JAMES GLEESON INTERVIEWS: MURRAY GRIFFIN 2 November 1979 JAMES GLEESON: Murray, could we begin first of all with some biographical background? When were you born, exact date? MURRAY GRIFFIN: Eleven, eleven, 03. JAMES GLEESON: Eleven, eleven, 03? MURRAY GRIFFIN: Yes. JAMES GLEESON: Eleventh of November nineteen hundred and three? Goodness me. MURRAY GRIFFIN: Hell of a long while ago, isn’t it? JAMES GLEESON: Well, the 11th has great resonance in our history. MURRAY GRIFFIN: Anyway, that’s the fact. JAMES GLEESON: And you were born in Melbourne? MURRAY GRIFFIN: I was born at Malvern. JAMES GLEESON: Malvern? MURRAY GRIFFIN: Yes, in Wattle Tree Road. I went there with this Shannon lass the other day and the little house has been— JAMES GLEESON: Eileen Shannon from the Macquarie? MURRAY GRIFFIN: Yes. There’s been–oh, I don’t know–a big building on it. It’s gone. JAMES GLEESON: Oh really, yes. And you studied art in Melbourne? MURRAY GRIFFIN: Yes. I went to the National Gallery. Not for very long. I went there, I think I was about 15 or 16, and I did two years drawing, really under Bill McGuinnes. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. MURRAY GRIFFIN: And Barney, Bernard Hall, came along every now and again. JAMES GLEESON: I see. 2 November 1979 MURRAY GRIFFIN: Then I had to go and earn my living. I went to the gallery to draw for only another year. That was upstairs. I was drawing heads. I had a tremendous respect for Bernard Hall. I think not so much from a designer standpoint, but from factual evidence. He made one see and draw. In fact, we used to almost hate him. You’d have a delicate drawing and Barney would come along without saying a word, reach out for your charcoal, and put a hell of a big black mark down where it should have been. Of course, that didn’t endear him to you, but in later years you realised that was right and I should have seen that. No, I had a tremendous respect for that discipline there. JAMES GLEESON: What years were those? MURRAY GRIFFIN: Oh, blimey. It was just during the First World War. I think I was at the gallery the last year of the war. JAMES GLEESON: I see. MURRAY GRIFFIN: Nineteen-eighteen, I think. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. MURRAY GRIFFIN: I couldn’t swear to that, but I think it was that. JAMES GLEESON: Do you remember any of the contemporary students of the day? MURRAY GRIFFIN: Well, Buckmaster was the envy of us all. JAMES GLEESON: I see. MURRAY GRIFFIN: He would start at the top. There was an old saying: you used to start with the eyes and then draw the head and then the rest of the body. Heaven, God forbid, he’d land up in the right place with the feet in it. That was amazing. JAMES GLEESON: It’s a real skill. MURRAY GRIFFIN: Oh, godfather, yes. Oh no, he was a very good draftsman, Bucks. JAMES GLEESON: Anyone else there at that time? MURRAY GRIFFIN: Yes. I forget names. Moppie McCubbin’s wife, Wynne Francis. Hilda Travers, Bill Black. I don’t think many of these people have made a name. I don’t know whether many would remember them now. In fact, I’ve forgotten a lot of them. JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes. 2 2 November 1979 MURRAY GRIFFIN: There were a lot of pretty girls there. I can remember the pretty girls names, but I’m blowed if I can—which is not much of a help, is it? JAMES GLEESON: Well, you trained as a painter really. Your first interest was in painting, wasn’t it? MURRAY GRIFFIN: Yes. I came under the spell of Max Meldrum. Not directly, but from his offsiders. I know that in Heidelberg in those days–oh, what was The Bulletin art critic in those early days? Skipper. Mervyn Skipper. He had built a place up there. Now look, is this, am I going out of — JAMES GLEESON: This is exactly what we want. MURRAY GRIFFIN: Mervyn Skipper built this place and there was a meeting of all the Meldrumites there, which were tremendously impressive to me, a young painter who had just moved out to Heidelberg in 1921. I was about 18. JAMES GLEESON: Is this the house that you moved into? MURRAY GRIFFIN: No, this was the place that Griffin built us up in Darrabin Street, this little Nitlock Place. JAMES GLEESON: I see. MURRAY GRIFFIN: All these artists, Jim Minogue, John Farmer, Colin Coulahan, Yurgensen. Oh and, you know, quite a few of the Meldrumites. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. MURRAY GRIFFIN: It was most impressive. Well, it was to me anyway. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. MURRAY GRIFFIN: I think Percy Leason came along occasionally. So I developed a habit of not paying any attention to design whatsoever. I would go out, as Percy Leason used to go out, and just merely paint where ever you happen to be looking. That was a very grim interpretation of Meldrum and I doubt very much whether Meldrum would have ever meant quite that. So I really got a second hand–very much second hand– Meldrumism. JAMES GLEESON: I see. MURRAY GRIFFIN: You know, there’s this story about— well, do you want to hear this? JAMES GLEESON: Yes. MURRAY GRIFFIN: The story about Percy Leason going out to the Olsen park, and he had a big wagon in those days, and a sort of a sliding thing for his picture 3 2 November 1979 which would slide up to the end of the rear of the caravan and he could compare it with nature, you see. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. MURRAY GRIFFIN: Because the whole idea with those people was to alter your canvas so that it looked exactly like the scene that you are painting. JAMES GLEESON: That’s right, yes. MURRAY GRIFFIN: It didn’t matter what you were painting, but that was the aim. Two or three of his (inaudible) up and said, ‘Oh Percy, what the hell are you going to call it? Gentlemen only?’, and here was this big slab. In those days, the gentlemen only had the serrated iron top, you know. But, no, I was very impressed, but thank God I got over that for some reason. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. MURRAY GRIFFIN: You see Meldrum, before he became such a positive teacher, was a very good designer but somehow or other it crept in that he ignored it, or his offsiders ignored it or translated him wrongly. I think that was just about it. However. JAMES GLEESON: Well, one thinks of your work not sort of as strongly related to the tonal school but as a colourist, with a strong interest in colour. MURRAY GRIFFIN: Yes. I tell you the one thing that I was always grateful for Meldrumism. Not so much the viewpoint, as the fact that you went out–this is where I feel that I’m associated with the Heidelberg school–you went out into the bush, into the golden paddocks, into the river and the gum trees, and you searched and you looked at it hard. You thought it was the only thing to do, but at least it impressed itself on your mind. You loved the landscape just as the early Heidelberg school did. That’s where I feel I have a relation to them. JAMES GLEESON: More to the Heidelberg than Meldrum? MURRAY GRIFFIN: Oh well, I’m not differentiating now. JAMES GLEESON: No. MURRAY GRIFFIN: Because they both looked; they both were limited by their looking. JAMES GLEESON: Yes, yes. MURRAY GRIFFIN: It introduced them, I think, consciously or subconsciously, to the beauty of the world around them. 4 2 November 1979 JAMES GLEESON: Yes. MURRAY GRIFFIN: Perhaps here I could say that to me so many of the contemporary artists have lost their association with nature. They seem to build up their forms from a so-called inner vision without sufficient relationship to nature. That always is— JAMES GLEESON: Yes, I understand. MURRAY GRIFFIN: You know, is a conviction to me. JAMES GLEESON: Murray, when you first came to Heidelberg, you said that was 1921? MURRAY GRIFFIN: Yes. JAMES GLEESON: It couldn’t have been greatly changed from the days of Streeton and Roberts? MURRAY GRIFFIN: No, no. It was a delightful place. JAMES GLEESON: Was it? Still bush everywhere? MURRAY GRIFFIN: Well, you know, comparatively. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. MURRAY GRIFFIN: Yes. I used to hit a golf ball from the top of Eaglemont, right across to the last hill just before the river, and there wasn’t a house. Then I used to paint a lot around—look, I seem to be talking about painting more than prints. JAMES GLEESON: Well, that is okay because we’ll get on to prints presently. MURRAY GRIFFIN: Oh, all right. But I did a lot of painting around Banyule. It is now, I’m glad to say, the little adjunct of the gallery. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. Jack Manton’s (inaudible). MURRAY GRIFFIN: Yes, yes, yes. His was there. Well then, oh damn I can’t think of his name. Never mind. He was a well known–oh, Gordon Lyon. JAMES GLEESON: Yes. MURRAY GRIFFIN: He had the place as a stud farm, and it was delightful there. I remember just below Banyule there was a lovely pool. I think it must have been a spring because it was a bit too high up for flooding. These old gaunt dead gum trees around it, and these lovely green reeds.