scholarships in those days. On my return over two years later I was supported once more and able to work seriously again, particularly boosted by the award in 1951 of the Commonwealth Jubilee Art Prize of £500 for Wallaroo, a painting depicting a mining port in South Australia. I was on my way: already in Sydney; and eventually settling in Italy as I had dreamed of long ago in the city where I had the good fortune to be born. Jeffrey Smart Posticcia Nuova, Arezzo Opposite Jeffrey Smart, April 1986 February 2012 Photograph by Michel Lawrence 1 INTRODUCTION When Jeffrey Smart left Adelaide in 1951 for a new life in Sydney, he was already well formed as an artist and equipped with the necessary technical skills, the legacy of his complete studio education at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts, today part of the University of South Australia. But he also had a clear plan. Little more than a decade later, Smart’s exemplary vision and capacity for hard work saw him residing permanently in Italy, close to the inspiration that he had yearned for, and living the culturally rich life of a full-time painter. It was to prove a long, productive life, distinguished by profound artistic success and fame. Now ninety-one years of age and residing still in his beloved Italian country home of more than forty years – Posticcia Nuova, near Arezzo – it is appropriate and timely that Jeffrey Smart be honoured in his hometown of Adelaide, where his education and journey began. Accordingly, this handsome book – published by Adelaide’s own Wakefield Press and with a key essay by respected curator Barry Pearce – complements an ambitious exhibition presented across two Adelaide venues: at the University of South Australia’s Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art; and at the historic home and gallery, Carrick Hill, in Springfield. Titled Master of Stillness and comprising works drawn from across Jeffrey Smart’s oeuvre, the exhibitions and publication together offer rare insight into his lifetime achievement as an artist and, in effect, a précis of his incomparable career. Master of Stillness has the vantage of curator Barry Pearce’s long friendship and professional association with Jeffrey Smart, this informing a deep appreciation of the artist’s work, methods and motivations. Through his selection of works and his knowledgeable, concise text, Pearce traces the development of Smart’s art from its beginnings in Adelaide (a city which embedded itself in the artist’s visual bloodstream as a child for its grids, long straight lines and vanishing points) to his ultimate, mature achievement as the poet of a new vernacular of modern painting. It is a vision inspired as much by the enduring example of Piero della Francesca as by the geometric patterns of apartment blocks and the familiar coloured squares, circles and letters of road signs and construction sites. The two fascinating exhibitions that comprised Master of Stillness were the outcome of a productive collaboration between the Samstag Museum of Art and Carrick Hill in partnership with TarraWarra Museum of Art, supported by very generous private and institutional lenders. The Jeffrey Smart project that brought to Adelaide sixty-eight of the artist’s iconic paintings, as well as works on paper, is a wonderful example of institutions sharing a vision to achieve a truly significant, historic outcome. Among many individuals who played a role in the creation of Opposite Jeffrey Smart, Sydney, 1945 this splendid project, special acknowledgement must be extended to long-time Smart archivist, Photograph courtesy The Jeffrey Smart Archive 3 Stephen Rogers, and to Susan Jenkins, Curator: Special Projects at the Samstag Museum of Art, who effectively led the development of the exhibition and coordinated its associated documentation.