International Art News

John RUSSELL
Peonies and head of a woman (c. 1887)
oil on canvas – 40.7 x 65.0 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
The Joseph Brown Collection. Presented through the NGV Foundation by Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE, Honorary Life Benefactor, 2004 2004.218

15 Jun 2013 to 06 Oct 2013 – National Gallery of Victoria
For the first time, the story of the Australian artists who lived in France during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is presented in an exhibition of over 130 stunning works of art. Australian Impressionists in France challenges our understanding of Australian art during these revolutionary decades.

Beginning in the 1880s and continuing into the twentieth century, many of the best and brightest art students left Australia to continue their studies in Paris, the undisputed world capital of the arts. In France the Australians became part of the large community of French and foreign artists who were changing the course of art.

Charles Conder
England 1868–1909, lived in Australia 1884–90, Europe 1890–1905
Mrs Conder in pink c.1901- oil on canvas – 48.0 x 44.3 cm
New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester
Purchased by the Friends of the Museum, 1956 (L.F43.1956)
© Leicester Arts & Museums/The Bridgeman Art Library

Claude Monet demonstrated his Impressionist technique to John Russell; Charles Conder trawled the cabarets of Montmartre with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; and Vincent van Gogh considered Russell a friend. In France, Australian artists engaged in personal and artistic exchanges with artists from around the world.

The exhibition shows that during these years Australian art took place beyond the confines of Australia, and examines how the expatriate artists were part of the story of Impressionism in Australia. Through the inclusion of key works by French, British and American artists the exhibition also places the Australians’ work within an international context of Impressionist art.

Australian Impressionists in France brings together over 130 paintings, prints and drawings from major public and private collections around the world. It includes important paintings by John Russell, E.Phillips Fox and Charles Conder, as well as never before seen works by lesser-known artists.

National Gallery of Victoria

Frances Hodgkins - The piano lesson Production Date:c 1909 - watercolour and charcoal - (hxw):515 x 595 mm - Frances Hodgkins - :Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2007

Until March 11, 2012 – Auckland Art Gallery
In 2007, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki acquired these 20 paintings by expatriate New Zealand artist Frances Hodgkins. Painted in the first decade of the 20th century, they were hidden away in a drawing folio before the original owner’s family discovered them in 2007.

These sketches may have served as teaching points for her many students, but how they came to be in a French private collection remains a mystery.

When Hodgkins exhibited similar watercolours in Sydney and Melbourne in 1912-13, she told a reviewer how she had gone to England in 1901 looking for colour and light. Unable to find it, she ‘fled to France’, where she attended Norman Garstin’s sketching class at Caudebec-en-Caux.

However, it was her trip to Morocco the same year that proved a turning point. Mediterranean culture provided Hodgkins with a simplicity of architectural forms, sparkling light and strong colour, all elements of what eventually became her own highly individual style.

In Paris, Hodgkins revelled in debates, experimentation and the desire for new forms of expression which were central to the avant-garde movements. We see Hodgkins pushing the boundaries of traditional watercolour, using the kind of experimentation that eventually transformed her into one of the leading English modernists of her day.

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