GRACE COSSINGTON SMITH

Case Study 2

MR. SHACKLETON 10 ART

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Biography

Grace Cossington Smith (1892–1984) is one of Australia’s most

important artists; a brilliant colourist, she was one of this country’s first

Post-Impressionsts. She is renowned for her iconic urban images and

radiant interiors. Although Cossington Smith was keenly attentive to the

modern urban environment, she also brought a deeply personal,

intimate response to the subjects of her art. Among the recurring

themes are the metropolis and Sydney Harbour Bridge, portraits, still

lifes, landscapes, religious and war subjects, theatre and ballet

performances, and domestic interiors infused with light.

Students studying Australian Art History will be interested in this artist’s

role in introducing concepts of modernism to Australia. Cossington

Smith demonstrated a more open, experimental and personally resolved

style than many of her male contemporaries and she produced works of

art that challenged convention and opened new pathways to

modernism.

Cossington Smith lived a quiet life, surrounded by female friends and

relatives, but in no way did she see herself as anything other than a

professional artist whose vision was original and non-derivative.

INTRODUCTION

Grace Cossington Smith out the front of her home in Turramurra (1915)

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1890 Ernest Augustus Smith marries Grace Fisher

1891–97 The births of Mabel (1891), Grace (1892), Margaret (Madge, 1896), and twins Gordon and Charlotte (Diddy, 1897)

1910 At the age of 18 Cossington Smith begins drawing classes at Anthony Dattilo Rubbo’s atelier in Sydney

1912–14 Cossington Smith, her father and sister Mabel travel to England; Cossington Smith attends art classes at Winchester Art School

1914  Cossington Smith returns to Sydney and begins painting in oils at Dattilo Rubbo’s atelier

1915  The sock knitter is painted and exhibited at an exhibition held by the Royal Art Society of New South Wales

1916  Study of a head: self portrait is painted

1920 The Smiths buy a property in Turrumurra and name it Cossington; a studio for Cossington Smith is built in the garden

1922 Portrait of Diddy drawn around this time

CENTRE OF A CITY C. 1925

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BIOGRAPHY

Important Dates

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1925  Centre of a city (a work in which the tonal influence of Max Meldrum can be seen) painted around this time

1926  A return to bright colour can be noted in Cossington Smith’s works; she makes a break with her teacher, Dattilo Rubbo; becomes interested in theosophy and the symbolic im-portance of colour; Eastern Road, Turrumurra is painted around this time; Cossington Smith exhibits for the first time with the Contemporary Group

1927  Lily growing in a field by the sea painted around this time

1928  Cossington Smith holds her first solo exhibition at Wal-ter Taylor’s Grosvenor Galleries

1929  Four panels for a screen: lo-quat tree, gum and wattle trees, water-fall, picnic in a gully is painted

1930  Bridge in-curve is painted around this time

1931  Cossington Smith’s mother, Grace, dies; Cossington Smith paints Poinsettias and Hippeastrums grow-ing

1932  Cossington Smith holds her first solo exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries (this gallery would become her main exhibiting venue)

1935–36 The Lacquer Room is painted

1938 Cossington Smith’s father, Ernest, dies and Cossington Smith moves her studio into the main house; Cossington Smith undertakes many painting trips into the countryside with fellow artists Helen Stewart, Enid Cambridge and Tre-ania Smith

1940 Cossington Smith volunteers as an air-raid warden at Turramurra 1941–42 Church Interior is painted

1944 Dawn landing is painted

1947  Cossington Smith elected to full membership of the So-ciety of Artists, Sydney

1948  Cossington Smith sails for England with her sisters Madge and Diddy (Madge remained in England perma-nently); during the trip, Cossington Smith draws Top deck, the Arawa, Shaw Saville Line

1949  Cossington Smith travels to Italy and then back to Eng-land

1951 Cossington Smith returns to Sydney

1954 The first of Cossington Smith’s large interiors, Interior with verandah doors, is painted

1962 Diddy dies; Cossington Smith begins painting Interior in yellow before breaking her hip, which is followed by a long convalescence (subsequently, Interior in yellow was not com-pleted until 1964)

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1973 Cossington Smith is awarded an Order of the British Empire for services to art in the New Year’s Honours List; a retrospective exhibition of Cossington Smith’s work, organ-ised by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, is held and tours major capital cities

1978 Cossington Smith moves from Cossington to Dalcross Hospital and then to the Milton Nursing Home, Roseville

1983  Cossington Smith awarded the Order of Australia

1984  Cossington Smith dies, 20 December, at the age of 92

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She was born Grace Smith, in Neutral Bay, Sydney, second of five children of London-born solicitor Ernest Smith and his wife Grace, née Fisher, who was the daughter of the rec-tor of Cossington in Leicestershire. The family moved to Thornleigh, New South Wales around 1890?.

Grace attended Abbotsleigh School for Girls in Wahroonga 1905–09 where Albert Collins and Alfred Coffey took art classes. From 1910–11 she studied drawing with Antonio Dat-tilo Rubbo. From 1912–14 she and her sister lived in Eng-land, staying with an aunt at Winchester where she attended drawing classes as well as classes at Speck in Germany, and was exposed to paintings by Watteau in Berlin.

After returning to Sydney in 1914 she attended Dattilo Rubbo's painting classes and took an interest in modernist theories. Her painting “The Sock Knitter” (1915) was argua-bly Australia's first post-Impressionist painting.

She adopted the middle name "Cossington" in 1920. Her work was greatly respected by fellow-artists Roland Wakelin and Roy de Maistre. She exhibited with the Royal Art Soci-

ety of New South Wales from 1915, the Society of Artists from 1919 and Thea Proctor's Contemporary Group at Adrian Feint's Grosvenor Gallery from 1926–28, and from 1932 to 1971,at the Macquarie Galleries.

Her painting is characterized by individual, square brush strokes with bright unblended colours. Her many paintings of Sydney landscapes, still lifes, and interiors include "Kurin-gai Avenue" (1943), "Fruit in the Window" (1957), and, ar-guably her most famous paint-ing, "The Lacquer Room" (1935). She received acclaim late in her career, and in 1973 a major retrospective exhibi-tion of her work toured Austra-lia.

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GRACE COSSINGTON SMITH: LIFE AND ARTISTIC IMPACT

Biography

Title: self-portrait, Year: 1948, Medium: oil on cardboard, Dimensions: 39.5 x 30.7 cm

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GCS - SYDNEY CITY:

Grace Cossington Smith painted the city of Sydney, its people, the crowds and places such as restau-rants. For example her painting of Martin Place, City Centre. She went to the city often to sketch, though she was somewhat embarrassed with drawing in public. When the Prince of Wales visited the city, Grace went to the city to record this event.

She did sketches of the buildings around where she was standing,

but relied on memory to record the actual moment when he passed by, obviously because she did not have time to record what would have taken only a couple of seconds. This paint-ing, The Prince, accurately records the scene of the prince be-ing driven in his car through the street, which is lined with a large crowd of people.

It shows the warm reception which Australians gave to the British royalty at the time, when Australia was still very much part of the British Empire. She followed this painting with other paintings based on sketches done in Sydney city, of crowds of people rushing past in Rushing, almost at humor-ous pace, with one woman looking at the viewer with a sur-prised expression.

They show that Sydney was already a busy city with large crowds of people going to and from their jobs. A less hurried crowd is shown in Crowd, which shows a massive crowd none-theless, almost all of them wearing hats, reflecting the cur-rent fashion.

GCS & MODERNISM:

Smith was seen to be painting similarly to the style of Austra-lian modernists in the early 1930s. She primarily painted in her own fashion, trying to avoid outside influences, with disin-terest. However exhibitions and discussions with other artists, brought her awareness of current modernist trends in paint-ing.

Many of her paintings painted around 1932-33 were close in style to those of other contemporary Sydney painters. These paintings show objects being broken down into forms based on their colours similar to Cézanne, and have a cubist ma-nipulation of some of the im-agery.

Her “House With Trees”, (1935) shows houses in pink, with unnatural blues for some of the bushes surrounding them. A distortion of the real-ist colours is apparent, with distortion also of the perspec-tive lines of the actual house.

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Title: Centre of a city, Year: (circa 1925), Medium: oil on canvas on hardboard, Dimensions: 82.3 x 70.0cm; 106.4 x 93.3 x 10.0cm frame

Title: House with trees [also known as The pink house] Year: c.1935, Materials: oil on pulpboard, Dimensions: 54.3 (h) x 64.0 (w) cm

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GCS - SYDNEY HARBOUR PAINTINGS:

Her paintings of the Sydney Harbour Bridge as it was being built are some of the best painted at the turn of the century when it was a symbol of what the people of Australia are ca-pable of. Her first paintings of the harbour bridge such as

The Curve of the Bridge, were of the bridge before the ac-tual work on the arms had started, and to disguise this fact she concentrated more on painting the pylons in her earlier paintings of the bridge.

She painted the arches as they were approaching one an-other, liking the tension between the two sides, and did not paint the bridge after it was completed.

Though the painting The Bridge in Curve was rejected from the Society of Artists exhibition in 1930 it is now considered one of Australia's best modernist paintings. It shows the con-struction work continuing, with cranes fixed over the edges of both sides of the bridge.

Her highly detailed drawn study for the painting shows her eye for details and her ability to capture a scene in a photo-realistic manner.

Smith did in fact draw the Harbour Bridge completed in “Great White Ship at Circular Quay”, but here as the title

suggests, the focus is more upon the ship in the foreground than the bridge itself.

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Title: “Great white ship at Circular Quay”, Year: 1931-32, Materials: pastel, pencil and crayon on paper, Dimensions: 44.6 (h) x 36.2 (w) cm

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The years from 1926 until the late 1930s were amongst the most important in Grace Cossington Smith’s artistic life. From the mid 1920s her paintings became more colourful, with the paint being applied in many small, separate strokes. These juxtaposed touches of paint, often in concentric radiat-ing patterns, give paintings from this period a brilliant vital-ity.

Cossington Smith became interested in colour theory after reading a book by Beatrice Irwin, called New science of col-our. The theory outlined in this book investigates the physi-cal, mental and spiritual nature of colour, concluding that ex-periencing colour has the power to transform our state of mind. Roland Wakelin and Roy De Maistre, artist friends of Cossington Smith’s, also had an interest in the emotional and spiritual effect colour has upon the viewer.

The Bridge in-curve, painted around 1930, demonstrates Cossington Smith’s understanding of Irwin’s colour theory. The radiating aura of blue and white in the sky almost tin-gles with spiritual power.

The earth-bound colours of the buildings and bushes are painted more analytically but with an emphasis on emotional rather than descriptive effect.

Based on a number of drawings made from Milsons Point on the North Shore, this painting is more than an exercise in line, form and pattern. The construction of the Sydney Har-bour Bridge began in 1923 and continued until its opening in March 1932. The new Bridge was a symbol of hope, unifica-tion and progress at a time of financial depression. It was the most exciting and daring feat of engineering taking place in Sydney at the time.

Visual analysis

The Bridge in-curve, with its sweeping curves, auras of radiat-ing lines, and repeated rhythmic patterns of girders and ca-bles conveys an uplifting sense of wonder at the magnificence of this structure.

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A CLOSER LOOK: THE BRIDGE IN CURVE

The Bridge In Curve

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Working drawing for The Bridge in-curve 1930 pencil and coloured pencil National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Pur-chased 1976

The horizontal collection of bushes in the foreground creates a firm base for a composition that becomes more dynamic, angular and ethereal as the eye travels to the focal point of the gap between the two arches. Diagonal cables and the sus-pended arch on the left also direct the eye to this point. The vertical lines of the power poles on the right complete the circular movement, grounding the viewer amongst the blue-green foliage of the foreground.

Discussion points

• This is more than a descriptive view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Discuss how

Cossington Smith endeavors to add symbolic meaning to this image.

• Discuss the application of Irwin’s New science of col-our in this painting.

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Title: “The Bridge in Curve”, Year: 1926, Artist: Grace Cossington Smith, Materials: Tempera on com-position board, Dimensions: 83.8cm x 111.8cm

The engineering feat of the bridge in this case is less impor-tant than it is a symbol of the triumph of modernism for Australia. Australia is a great modernist society, and so that's why it is reaching up into the sky, elevating the coun-try. (Cossington Smith) is putting together the modernist ideal with the spiritual ideal. That's why there's the light radiating out like a halo

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”Jennifer Phipps, curator of Australian Art (Late Modernism), National Gallery of Victoria. Interviewed 28 May 2004.

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