LIVING ON THE FRONTIER FOUR GENERATIONS OF THE LEWERS FAMILY PART 1 A story of courage, tenacity and adventurous creativity across four generations Margo Lewers, Abstract in Yellow,1960s Abstract Lewers, Margo ‘I imagined when I was growing up that everyone lived in with an acclaimed body of work spanning fve decades. an artists’ family and they all had the same values as I did’, Darani’s younger sister Tanya Crothers is a highly respected says art jeweller Darani Lewers. printmaker, architect and writer who collaborates and exhibits with her architect-artist husband Jon. Such a view of the world is especially understandable when your family tree has accomplished artists on every Darani and Tanya are also wellknown as the daughters of branch. Darani and her husband Helge form the pioneering the prominent Australian artists of a previous generation, partnership of Larsen and Lewers, regarded as Australia’s sculptor Gerald Lewers and abstract expressionist foremost contemporary art jewellers and silversmiths painter Margo Lewers. Gerald, Margo and her brother, (AGNSW) c.1959 oil on masonite City Building, Lewers, Margo 16 Lef: British Land Commissioner Bazett Hazzard and Adolf Gustav spat on in public. That same bitter wartime sentiment may Plate (in grass skirt) on the paved road to Robert Louis Stevenson’s also explain Adolf’s complete erasure from Australian art house in Samoa c.1894 history. South Pacifc from 1887 to 1900. He lived with islander communities on Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and on the remote Cassi Plate, daughter of Carl, was coordinating curator of island of Rotuma, speaking and writing in local languages A Restless Life, a 1997 retrospective of her grandfather’s and making enduring friendships. A self-taught artist, work at Penrith Regional Gallery. Her research culminated Adolf held his frst exhibition in Fiji at age 17. Adept at in the book Restless Spirits. She writes: ‘[Adolf’s] oils, pastels, drawing and photography, he was above all commitment to creating culture in Australia, his drive to a highly skilled watercolourist, particularly of landscapes. link the continent with its regional people and cultures and develop a cosmopolitan defnition of identity, On the advice of a good friend in Samoa, none other than was continued in the work of two of his children, the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, Adolf settled in modernist artists Carl Plate and Margo Lewers.’ Sydney in 1900 to make his reputation as a professional artist. He showed oils, watercolours and pen and ink In an interview with Hazel de Berg in 1962, Margo Lewers sketches of Pacifc island life in three exhibitions of the said: ‘I’ve always been interested in painting. My father prestigious Art Society of N.S.W.. He was soon considered was a painter. My brother Carl Plate is a painter. I suspect the equal of the leading artists of the day and invited to we all just inherited something from our father. As a small participate in the special Federal Art Exhibition in 1901. child I painted wild fowers and very much wanted to go His work was even included in the folio of watercolours to art school.’ presented to the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall at the ofcial celebrations of a new nation. ‘The house was always full of art’, Cassi Plate tells me. ‘I think for both [Margo and Carl] it was a way of remaining In 1903 Adolf married Elsie Gill Burton and they spent in touch with their father. It wasn’t until I was writing their honeymoon sightseeing and collecting native art the book that I realised that my father used to cross the Carl Plate, an important post-war abstract painter, were in German New Guinea. He supplemented his artist’s Pacifc in boats all the time. I thought ‘Oh my God, he’s ferce advocates for modernism in a deeply conservative income as a travel writer, resuming his itinerant life, retracing Adolf’’.’ Australia. The Lewers’ house in Emu Plains became a sketching, painting, photographing and writing about popular meeting place for the close modernist arts circle visits to New Zealand, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, ‘It raises the question of how an arts tradition is seen in N.S.W. much like the Reeds’ Heide in Victoria. When Ceylon, China and Japan, contributing features under as a way of life’, says Darani Lewers when I ask about Margo died in 1978 her daughters gave the family home several pseudonyms to The Bulletin. In 1906, with tourism her grandfather’s infuence. ‘It’s something you take to Penrith City Council on behalf of the local community starting to boom in the Pacifc, he published two travel for granted. Even though our mother was incredibly as a heritage site and arts centre. It was opened as The books for cruise passengers of the giant German shipping entrepreneurial and very brave for her generation… I’m Lewers Bequest & Penrith Regional Gallery in 1981. frm, Norddeutchser Lloyd. sure that Adolf’s career as an artist would have been there in a subliminal way. And of course that same thing applies A generation earlier Carl and Margo’s father Adolf Plate In 1907 Adolf, Elsie and their frst son Max moved to Perth to Tanya and me, having two parents as artists.’ was a prolifc artist whose early death left only a shadowy where their daughter Margo was born in 1908 and her legend until his life and works were resurrected by his brother Carl in 1909. The following year Adolf edited and THE SECOND GENERATION: granddaughter Cassi Plate. Today the legacy lives on in a illustrated The Leeuwin, Western Australia’s frst monthly A HOUSE AT THE CITY’S EDGE fourth generation with conceptual artist Pia Larsen and magazine, which ran for six issues until its demise in 1911 With no family money to spare for art school fees, Carl sculptor and TV art director/production designer Aaron for lack of a cultured readership. and Margo Plate showed a tenacious determination Crothers. to lead an artist’s life. In the 1920s Margo worked at Adolf failed in his attempt at farming but his feel for several odd jobs—including as a cadet artist on the Julian Leatherdale spent an afternoon talking to Tanya the bush led to a prolifc period of Australian landscape Daily Telegraph—in order to buy a commercial ceramics Crothers and Darani Lewers about the history of this painting in Western Australia. In a catalogue essay in 1997, business, hand-decorating pottery to her own designs exceptional family and their own commitment to Jacqui Strecker likens Adolf’s watercolours of gum trees preserving and curating the family’s legacy. A story of to Hans Heysen’s while his paintings reveal ‘his delight in courage, tenacity and adventurous creativity across four the instinctive beauty of colour and considerable skills as Above: Carl Plate, Journey 1971-74 (Carl Plate Estate) generations, it is told in two parts in this and the next a colourist’. She suggests it may have been on trips to issue of Oz Arts. Right: Europe between 1905 and 1907 that Adolf encountered Adolf Plate, Vakiora, Motusa, Feb. 6 1900, the pointillist technique of the French modernists evident oil on cardboard 30x32 cm, portrait of an island THE FIRST GENERATION: RESTLESS WANDERINGS in several works. princess afer death, Rotuma (Penrith Regional Apprenticed to the German merchant marine at age Gallery & Te Lewers Bequest, gif of Jocelyn Plate) 13, Adolf Gustav Plate would leave behind a trunk of Soon after the family’s return to Sydney, Adolf died paintings, sketches, photos and writings as a record of suddenly at age 40 in early 1914. As the widow of a Cassi Plate has noted the similarities seen his thirteen years’ travels as sailor and later trader in the German, Elsie would later be accused of being a spy and here in the work of Carl and his father. 18 Adolf Plate, Untitled (Heath with Mallee Gum, WA), c.1912, and taking night classes with the painter Antonio Datillo- watercolour, 15.1x19.7 cm (Penrith Regional Gallery and The Rubbo. Carl’s work in advertising supported his part-time Lewers Bequest) studies at East Sydney Technical College before he left on the customary study tour abroad. Adolf Plate, Untitled (Banana Plant in Light), c.1898, watercolour, 17x17 cm (Penrith Regional Gallery and The Lewers Bequest) At Datillo-Rubbo’s studio in Rowe Street, Margo met fellow student Gerald Lewers who had grown up on Sydney’s North Shore with a childhood passion for the bush and wood-carving. In 1926 Gerald joined Farley and Lewers, a family quarry and construction frm established with his brother and brother-in-law. He continued to fnd time for art studies at East Sydney Tech, the Rowe Street fertile ideas for his own artistic vision and bearing a torch studio and even a short course in Vienna. for British and international modernism. Gerald and Margo married and in 1934 headed of to In July 1934, Gerald Lewers won critical acclaim with his study in London. Thanks to Gerald’s brother-in-law Arthur machine-inspired sculptures including the wellknown Wheen, Librarian at the Victoria and Albert Museum The Plough, for the Six Colonial Artists exhibition in and a generous mentor, they saw the latest modernist London. Back at home, he returned to work at Farley and exhibitions and met art critic Herbert Read, painter Ben Lewers but continued to sculpt part-time through the Nicholson and sculptor Barbara Hepworth. 1940s and to participate in group exhibitions. On an artistic odyssey through the United States, Mexico, His expressive animal pieces in wood and stone (such Europe, Scandinavia and Russia from 1935 to 1940, Margo’s as Camel’s Head, Tortoise, Hippo, Pelican Birdbath) won brother Carl Plate was also mentored by Arthur during his period of study at art schools in London.