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Clarice Beckett

Clarice Marjoribanks Beckett (21 March 1887 – 7 July 1935) was an Australian artist and a key member of the Australian tonalist movement. Known for her subtle, misty landscapes of Melbourne and its suburbs, Beckett developed a personal style that contributed to the development of modernism in Australia. Disregarded by the art establishment during her lifetime, and largely forgotten in the decades after her death, she is now considered one of Australia's greatest artists.

Clarice Beckett
Born
Clarice Marjoribanks Beckett

(1887-03-21)21 March 1887
Casterton, Victoria, Australia
Died7 July 1935(1935-07-07) (aged 48)
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
NationalityAustralian
Known forPainting
MovementAustralian tonalism

Born and raised in the country town of Casterton, Victoria, Beckett was seen as extremely shy from a young age, as well as bright and artistic.[1] In 1914, after moving to Melbourne with her family, she began a three-year study at the National Gallery School under Australian impressionist painter Frederick McCubbin, then for nine months attended the rival school of art theorist Max Meldrum, a controversial outlier of the Australian art world who propounded his own tonalist painting system drawn from scientific principles. Beckett and others in Meldrum's circle, derided as "Meldrumites" by his critics, began staging group exhibitions in 1919. Beckett also exhibited with the Meldrum-inspired Twenty Melbourne Painters Society, and staged the first of her ten annual solo exhibitions in 1923.

Beckett never left Victoria and rarely travelled outside Melbourne,[2] much of her adult life being spent caring for her ailing parents at their home in bayside Beaumaris. She did however paint prolifically, often en plein air in and around Beaumaris, and mostly at daybreak or towards evening, when she was exempted from domestic duties. In her method and choice of "everyday" subject matter, Beckett remained indebted to Meldrum, but her work also differed from that of other tonalists, in part due to its emotional and spiritual qualities, reflecting her interest in Buddhism, Theosophy and Freud.[3] By 1926, she was creating landscapes unprecedented in Australian art for their "radical simplicity", and from 1930, she experimented further with a broader colour palette and more challenging compositions. In 1935, while painting the sea off Beaumaris during a winter storm, Beckett contracted pneumonia and died four days later, aged 48.

In what has been called "one of the great disasters of Australian art history",[4] well over one thousand of Beckett's works were destroyed in the decades after her death, including many by her father that he deemed "unfinished"—works from her final years that were said by friends to be more abstracted and spiritual. More works were lost in a bush fire, and in 1970, in an open-sided shed in country Victoria, as many as two thousand works were found abandoned, two thirds of which had been destroyed by the elements. Those that did survive were exhibited the following year in Melbourne, precipitating a resurgence of interest in Beckett. Catalogues, biographies and major exhibitions followed, and today she is represented in Australia's national and state galleries.

Life edit

Family and early years edit

 
Beckett, aged 18

Beckett was born on 21 March 1887 in the town of Casteron in country Victoria, the eldest daughter of Elizabeth Kate (née Brown) and Joseph Clifden Beckett, a Freemason, organist[5] and manager of the Casteron's Colonial Bank,[6] the site of Clarice's birth.[7] Beckett had one sister, Hilda. Their grandfather was John Brown, a Scottish master builder, who had designed and built Como House, and its gardens, in the Melbourne suburb of South Yarra.[8]

Undertaking her primary education in Casterton, for secondary school Beckett was a boarder at Queen's College, Ballarat, until 1903, where she revealed strong drawing ability and wrote a play, including a part for herself, which was performed by the students,[9] and in 1905 won a competition for writing on the moral lessons of Walter Melville's play A Girl's Cross Roads.[10] To foster her artistic skill, she took private lessons in charcoal drawing in Ballarat. After her family's relocation to 22 Kensington Road, South Yarra,[10] she finished her final year of school at the nearby Merton Hall campus of Melbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar School. The Beckett family then moved to Bendigo, where Beckett continued to pursue her art, and her and her sister's social engagements were reported on in the local press.[11][12]

In 1914, Beckett moved back to Melbourne to attend the National Gallery School, completing three years of study under Frederick McCubbin, one of the leading figures of Heidelberg School of Australian impressionism.

Meldrum and Australian tonalism edit

 
Silent Approach, c. 1924

In 1919, Beckett became the first National Gallery student to break from the school and study under rival teacher Max Meldrum, whose controversial theories became a pivotal factor in her own art practice. Beckett had met Meldrum as early as 1906, when, through the friendship of Beatrix Hoile and her husband Alexander Colquhoun, she became associated with an artistic circle that he frequented. She studied under Meldrum for nine months, adopting aspects of his unique tonalist system of painting, the "Scientific Order of Impressions", which resulted in a style now known as Australian tonalism, characterised by a particular "misty" or atmospheric quality created by building "tone on tone". Meldrum maintained that art "should be a pure science based on optical analysis; its sole purpose being to place on the canvas the first ordered tonal impressions that the eye received. All adornments and narrative and literary references should be rejected".[13]

The Australian tonalists opposed impressionism and modernist art styles,[14][15] and for decades the movement was the subject of fierce controversy. Its practitioners were unpopular amongst other artists, and derided as "Meldrumites".[16][17][18] Influential Melbourne modernist artist and teacher George Bell, founder of the Contemporary Art Society, described Australian Tonalism as a "cult which muffles everything in a pall of opaque density".[19]

The same year that Beckett joined Meldrum's school, her family moved from Bendigo to Melbourne's then-undeveloped bayside suburb of Beaumaris, into an existing dwelling on a double block at 14 Dalgetty Road on the corner of Tramway Parade,[3] which they named St. Enoch's after their Bendigo home.[20][21]

With her parents' health failing, and after her sister's marriage in 1922, Beckett assumed household responsibilities that dictated the structure of the rest of her life, limiting her artistic endeavours.[22] She did however regularly exhibit with other Australian tonalists at the Melbourne Athenaeum, and also with the Meldrum-inspired Twenty Melbourne Painters Society. She also joined painting and camping excursions with groups of other Australian tonalists, including the artists Lily and Justus Jorgensen, Percy Leason and Colin Colahan and their families into the hills of Eltham, Olinda, and to Anglesea (c. 1929), Lorne and San Remo (c. 1930s) on the coast, as her paintings of these locations attest, and she often met with them at the Café Latin in Exhibition Street, Melbourne.

 
Summer Fields, 1926, painted during her stay at Naringal

In 1926, Beckett painted during a six month sojourn in Victoria's Western District using as a studio the upper level of a shearing shed at the Naringal property of the brother of her good friend, Maud Rowe.[3] At home in Beaumaris, Beckett could only go out during the dawn and dusk to paint as most of her day was spent caring for her parents, more intensively from 1932 when her mother became seriously ill, before dying in 1934.[8][3] Beckett's father, though becoming frail, moved from Beaumaris, after burning her paintings he considered were 'unfinished,' and died 12 June 1936 in St Kilda,[23] leaving an estate of £2520 to Hilda.[24]

Death edit

While painting the sea off Beaumaris during a storm in 1935, Beckett developed pneumonia and died four days later, aged 48, in a hospital at Sandringham.[25] She was buried in the Cheltenham Memorial Park.[26] A retrospective solo exhibition of Beckett's work was held at the Melbourne Athenaeum. During this time, Meldrum, despite being of the opinion that "There would never be a great woman artist",[27][28] described Beckett as his most skilled pupil, saying that "she worked like a man", that she had done work "of which any nation would be proud", and that she "ranked as a great artist."[29][30]

Style and subject matter edit

 
Wet Evening, 1927
 
View Across the Yarra, c. 1931

Beckett elucidated her artistic aims in what is her only known surviving written statement, published in the catalogue accompanying the sixth annual exhibition of the Twenty Melbourne Painters Society, held in 1924:[31]

To give a sincere and truthful representation of a portion of the beauty of Nature, and to show the charm of light and shade, which I try to give forth in correct tones so as to give as nearly as possible an exact illusion of reality.

Beckett persistently and diligently painted, extending Meldrum's principles to subjects en plein air, and was highly productive. Her subjects were sea and beachscapes, and rural and suburban scenes, often enveloped in the atmospheric effects of early mornings or evening. Early critical appraisal of her paintings was mixed, with members of the conservative art establishment often finding fault in their "opaque" quality. Many critics found her difficult to categorise. Surveying her work in 1931, a critic for The Age recalled that, "When Miss Clarice Beckett held her first show at the Athenæum gallery in 1923 her work certainly found admirers, but the admiration was by no means general, and there was a good deal of confusion in the public mind as to whether she was a futurist, or only a new and dangerous variety of Meldrumite."[32] Reviewing one of her shows, an earlier critic from The Age wrote that "one would imagine from the little scenes that Miss Beckett has gathered, in the name of Australian art, that Australia was in a continual state of fog—all kinds of fogs—pink, blue, green and grey with an occasional mist that surely was never on land or sea."[33]

In 1925, Herald reviewer and staunch anti-modernist James S. MacDonald[34] was especially derogatory, favouring, if anything, the flower studies that Beckett regarded as minor in comparison with her landscapes.[35] By 1931, however, her friend and fellow Australian tonalist Percy Leason,[36] writing a long review in Table Talk,[37] said that Beckett's work showed "a convincing illusion of actual space and air and light; the same refinement and delicacy of true color; the same regard for true form and character; and the same complete indifference to conventions and the mere clever handling of paint for the sake of it."

Despite a talent for portraiture and a keen public appreciation for her still lifes, the subject matter favoured by her teacher Meldrum, Beckett preferred the solo, outdoor process of painting landscapes.[26] Her subjects were often drawn from the Beaumaris area, where she lived for the latter part of her life.[26] She was one of the first of Meldrum's group to use a painting trolley, or mobile easel to make it easier to paint outdoors in different locations.[15][38]

Modernism and increasing abstraction edit

 
Passing Trams, 1931

As Beckett developed her own style, she departed from Meldrum's dictum that tone should take precedence over colour.[39] While Meldrum blamed social decadence for 'modern' artists' exaggerated interest in colour over tone and proportion,[13] a uncredited Age reviewer of her 1932 Atheneum show[40] expressed her particular version of his principles as being "an adaptation of art to nature, which belongs neither to the realm of the orthodox normalist or the avowed modern, but is a purely individual expression of certain sensations in light, form and color."

 
Sunset, 1932

Rosalind Hollinrake, who was largely responsible for Beckett's revival in 1970,[41][42] notes a use of colour to reinforce form, and more daring design, in the later years of the artist's short life.[8] In 1971 The Age critic Patrick McCaughey considered Beckett "a remarkable modernist,"[43] situating her as an equal to Grace Cossington Smith and Margaret Preston, and "both a Meldrumite and a pioneering modernist."[44] Artist and critic Nancy Borlase wrote on the occasion of Beckett's 1979 Macquarie Galleries retrospective that launched Hollinrake's Clarice Beckett-The Artist and Her Circle. Her review draws attention to Beckett's reductionism that "presage the work of Barnett Newman and [Jules] Olitski," of forty years later, and "solitude and stillness" as her leitmotif.[45]

However, even in 2001, Tim Bonyhady, discussing the "Modern Australian Women" exhibition in which Beckett was included at the Art Gallery of South Australia, acknowledges its director Ron Radford's observation that women artists Margaret Preston, Clarice Beckett, Grace Cossington Smith, Grace Crowley, Dorrit Black and Kathleen O'Connor were "more adventurous than their male counterparts in what and how they painted," but baulks at his notion that they were "the major Australian artists of the 1920s and 1930s."[46]

Legacy edit

 
Morning Shadows (c. 1932) was acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1979, making it the first of Beckett's works to enter the collection. The painting was the subject of a two-hour lecture by Germaine Greer, who said Beckett was "the first to paint the suburbs of Australia ... Australia as it really is, as we know it."[47]

During her lifetime, Beckett was not represented in any public collection in Australia, though her sister donated one work[48] and friend Maud Rowe bequeathed three to the Castlemaine Art Museum shortly after her death,[49] with others going to the Art Gallery of Ballarat in 1937;[3] now almost every major Australian gallery holds examples of her work, including the National Gallery of Australia, which purchased eight of her works on the recommendation of artist Fred Williams in 1971.[3] Williams wrote on Beckett:

She really was ahead of her time. I found it very interesting to compare her early best work with Blackman's early paintings, that same lyrical feeling ...[50]

By 2001, her paintings had achieved six figure sums at auction.[42] In 1936, a major memorial exhibition of 79 works was presented over 4–16 May at the Melbourne Athenaeum by Beckett's sister and father, with prices ranging from 75 guineas (a value of A$7,228.00 in 2022) for Along the Coast, with most at 10-40, to 3 guineas each for 'ten sketches.'[51] An unnamed reviewer for The Age reviewed the show reverently, quoted Meldrum's comment that she "had done work of which any nation should be proud," and concluded that;

No European critic would say that Miss Beckett belonged to any particular school, and that would be the highest compliment one could bestow. She ranked as a great artist.[52]

In 1971, Beckett's sister alerted Hollinrake to a tragedy;[53] more than 2,000 of her works had been left abandoned to the elements and vermin in an open-sided hay shed near Benalla.[54] Most were unsalvageable, but thirty well-preserved but neglected works were discovered at the Montsalvat artist colony, sent there when the Beaumaris home was cleared.[55][56] An image of at least one of the lost works survives (see external links below).

Five commercial gallery exhibitions of Beckett's work were staged from 1971 to 1980. The first museum exhibition of her work, "In a Certain Light" (a two-person show with photographer Olive Cotton) was curated by Felicity Fenner and artist Jenny Bell for UNSW's Ivan Dougherty Gallery in 1995. Over 1999 and 2000, the retrospective exhibition "Politically incorrect: Clarice Beckett" was organised by the Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, and Rosalind Hollinrake. It toured eight national galleries.[29]

During the 2021 Adelaide Festival, the Art Gallery of South Australia staged the exhibition "Clarice Beckett: The Present Moment". Her most comprehensive retrospective to date, it featured 160 works, including a long-lost portrait that had recently been rediscovered. It drew large crowds and was the most successful ticketed solo exhibition in the museum's 140-year history.[57][58] Between April and July 2023, the Geelong Art Gallery staged the retrospective "Clarice Beckett—Atmosphere".[59]

She is memorialised in Clarice Beckett's Lane in the Melbourne suburb of Black Rock, and in the naming of Beckett Ward, one of seven City of Bayside municipal wards. Ballarat Grammar, where the artist studied, awards the Clarice Beckett Prize annually to a student for outstanding achievement in the study of Art at VCE level.[9] She is also the eponym of Beckett, a crater on the planet Mercury, discovered in 2008 and named by the International Astronomical Union.[60]

Cultural references edit

Kristel Thornell's debut novel Night Street (2009) is a fictionalised account of Beckett's life. It co-won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award,[61] and won the Dobbie Literary Award.[62] Nobel laureate Patrick White referred to Beckett's work when discussing influences on his 1979 novel The Twyborn Affair, which has been described as vivid and painterly in its representation of landscape.[63]

A number of Beckett's paintings feature as a plot point in the 2022 film Poker Face, directed by and starring Russell Crowe. An avid collector of Beckett's work, Crowe used real Beckett paintings from his personal collection, as well as some from the Art Gallery of New South Wales.[64]

Selected paintings edit

Exhibitions edit

Solo exhibitions edit

  • 1923 June, Athenaeum Gallery[65][66]
  • 1924 September, Athenaeum Gallery[67]
  • 1925 July, Athenaeum Gallery[68]
  • 1926 July 20–31, Athenaeum Gallery[69]
  • 1927 September, Athenaeum Gallery[70][71]
  • 1928 July, Athenaeum Gallery[72]
  • 1929 November, Athenaeum Gallery[73]
  • 1930 October, Athenaeum Gallery[74][75]
  • 1931 October, Athenaeum Gallery (show opened by Max Meldrum)[39][37][76]
  • 1932 March, The Meldrum Gallery
  • 1932 October, Athenaeum Gallery[40]
  • 1933 November, The Meldrum Gallery[77]

Group exhibitions edit

  • 1918 May, Victorian Artists' Society Autumn Exhibition, East Melbourne
  • 1918 September, Victorian Artists' Society Spring Exhibition, East Melbourne
  • 1919 September, A Meldrum Group, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1920 June, A Meldrum Group, Athenaeum Gallery[78]
  • 1921 May, A Meldrum Group, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1922 May, Victorian Artists' Society Autumn Exhibition, East Melbourne
  • 1922 November, Victorian Artists' Society Spring Exhibition, East Melbourne
  • 1923 April, Victorian Artists' Society Autumn Exhibition, East Melbourne
  • 1923 July, Twenty Melbourne Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1923 October, Victorian Artists' Society Spring Exhibition, East Melbourne
  • 1924 May, Twenty Melbourne Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1925 September, Twenty Melbourne Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1926 September, Twenty Melbourne Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1926 December, Women's Art Club, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1927 July, Women's Art Club, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1927 September, Twenty Melbourne Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1928 September, Twenty Melbourne Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1928 October, Melbourne Society of Women Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1929 September, Twenty Melbourne Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1929 October, Melbourne Society of Women Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1930 September, Twenty Melbourne Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1930 October, Melbourne Society of Women Painters, Athenaeum Gallery[79]
  • 1931 September, Twenty Melbourne Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1931 October, Melbourne Society of Women Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1931 First Contemporary All-Australian Art Exhibition, at the International Art Centre of the Roerich Museum, New York
  • 1932 September, Twenty Melbourne Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1933 March, Meldrum Gallery[80]
  • 1933 September, Twenty Melbourne Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1934 September, Twenty Melbourne Painters, Athenaeum Gallery
  • 1934 October, A Meldrum Group, Athenaeum Gallery

Selected posthumous exhibitions edit

  • 1936 Athenaeum Gallery (Memorial Exhibition)[52]
  • 1971-2 Homage to Clarice Beckett (1887–1935) : Idylls of Melbourne and Beaumaris. Rosalind Humphries Galleries, Melbourne
  • 1973 "Clarice Beckett", David Sumner Galleries, Adelaide
  • 1975 Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
  • 1978 Clarice Beckett 1887-1935, 58 Wattle Valley Road, Canterbury, 29 October[81]
  • 1979 Realities, Melbourne (Retrospective Exhibition)
  • 1979 Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, accompanying launch of Rosalind Hollinrake's book Clarice Beckett–The Artist and Her Circle[82][45]
  • 1980 Gallery Huntly, Canberra
  • 1995 "In a Certain Light" (with Olive Cotton), The University of New South Wales Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney
  • 1999–2000 "Politically incorrect: Clarice Beckett" A retrospective touring exhibition organised by The lan Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne:
Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria: 5 February 1999 – 28 March 1999
S. H. Ervin Gallery (National Trust of Australia NSW), Sydney, NSW: 24 April 1999 – 13 June 1999
Orange Regional Gallery, Orange, NSW: 19 June 1999 – 18 July 1999
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide SA: 6 August 1999 – 19 September 1999
Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, Victoria: 30 September 1999 – 31 October 1999
Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat, Victoria: 5 November 1999 – 16 January 2000
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania: 3 February 2000 – 26 March 2000
Burnie Regional Art Gallery, Burnie, Tasmania: 7 April 2000 – 22 May 2000

References edit

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  67. ^ "Miss Beckett's Paintings". The Argus (Melbourne). No. 24, 359. Victoria, Australia. 2 September 1924. p. 14. Retrieved 28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  68. ^ "Miss Beckett's Paintings". The Argus (Melbourne). No. 24, 628. Victoria, Australia. 15 July 1925. p. 10. Retrieved 28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  69. ^ "Art Notes". The Age. No. 22244. Victoria, Australia. 21 July 1926. p. 13. Retrieved 27 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  70. ^ "Woman's Work In Oils". The Herald. No. 15, 711. Victoria, Australia. 26 September 1927. p. 15. Retrieved 27 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  71. ^ "Women's World". Advocate. Vol. LX, no. 3868. Victoria, Australia. 6 October 1927. p. 38. Retrieved 27 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  72. ^ "Miss Beckett's Art". The Age. No. 22870. Victoria, Australia. 25 July 1928. p. 13. Retrieved 28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  73. ^ "Current Art Shows". Table Talk. No. 3212. Victoria, Australia. 28 November 1929. p. 15. Retrieved 28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  74. ^ "Miss Beckett's Art Exhibition". The Age. No. 23, 570. Victoria, Australia. 24 October 1930. p. 8. Retrieved 28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  75. ^ "Art Exhibition". The Argus (Melbourne). No. 26, 264. Victoria, Australia. 17 October 1930. p. 13. Retrieved 28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  76. ^ "A Woman's Letter". Cairns Post. No. 9286. Queensland, Australia. 3 November 1931. p. 8. Retrieved 28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  77. ^ "Beckett Landscapes at the Meldrum Gallery". The Age. No. 24, 533. Victoria, Australia. 28 November 1933. p. 7. Retrieved 28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  78. ^ "PAINTING". Advocate. Vol. LII, no. 2750. Victoria, Australia. 10 June 1920. p. 21. Retrieved 28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  79. ^ "SOCIAL NOTES". Australasian. 20 September 1930. p. 10. Retrieved 8 March 2023.
  80. ^ "ART". The Australasian. Vol. CXXXIV, no. 4, 397. Victoria, Australia. 15 April 1933. p. 17. Retrieved 28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  81. ^ "Auction Item – Leonard Joel". auctions.leonardjoel.com.au. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  82. ^ Coleman, Richard (7 December 1979). "The rediscovering of Clarice Beckett". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 10.
  83. ^ "Niagara Galleries - Contemporary Art Gallery Melbourne, Australia - Clarice Beckett". niagaragalleries.com.au. Retrieved 25 August 2019.
  84. ^ "Clarice Beckett: The present moment". AGSA - The Art Gallery of South Australia. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
  85. ^ Hannah Reich Clarice Beckett: Australian artist's place in global art history cemented in exhibition ABC News, 25 April 2021. Retrieved 25 April 2021.

Bibliography edit

Books

  • Colahan, Colin (1996). Colin Colahan: A Portrait. Melbourne University Publishing. ISBN 0522847102.
  • Fenner, Felicity (1995). In a Certain Light: Clarice Beckett, Olive Cotton. Ivan Dougherty Gallery. ISBN 0733410014.
  • Hollinrake, Rosalind (1979a). Clarice Beckett, the Artist and Her Circle. Macmillan. ISBN 0333252438.
  • Hollinrake, Rosalind (1999). Clarice Beckett: Politically Incorrect. Ian Potter Museum of Art. ISBN 0734015933.
  • Jorgensen, Sigmund (2014). Montsalvat: The Intimate Story of an Australian Artists' Colony. Allen & Unwin. ISBN 978-1743312728.
  • Lock, Tracey (2008). Misty Moderns: Australian Tonalists 1915-1950. Art Gallery of South Australia. ISBN 978-0730830153.
  • Lock, Tracey (2021). The Present Moment: the Art of Clarice Beckett. Art Gallery of South Australia. ISBN 978-1921668463.
  • McAuliffe, Chris (1996). Art and Suburbia: A World Art Book. Craftsman House. ISBN 9766410291.
  • Perry, John R.; Perry, Peter W. (1996). Max Meldrum and Aossicates: Their Art, Lives and Influences. Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum. ISBN 0959806679.
  • Tasca, Margot (2014). Percy Leason: An Artist's Life. Thames & Hudson Australia. ISBN 978-0500500798.
  • Ziegler, Edith M. (2022). The Worlds and Work of Clarice Beckett. Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty, Limited. ISBN 978-1922669384.

Journals

  • Bell, Jenny (2003). "Clarice Beckett: A Private Conversation". Art and Australia. 41 (1). Art and Australia Pty. Ltd.: 108–114.
  • Holt, Stephanie (1995). "Woman About Town: Urban Images of the 1920s and 1930s". Art and Australia. 33 (2). Art and Australia Pty. Ltd.: 232–243.
  • McFarlane, Jenny (1999). "Clarice Beckett's Open Road: Suggestions of an Unseen Dimension to the Familiar". Art and Australia. 37 (2). Art and Australia Pty. Ltd.
  • McGuire, M. A. (1986). "'Life and Your Imagining': The Art of Clarice Beckett". Australian Journal of Art. 5 (1). Art Association of Australia: 90–103. doi:10.1080/03146464.1986.11432882.
  • McGuire, Peg (2012). "'The Silver Thread': Clarice Beckett and Her Brother". Victorian Historical Journal. 83 (2). Royal Historical Society of Victoria: 276–285.
  • Thomas, Daniel (2021). "Clarice Beckett's Edgy Calm". Art Monthly Australasia (329). Art Monthly Australia Ltd.: 68–73.
  • Wallace-Crabbe, Robin (1999). "Eloquent Silence: Paintings by Clarice Beckett". Art and Australia. 35 (2). Art and Australia Pty. Ltd.

Webpages

External links edit

  • Between Sea and Sky: A Portrait of Clarice Beckett, ABC Radio National

clarice, beckett, clarice, marjoribanks, beckett, march, 1887, july, 1935, australian, artist, member, australian, tonalist, movement, known, subtle, misty, landscapes, melbourne, suburbs, beckett, developed, personal, style, that, contributed, development, mo. Clarice Marjoribanks Beckett 21 March 1887 7 July 1935 was an Australian artist and a key member of the Australian tonalist movement Known for her subtle misty landscapes of Melbourne and its suburbs Beckett developed a personal style that contributed to the development of modernism in Australia Disregarded by the art establishment during her lifetime and largely forgotten in the decades after her death she is now considered one of Australia s greatest artists Clarice BeckettBornClarice Marjoribanks Beckett 1887 03 21 21 March 1887Casterton Victoria AustraliaDied7 July 1935 1935 07 07 aged 48 Melbourne Victoria AustraliaNationalityAustralianKnown forPaintingMovementAustralian tonalism Born and raised in the country town of Casterton Victoria Beckett was seen as extremely shy from a young age as well as bright and artistic 1 In 1914 after moving to Melbourne with her family she began a three year study at the National Gallery School under Australian impressionist painter Frederick McCubbin then for nine months attended the rival school of art theorist Max Meldrum a controversial outlier of the Australian art world who propounded his own tonalist painting system drawn from scientific principles Beckett and others in Meldrum s circle derided as Meldrumites by his critics began staging group exhibitions in 1919 Beckett also exhibited with the Meldrum inspired Twenty Melbourne Painters Society and staged the first of her ten annual solo exhibitions in 1923 Beckett never left Victoria and rarely travelled outside Melbourne 2 much of her adult life being spent caring for her ailing parents at their home in bayside Beaumaris She did however paint prolifically often en plein air in and around Beaumaris and mostly at daybreak or towards evening when she was exempted from domestic duties In her method and choice of everyday subject matter Beckett remained indebted to Meldrum but her work also differed from that of other tonalists in part due to its emotional and spiritual qualities reflecting her interest in Buddhism Theosophy and Freud 3 By 1926 she was creating landscapes unprecedented in Australian art for their radical simplicity and from 1930 she experimented further with a broader colour palette and more challenging compositions In 1935 while painting the sea off Beaumaris during a winter storm Beckett contracted pneumonia and died four days later aged 48 In what has been called one of the great disasters of Australian art history 4 well over one thousand of Beckett s works were destroyed in the decades after her death including many by her father that he deemed unfinished works from her final years that were said by friends to be more abstracted and spiritual More works were lost in a bush fire and in 1970 in an open sided shed in country Victoria as many as two thousand works were found abandoned two thirds of which had been destroyed by the elements Those that did survive were exhibited the following year in Melbourne precipitating a resurgence of interest in Beckett Catalogues biographies and major exhibitions followed and today she is represented in Australia s national and state galleries Contents 1 Life 1 1 Family and early years 1 2 Meldrum and Australian tonalism 1 3 Death 2 Style and subject matter 2 1 Modernism and increasing abstraction 3 Legacy 4 Cultural references 5 Selected paintings 6 Exhibitions 6 1 Solo exhibitions 6 2 Group exhibitions 6 3 Selected posthumous exhibitions 7 References 8 Bibliography 9 External linksLife editFamily and early years edit nbsp Beckett aged 18 Beckett was born on 21 March 1887 in the town of Casteron in country Victoria the eldest daughter of Elizabeth Kate nee Brown and Joseph Clifden Beckett a Freemason organist 5 and manager of the Casteron s Colonial Bank 6 the site of Clarice s birth 7 Beckett had one sister Hilda Their grandfather was John Brown a Scottish master builder who had designed and built Como House and its gardens in the Melbourne suburb of South Yarra 8 Undertaking her primary education in Casterton for secondary school Beckett was a boarder at Queen s College Ballarat until 1903 where she revealed strong drawing ability and wrote a play including a part for herself which was performed by the students 9 and in 1905 won a competition for writing on the moral lessons of Walter Melville s play A Girl s Cross Roads 10 To foster her artistic skill she took private lessons in charcoal drawing in Ballarat After her family s relocation to 22 Kensington Road South Yarra 10 she finished her final year of school at the nearby Merton Hall campus of Melbourne Church of England Girls Grammar School The Beckett family then moved to Bendigo where Beckett continued to pursue her art and her and her sister s social engagements were reported on in the local press 11 12 In 1914 Beckett moved back to Melbourne to attend the National Gallery School completing three years of study under Frederick McCubbin one of the leading figures of Heidelberg School of Australian impressionism Meldrum and Australian tonalism edit Main article Australian tonalism nbsp Silent Approach c 1924 In 1919 Beckett became the first National Gallery student to break from the school and study under rival teacher Max Meldrum whose controversial theories became a pivotal factor in her own art practice Beckett had met Meldrum as early as 1906 when through the friendship of Beatrix Hoile and her husband Alexander Colquhoun she became associated with an artistic circle that he frequented She studied under Meldrum for nine months adopting aspects of his unique tonalist system of painting the Scientific Order of Impressions which resulted in a style now known as Australian tonalism characterised by a particular misty or atmospheric quality created by building tone on tone Meldrum maintained that art should be a pure science based on optical analysis its sole purpose being to place on the canvas the first ordered tonal impressions that the eye received All adornments and narrative and literary references should be rejected 13 The Australian tonalists opposed impressionism and modernist art styles 14 15 and for decades the movement was the subject of fierce controversy Its practitioners were unpopular amongst other artists and derided as Meldrumites 16 17 18 Influential Melbourne modernist artist and teacher George Bell founder of the Contemporary Art Society described Australian Tonalism as a cult which muffles everything in a pall of opaque density 19 The same year that Beckett joined Meldrum s school her family moved from Bendigo to Melbourne s then undeveloped bayside suburb of Beaumaris into an existing dwelling on a double block at 14 Dalgetty Road on the corner of Tramway Parade 3 which they named St Enoch s after their Bendigo home 20 21 With her parents health failing and after her sister s marriage in 1922 Beckett assumed household responsibilities that dictated the structure of the rest of her life limiting her artistic endeavours 22 She did however regularly exhibit with other Australian tonalists at the Melbourne Athenaeum and also with the Meldrum inspired Twenty Melbourne Painters Society She also joined painting and camping excursions with groups of other Australian tonalists including the artists Lily and Justus Jorgensen Percy Leason and Colin Colahan and their families into the hills of Eltham Olinda and to Anglesea c 1929 Lorne and San Remo c 1930s on the coast as her paintings of these locations attest and she often met with them at the Cafe Latin in Exhibition Street Melbourne nbsp Summer Fields 1926 painted during her stay at Naringal In 1926 Beckett painted during a six month sojourn in Victoria s Western District using as a studio the upper level of a shearing shed at the Naringal property of the brother of her good friend Maud Rowe 3 At home in Beaumaris Beckett could only go out during the dawn and dusk to paint as most of her day was spent caring for her parents more intensively from 1932 when her mother became seriously ill before dying in 1934 8 3 Beckett s father though becoming frail moved from Beaumaris after burning her paintings he considered were unfinished and died 12 June 1936 in St Kilda 23 leaving an estate of 2520 to Hilda 24 Death edit While painting the sea off Beaumaris during a storm in 1935 Beckett developed pneumonia and died four days later aged 48 in a hospital at Sandringham 25 She was buried in the Cheltenham Memorial Park 26 A retrospective solo exhibition of Beckett s work was held at the Melbourne Athenaeum During this time Meldrum despite being of the opinion that There would never be a great woman artist 27 28 described Beckett as his most skilled pupil saying that she worked like a man that she had done work of which any nation would be proud and that she ranked as a great artist 29 30 Style and subject matter edit nbsp Wet Evening 1927 nbsp View Across the Yarra c 1931 Beckett elucidated her artistic aims in what is her only known surviving written statement published in the catalogue accompanying the sixth annual exhibition of the Twenty Melbourne Painters Society held in 1924 31 To give a sincere and truthful representation of a portion of the beauty of Nature and to show the charm of light and shade which I try to give forth in correct tones so as to give as nearly as possible an exact illusion of reality Beckett persistently and diligently painted extending Meldrum s principles to subjects en plein air and was highly productive Her subjects were sea and beachscapes and rural and suburban scenes often enveloped in the atmospheric effects of early mornings or evening Early critical appraisal of her paintings was mixed with members of the conservative art establishment often finding fault in their opaque quality Many critics found her difficult to categorise Surveying her work in 1931 a critic for The Age recalled that When Miss Clarice Beckett held her first show at the Athenaeum gallery in 1923 her work certainly found admirers but the admiration was by no means general and there was a good deal of confusion in the public mind as to whether she was a futurist or only a new and dangerous variety of Meldrumite 32 Reviewing one of her shows an earlier critic from The Age wrote that one would imagine from the little scenes that Miss Beckett has gathered in the name of Australian art that Australia was in a continual state of fog all kinds of fogs pink blue green and grey with an occasional mist that surely was never on land or sea 33 In 1925 Herald reviewer and staunch anti modernist James S MacDonald 34 was especially derogatory favouring if anything the flower studies that Beckett regarded as minor in comparison with her landscapes 35 By 1931 however her friend and fellow Australian tonalist Percy Leason 36 writing a long review in Table Talk 37 said that Beckett s work showed a convincing illusion of actual space and air and light the same refinement and delicacy of true color the same regard for true form and character and the same complete indifference to conventions and the mere clever handling of paint for the sake of it Despite a talent for portraiture and a keen public appreciation for her still lifes the subject matter favoured by her teacher Meldrum Beckett preferred the solo outdoor process of painting landscapes 26 Her subjects were often drawn from the Beaumaris area where she lived for the latter part of her life 26 She was one of the first of Meldrum s group to use a painting trolley or mobile easel to make it easier to paint outdoors in different locations 15 38 Modernism and increasing abstraction edit Main article Australian modernism nbsp Passing Trams 1931 As Beckett developed her own style she departed from Meldrum s dictum that tone should take precedence over colour 39 While Meldrum blamed social decadence for modern artists exaggerated interest in colour over tone and proportion 13 a uncredited Age reviewer of her 1932 Atheneum show 40 expressed her particular version of his principles as being an adaptation of art to nature which belongs neither to the realm of the orthodox normalist or the avowed modern but is a purely individual expression of certain sensations in light form and color nbsp Sunset 1932 Rosalind Hollinrake who was largely responsible for Beckett s revival in 1970 41 42 notes a use of colour to reinforce form and more daring design in the later years of the artist s short life 8 In 1971 The Age critic Patrick McCaughey considered Beckett a remarkable modernist 43 situating her as an equal to Grace Cossington Smith and Margaret Preston and both a Meldrumite and a pioneering modernist 44 Artist and critic Nancy Borlase wrote on the occasion of Beckett s 1979 Macquarie Galleries retrospective that launched Hollinrake s Clarice Beckett The Artist and Her Circle Her review draws attention to Beckett s reductionism that presage the work of Barnett Newman and Jules Olitski of forty years later and solitude and stillness as her leitmotif 45 However even in 2001 Tim Bonyhady discussing the Modern Australian Women exhibition in which Beckett was included at the Art Gallery of South Australia acknowledges its director Ron Radford s observation that women artists Margaret Preston Clarice Beckett Grace Cossington Smith Grace Crowley Dorrit Black and Kathleen O Connor were more adventurous than their male counterparts in what and how they painted but baulks at his notion that they were the major Australian artists of the 1920s and 1930s 46 Legacy edit nbsp Morning Shadows c 1932 was acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1979 making it the first of Beckett s works to enter the collection The painting was the subject of a two hour lecture by Germaine Greer who said Beckett was the first to paint the suburbs of Australia Australia as it really is as we know it 47 During her lifetime Beckett was not represented in any public collection in Australia though her sister donated one work 48 and friend Maud Rowe bequeathed three to the Castlemaine Art Museum shortly after her death 49 with others going to the Art Gallery of Ballarat in 1937 3 now almost every major Australian gallery holds examples of her work including the National Gallery of Australia which purchased eight of her works on the recommendation of artist Fred Williams in 1971 3 Williams wrote on Beckett She really was ahead of her time I found it very interesting to compare her early best work with Blackman s early paintings that same lyrical feeling 50 By 2001 her paintings had achieved six figure sums at auction 42 In 1936 a major memorial exhibition of 79 works was presented over 4 16 May at the Melbourne Athenaeum by Beckett s sister and father with prices ranging from 75 guineas a value of A 7 228 00 in 2022 for Along the Coast with most at 10 40 to 3 guineas each for ten sketches 51 An unnamed reviewer for The Age reviewed the show reverently quoted Meldrum s comment that she had done work of which any nation should be proud and concluded that No European critic would say that Miss Beckett belonged to any particular school and that would be the highest compliment one could bestow She ranked as a great artist 52 In 1971 Beckett s sister alerted Hollinrake to a tragedy 53 more than 2 000 of her works had been left abandoned to the elements and vermin in an open sided hay shed near Benalla 54 Most were unsalvageable but thirty well preserved but neglected works were discovered at the Montsalvat artist colony sent there when the Beaumaris home was cleared 55 56 An image of at least one of the lost works survives see external links below Five commercial gallery exhibitions of Beckett s work were staged from 1971 to 1980 The first museum exhibition of her work In a Certain Light a two person show with photographer Olive Cotton was curated by Felicity Fenner and artist Jenny Bell for UNSW s Ivan Dougherty Gallery in 1995 Over 1999 and 2000 the retrospective exhibition Politically incorrect Clarice Beckett was organised by the Ian Potter Museum of Art University of Melbourne and Rosalind Hollinrake It toured eight national galleries 29 During the 2021 Adelaide Festival the Art Gallery of South Australia staged the exhibition Clarice Beckett The Present Moment Her most comprehensive retrospective to date it featured 160 works including a long lost portrait that had recently been rediscovered It drew large crowds and was the most successful ticketed solo exhibition in the museum s 140 year history 57 58 Between April and July 2023 the Geelong Art Gallery staged the retrospective Clarice Beckett Atmosphere 59 She is memorialised in Clarice Beckett s Lane in the Melbourne suburb of Black Rock and in the naming of Beckett Ward one of seven City of Bayside municipal wards Ballarat Grammar where the artist studied awards the Clarice Beckett Prize annually to a student for outstanding achievement in the study of Art at VCE level 9 She is also the eponym of Beckett a crater on the planet Mercury discovered in 2008 and named by the International Astronomical Union 60 Cultural references editKristel Thornell s debut novel Night Street 2009 is a fictionalised account of Beckett s life It co won The Australian Vogel Literary Award 61 and won the Dobbie Literary Award 62 Nobel laureate Patrick White referred to Beckett s work when discussing influences on his 1979 novel The Twyborn Affair which has been described as vivid and painterly in its representation of landscape 63 A number of Beckett s paintings feature as a plot point in the 2022 film Poker Face directed by and starring Russell Crowe An avid collector of Beckett s work Crowe used real Beckett paintings from his personal collection as well as some from the Art Gallery of New South Wales 64 Selected paintings edit nbsp Spring Morning 1925 Benalla Art Gallery nbsp Chestnut Avenue Ballarat Gardens 1927 private collection nbsp October Morning 1927 Art Gallery of South Australia nbsp Boatshed Beaumaris 1928 Castlemaine Art Museum nbsp Motor Lights 1929 Art Gallery of South Australia nbsp Sea Drift 1930 Art Gallery of South Australia nbsp Wet Night Brighton 1930 private collection nbsp Half Moon Bay 1930 private collection nbsp Evening St Kilda Road 1930 Art Gallery of New South Wales nbsp Moonlight and Calm Sea 1931 private collection nbsp Solitude 1932 Art Gallery of South Australia nbsp Hawthorn Tea Gardens 1933 Art Gallery of South Australia nbsp Sandringham Beach 1933 National Gallery of Australia nbsp Tranquility 1933 Art Gallery of South AustraliaExhibitions editSolo exhibitions edit 1923 June Athenaeum Gallery 65 66 1924 September Athenaeum Gallery 67 1925 July Athenaeum Gallery 68 1926 July 20 31 Athenaeum Gallery 69 1927 September Athenaeum Gallery 70 71 1928 July Athenaeum Gallery 72 1929 November Athenaeum Gallery 73 1930 October Athenaeum Gallery 74 75 1931 October Athenaeum Gallery show opened by Max Meldrum 39 37 76 1932 March The Meldrum Gallery 1932 October Athenaeum Gallery 40 1933 November The Meldrum Gallery 77 Group exhibitions edit 1918 May Victorian Artists Society Autumn Exhibition East Melbourne 1918 September Victorian Artists Society Spring Exhibition East Melbourne 1919 September A Meldrum Group Athenaeum Gallery 1920 June A Meldrum Group Athenaeum Gallery 78 1921 May A Meldrum Group Athenaeum Gallery 1922 May Victorian Artists Society Autumn Exhibition East Melbourne 1922 November Victorian Artists Society Spring Exhibition East Melbourne 1923 April Victorian Artists Society Autumn Exhibition East Melbourne 1923 July Twenty Melbourne Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1923 October Victorian Artists Society Spring Exhibition East Melbourne 1924 May Twenty Melbourne Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1925 September Twenty Melbourne Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1926 September Twenty Melbourne Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1926 December Women s Art Club Athenaeum Gallery 1927 July Women s Art Club Athenaeum Gallery 1927 September Twenty Melbourne Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1928 September Twenty Melbourne Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1928 October Melbourne Society of Women Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1929 September Twenty Melbourne Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1929 October Melbourne Society of Women Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1930 September Twenty Melbourne Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1930 October Melbourne Society of Women Painters Athenaeum Gallery 79 1931 September Twenty Melbourne Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1931 October Melbourne Society of Women Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1931 First Contemporary All Australian Art Exhibition at the International Art Centre of the Roerich Museum New York 1932 September Twenty Melbourne Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1933 March Meldrum Gallery 80 1933 September Twenty Melbourne Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1934 September Twenty Melbourne Painters Athenaeum Gallery 1934 October A Meldrum Group Athenaeum Gallery Selected posthumous exhibitions edit 1936 Athenaeum Gallery Memorial Exhibition 52 1971 2 Homage to Clarice Beckett 1887 1935 Idylls of Melbourne and Beaumaris Rosalind Humphries Galleries Melbourne 1973 Clarice Beckett David Sumner Galleries Adelaide 1975 Macquarie Galleries Sydney 1978 Clarice Beckett 1887 1935 58 Wattle Valley Road Canterbury 29 October 81 1979 Realities Melbourne Retrospective Exhibition 1979 Macquarie Galleries Sydney accompanying launch of Rosalind Hollinrake s book Clarice Beckett The Artist and Her Circle 82 45 1980 Gallery Huntly Canberra 1995 In a Certain Light with Olive Cotton The University of New South Wales Ivan Dougherty Gallery Sydney 1999 2000 Politically incorrect Clarice Beckett A retrospective touring exhibition organised by The lan Potter Museum of Art University of Melbourne Ian Potter Museum of Art The University of Melbourne Melbourne Victoria 5 February 1999 28 March 1999 S H Ervin Gallery National Trust of Australia NSW Sydney NSW 24 April 1999 13 June 1999 Orange Regional Gallery Orange NSW 19 June 1999 18 July 1999 Art Gallery of South Australia Adelaide SA 6 August 1999 19 September 1999 Bendigo Art Gallery Bendigo Victoria 30 September 1999 31 October 1999 Art Gallery of Ballarat Ballarat Victoria 5 November 1999 16 January 2000 Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Hobart Tasmania 3 February 2000 26 March 2000 Burnie Regional Art Gallery Burnie Tasmania 7 April 2000 22 May 2000 dd 2000ff Niagara Galleries Melbourne has held three survey exhibitions of Beckett s work in 2000 2002 and 2014 83 2021 Clarice Beckett The present moment Art Gallery of South Australia Adelaide SA 27 February 16 May 84 85 References edit Hollinrake 1979b McCulloch Alan McCulloch Susan McCulloch Childs Emily 2006 The new McCulloch s encyclopedia of Australian art Fourth ed Fitzroy BC Vic ISBN 0 522 85317 X OCLC 80568976 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link a b c d e f Lock Tracey 20 September 2023 Game Cathryn ed The present moment the art of Clarice Beckett Fisherman s Bend Victoria Art Gallery of South Australia Distributed in Australia by Thames amp Hudson ISBN 978 1 921668 46 3 Lock Tracey 30 March 2021 Lost butterfly catcher found in time for Clarice Beckett show In Daily Retrieved 15 November 2022 Freemasonry Argus 3 October 1890 p 6 Retrieved 8 March 2023 Joseph Clifden BECKETT was the manager of the Colonial Bank at Casterton 1875 1903 Casterton Historical Society http www swvic org casterton beckett joseph htm Archived 24 March 2020 at the Wayback Machine accessed 5 Nov 2014 Family Notices Argus 24 March 1887 p 1 Retrieved 8 March 2023 a b c Rosalind Hollinrake Beckett Clarice Marjoribanks 1887 1935 Australian Dictionary of Biography National Centre of Biography Australian National University http adb anu edu au biography beckett clarice marjoribanks 5178 text8701 published in hardcopy 1979 accessed online 5 November 2014 a b Clarice Marjoribanks Beckett Ballarat Grammar 17 June 2015 Archived from the original on 11 March 2022 Retrieved 10 October 2020 a b News of the day The Age 8 April 1905 p 10 Signa 5 May 1914 OUR BENDIGO LETTER Bendigonian p 25 Retrieved 8 March 2023 THE GUESTS Bendigo Independent 1 July 1914 p 6 Retrieved 8 March 2023 a b Christian John 22 July 1999 The subtle work of a much neglected Australian artist www wsws org Retrieved 28 July 2019 Lock Weir Tracey 22 September 2009 The sound of silence twentieth century Australian tonalism art feature Art and Australia 46 3 Art and Australia Pty Ltd 448 6 ISSN 0004 301X a b Catalogue Misty Moderns Australian Tonalists 1915 1950 written by curator Tracey Lock Weir Art Gallery of South Australia Adelaide 2008 BLACKBALLING CANDIDATES The Herald No 13 377 Victoria Australia 19 December 1918 p 10 Retrieved 4 November 2020 via National Library of Australia ARTISTS TROUBLES REVIEWED The Herald No 13 381 Victoria Australia 24 December 1918 p 8 Retrieved 4 November 2020 via National Library of Australia Haese Richard 1982 Rebels and precursors Modern Australian art Alpine Fine Arts Collection ISBN 978 0 933516 50 2 Hollinrake Rosalind 3 April 1985 Painting against the tide The Age Our Bendigo Letter Bendigonian 16 August 1917 p 8 Retrieved 8 March 2023 Advertising Bendigo Advertiser 19 November 1918 p 1 Retrieved 8 March 2023 Lake Marilyn Kelly Farley 1985 Doubletime women in Victoria 150 years Ringwood Vic Penguin Books ISBN 0 14 006002 2 OCLC 29002268 Family Notices Argus 13 June 1936 p 17 Retrieved 8 March 2023 Wills And Estates The Age 22 July 1936 p 12 Retrieved 8 March 2023 Beckett art joins Misty Moderns in Langwarrin by Teresa Murphy Hastings Leader 12 November 2009 a b c THE LATE CLARICE BECKETT The Age No 25 033 Victoria Australia 9 July 1935 p 7 Retrieved 27 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Can a Woman Be an Artist The Mail Adelaide Vol 27 no 1 391 South Australia 21 January 1939 p 1 Retrieved 10 August 2019 via National Library of Australia Marriage Before Career The Herald No 19 245 Victoria Australia 21 January 1939 p 8 Retrieved 10 August 2019 via National Library of Australia a b Clarice Beckett Rosalind Hollinrake Ian Potter Museum of Art 1999 Clarice Beckett politically incorrect Ian Potter Museum of Art University of Melbourne ISBN 9780734015938 Gray Anne Jordan Caroline Hooper Juliana eds 2020 Modern Australian Women Artists Paintings Prints and Potters The Andree Harkness Collection Amaled Pty 2020 Amaled p 28 ISBN 9780646817569 Lock 2021 p 18 A C 18 July 1931 Australian Artists Of To Day The Age p 7 Retrieved 6 March 2023 Art Notes The Age 2 September 1924 p 10 Retrieved 6 March 2023 Bernard Smith The Death of the Artist as Hero Essays in History and Culture Melbourne Oxford University Press 1988 p 70 A Misty Effect The Herald No 15 023 Victoria Australia 14 July 1925 p 17 Retrieved 27 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Tasca Margot 2016 Percy Leason an artist s life Port Melbourne Thames amp Hudson Australia ISBN 9780500500798 OCLC 954428284 a b Current Art Shows Table Talk No 3310 Victoria Australia 15 October 1931 p 15 Retrieved 27 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Candice Bruce Clarice Beckett in Gaze Delia ed Dictionary of women artists London pp 232 4 ISBN 1 884964 21 4 OCLC 37693713 a b Miss Clarice Beckett The Age No 23 871 Victoria Australia 13 October 1931 p 5 Retrieved 27 July 2019 via National Library of Australia a b Art Notes The Age No 24187 Victoria Australia 18 October 1932 p 5 Retrieved 27 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Between sea and sky a portrait of Clarice Beckett Radio National 11 August 2014 Retrieved 28 July 2019 a b Sun rises again for a misty modern www aasd com au Retrieved 28 July 2019 Cosic Miriam 1 April 2021 Clarice Beckett The Present Moment Art Gallery of South Australia until May 16 The Monthly p 65 Patrick McCaughey 2014 Strange country why Australian painting matters Carlton Vic Melbourne University Publishing p 133 ISBN 978 0 522 86120 4 OCLC 874555989 a b Borlase Nancy 8 December 1979 In Hostility The Sydney Morning Herald p 16 Bonyhady Tim 27 January 2001 A land of sweeping claims The Sydney Morning Herald p 187 Smee S 24 April 1999 Painter put her soul into suburbia The Sydney Morning Herald p 5 Silver morning Near Beaumaris Castlemaine Art Museum Collection Online Retrieved 7 March 2023 Wet Evening Castlemaine Art Museum Collection Online Retrieved 7 March 2023 Fred Williams diary note Saturday 30 October 1971 quoted in Lock The present moment Beckett Clarice 1936 Memorial exhibition Athenaeum May 4 16 1936 Prahran F amp M Pty Ltd Typ a b Work of Clarice Beckett The Age No 25 289 Victoria Australia 5 May 1936 p 9 Retrieved 27 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Summers Anne 2009 The lost mother a story of art and love Melbourne University Publishing ISBN 978 0 522 85635 4 Beckett Clarice Silent approach Item held by National Gallery of Australia Retrieved 28 July 2019 Jorgensen Sigmund 2014 Montsalvat the intimate story of Australia s most exciting artists colony Cross Malcolm artist Allen amp Unwin ISBN 978 1 74331 272 8 Strickland Katrina 2013 Affairs of the art love loss and power in the art world Melbourne University Publishing ISBN 978 0 522 85862 4 Pickup Jo 27 July 2021 Galleries are our anchors amid COVID closures artshub com au Retrieved 18 November 2022 Ewington Julie 13 April 2021 Clarice Beckett The Present Moment Art Gallery of South Australia Australian Book Review Retrieved 21 October 2021 Clarice Beckett Atmosphere Geelong Art Gallery Retrieved 18 November 2022 Mahoney Terry ed 2016 Mercury 4th ed New York Springer p 54 ISBN 978 1 4939 5042 3 OCLC 1062305957 McEvoy Marc 18 September 2009 Historical focus for Vogel winners The Sydney Morning Herald Retrieved 25 August 2022 Awards and Recipients www perpetual com au Archived from the original on 14 November 2022 Retrieved 25 August 2022 Patrick White 1996 Marr David ed Patrick White letters 2nd ed Milsons Point N S W Vintage p 454 ISBN 9780091830878 OCLC 38815874 Quinn Karl 23 November 2022 Is the priceless artwork in Russell Crowe s new film real and is it his The Sydney Morning Herald Retrieved 30 November 2022 Art Exhibition The Argus Melbourne No 23 971 Victoria Australia 5 June 1923 p 4 Retrieved 28 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Art Notes The Age No 21 271 Victoria Australia 5 June 1923 p 5 Retrieved 28 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Miss Beckett s Paintings The Argus Melbourne No 24 359 Victoria Australia 2 September 1924 p 14 Retrieved 28 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Miss Beckett s Paintings The Argus Melbourne No 24 628 Victoria Australia 15 July 1925 p 10 Retrieved 28 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Art Notes The Age No 22244 Victoria Australia 21 July 1926 p 13 Retrieved 27 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Woman s Work In Oils The Herald No 15 711 Victoria Australia 26 September 1927 p 15 Retrieved 27 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Women s World Advocate Vol LX no 3868 Victoria Australia 6 October 1927 p 38 Retrieved 27 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Miss Beckett s Art The Age No 22870 Victoria Australia 25 July 1928 p 13 Retrieved 28 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Current Art Shows Table Talk No 3212 Victoria Australia 28 November 1929 p 15 Retrieved 28 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Miss Beckett s Art Exhibition The Age No 23 570 Victoria Australia 24 October 1930 p 8 Retrieved 28 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Art Exhibition The Argus Melbourne No 26 264 Victoria Australia 17 October 1930 p 13 Retrieved 28 July 2019 via National Library of Australia A Woman s Letter Cairns Post No 9286 Queensland Australia 3 November 1931 p 8 Retrieved 28 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Beckett Landscapes at the Meldrum Gallery The Age No 24 533 Victoria Australia 28 November 1933 p 7 Retrieved 28 July 2019 via National Library of Australia PAINTING Advocate Vol LII no 2750 Victoria Australia 10 June 1920 p 21 Retrieved 28 July 2019 via National Library of Australia SOCIAL NOTES Australasian 20 September 1930 p 10 Retrieved 8 March 2023 ART The Australasian Vol CXXXIV no 4 397 Victoria Australia 15 April 1933 p 17 Retrieved 28 July 2019 via National Library of Australia Auction Item Leonard Joel auctions leonardjoel com au Retrieved 21 October 2021 Coleman Richard 7 December 1979 The rediscovering of Clarice Beckett The Sydney Morning Herald p 10 Niagara Galleries Contemporary Art Gallery Melbourne Australia Clarice Beckett niagaragalleries com au Retrieved 25 August 2019 Clarice Beckett The present moment AGSA The Art Gallery of South Australia Retrieved 23 March 2021 Hannah Reich Clarice Beckett Australian artist s place in global art history cemented in exhibition ABC News 25 April 2021 Retrieved 25 April 2021 Bibliography editBooks Colahan Colin 1996 Colin Colahan A Portrait Melbourne University Publishing ISBN 0522847102 Fenner Felicity 1995 In a Certain Light Clarice Beckett Olive Cotton Ivan Dougherty Gallery ISBN 0733410014 Hollinrake Rosalind 1979a Clarice Beckett the Artist and Her Circle Macmillan ISBN 0333252438 Hollinrake Rosalind 1999 Clarice Beckett Politically Incorrect Ian Potter Museum of Art ISBN 0734015933 Jorgensen Sigmund 2014 Montsalvat The Intimate Story of an Australian Artists Colony Allen amp Unwin ISBN 978 1743312728 Lock Tracey 2008 Misty Moderns Australian Tonalists 1915 1950 Art Gallery of South Australia ISBN 978 0730830153 Lock Tracey 2021 The Present Moment the Art of Clarice Beckett Art Gallery of South Australia ISBN 978 1921668463 McAuliffe Chris 1996 Art and Suburbia A World Art Book Craftsman House ISBN 9766410291 Perry John R Perry Peter W 1996 Max Meldrum and Aossicates Their Art Lives and Influences Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum ISBN 0959806679 Tasca Margot 2014 Percy Leason An Artist s Life Thames amp Hudson Australia ISBN 978 0500500798 Ziegler Edith M 2022 The Worlds and Work of Clarice Beckett Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Limited ISBN 978 1922669384 Journals Bell Jenny 2003 Clarice Beckett A Private Conversation Art and Australia 41 1 Art and Australia Pty Ltd 108 114 Holt Stephanie 1995 Woman About Town Urban Images of the 1920s and 1930s Art and Australia 33 2 Art and Australia Pty Ltd 232 243 McFarlane Jenny 1999 Clarice Beckett s Open Road Suggestions of an Unseen Dimension to the Familiar Art and Australia 37 2 Art and Australia Pty Ltd McGuire M A 1986 Life and Your Imagining The Art of Clarice Beckett Australian Journal of Art 5 1 Art Association of Australia 90 103 doi 10 1080 03146464 1986 11432882 McGuire Peg 2012 The Silver Thread Clarice Beckett and Her Brother Victorian Historical Journal 83 2 Royal Historical Society of Victoria 276 285 Thomas Daniel 2021 Clarice Beckett s Edgy Calm Art Monthly Australasia 329 Art Monthly Australia Ltd 68 73 Wallace Crabbe Robin 1999 Eloquent Silence Paintings by Clarice Beckett Art and Australia 35 2 Art and Australia Pty Ltd Webpages Hollinrake Elizabeth 1979b Beckett Clarice Marjoribanks 1887 1935 Australian Dictionary of Biography Retrieved 7 March 2023 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Clarice Beckett Between Sea and Sky A Portrait of Clarice Beckett ABC Radio National Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Clarice Beckett amp oldid 1220828599, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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