Booking detailsEntry $12Members and concessions $8Entry for booked school groups and students under 16 is free

Online teachers’ resourcesVisit nga.gov.au to download study sheets that can be used with on-line images – key works have been selected and are accompanied by additional text.

Other resources availableThe catalogue to the exhibition: Grace Cossington Smith (a 10% discount is offered for schools’ purchases) Available from the NGA shop. Phone 1800 808 337 (free call) or 02 6240 6420, email trade@nga.gov.au, or shop online at ngashop.com.au

Audio tourFree children’s trailPostcards, cards, bookmarks and posters

Venues and datesNational Gallery of Australia, Canberra 4 March – 13 June 2005Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 29 July – 9 October 2005Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 29 October 2005 – 15 January 2006Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane 11 February – 30 April 2006

nga.gov.au/CossingtonSmithThe National Gallery of Australia is an Australian Government Agency

Grace Cossington Smith

A RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION

This exhibition has been curated by Deborah Hart, Senior Curator, Australian Paintings and Sculpture at the National Gallery of Australia.

Proudly sponsored by

Teachers’ notes

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 integrity absolute.

This resource contains:• teachers’ notes• a biographical timeline on the artist• 14 cards with full-colour images of works from the exhibition and contextual information and visual analysis of each image• a series of discussion points.

Suggested strategy for use of the resource:Distribute the cards to students, in groups or individuallyStudents read the information on the back and prepare answers to the discussion pointsStudents deliver their prepared answers to the class and read out the visual analysis provided

Suggested reading

Grace Cossington Smith, exhibition catalogue, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2005.

Jane Hylton, Modern Australian women: paintings and prints 1925–1945, Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2000.

Bruce James, Grace Cossington Smith, Roseville, New South Wales: Craftsman House, 1990.

Daniel Thomas, Grace Cossington Smith: a life from drawings in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1993.

For further information visit the Gallery’s website: nga.gov.au/CossingtonSmith/

Sources for the information in this education resource: Grace Cossington Smith, exhibition catalogue, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2005; Bruce James, Grace Cossington Smith, Roseville, New South Wales: Craftsman House, 1990; Grace Cossington Smith, interviews with Alan Roberts at Cossington, Sydney, 9 January 1970, 29 January 1970, 9 February 1970 and 28 April 1970; and Grace Cossington Smith, interview with Hazel De Berg, 16 August 1965, National Library of Australia.

GRACE COSSINGTON SMITH EDUCATION RESOURCE

GRACE COSSINGTON SMITH BIOGRAPHICAL TIMELINE

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

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 importance 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 Walter Taylor’s Grosvenor Galleries

1929 Four panels for a screen: loquat tree, gum and wattle trees, waterfall, 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 growing

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 Treania 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 Society of Artists, Sydney

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

1949 Cossington Smith travels to Italy and then back to England

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 completed until 1964)

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, organised 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

Grace Cossington SmithStudy of a head: self portrait 1916

The portraits by Grace Cossington Smith are intimate, descriptive and perceptive. She was not interested in producing large, formally posed portraits. Members of her family sitting and reading, friends, and children of friends were the subjects of her gentle, intuitive portraits. Many studies of her family lounging in cane armchairs fi ll her sketchbooks; she delighted in the interplay between the lineal structure of the chair and the soft silhouette of the body.

Painted as an art student in her early twenties, Study of a head: self portrait 1916 suggests the young artist’s vitality and determination, along with her love of colour and structure. Cossington Smith’s sensuous use of vibrant blues, greens and rosy pinks, along with the dramatic passages of light and dark anticipate her later work. Her characteristic style, with fan-like brushstrokes, had not developed at this early stage of her career; instead she uses bright dabs of colour, demonstrating her awareness of British and European Post-Impressionism gleaned primarily from her classes with Anthony Dattilo Rubbo at his atelier in Rowe Street, Sydney.

Visual analysis

Note the use of parallel diagonals to animate the composition. The collar, jaw line, nose and parting in her hair form diagonals that counterpoint the strong compositional line from bottom left to top right. Her dark hair is balanced by the dark, bottom right-hand corner. The artist separates the cheek from the background with a bright edge of light paint.

Discussion points

•What characteristics of Post-Impressionism are evident in this portrait?•What does this portrait convey about the artist?

P O R T R A I T S

Grace Cossington SmithStudy of a head: self portrait 1916

oil on canvas on board

The Holmes à Court Collection,

Heytesbury Pty Ltd, Perth

Grace Cossington SmithPortrait of Diddy c. 1922

Grace Cossington Smith was the second of fi ve children – she had three sisters and a brother. Her mother, also named Grace, was a cultured woman with a love of music and languages; her father, Ernest, was appointed Crown Solicitor of New South Wales in 1890 and later established his own fi rm. Theirs was a close, supportive family. The family liked nicknames: Margaret was known as Madge and Charlotte as Diddy.

Cossington was the name of the ancestral home of the artist’s mother in Great Britain, and it was the name given to the house where Cossington Smith was born on 22 April 1892, in Neutral Bay in Sydney, and later to the family home in Turramurra. Cossington was also the name the artist adopted in the 1920s, when she began signing her work as Grace Cossington Smith.

Cossington Smith’s ability to draw was recognised while she was at school. The Head Mistress of Abbotsleigh, who encouraged Cossington Smith’s art education, gave her a gift of four art books on her graduation from school. Her parents took it for granted that their second daughter would study art and that she would become a professional artist, not just a genteel amateur painter.

Cossington Smith began drawing classes with Anthony Dattilo Rubbo in 1910, at the age of 18. During her fi rst year of tuition Cossington Smith began the practice of drawing in sketchbooks. A sketchpad, pencils, crayons and pastels are easily transported and are non-intrusive, enabling the artist to sit and draw within the intimacy of the family circle. The National Gallery of Australia owns 52 of Cossington Smith’s sketchbooks, dating from 1910 to the 1950s. The artist made drawings for a variety of purposes: as fi nished works of art, as sketches for later paintings, as investigations of form and composition, as travel documentation and as intimate records of family life.

Diddy was a favourite subject to draw, as she could maintain a pose while deeply absorbed in a book. She had a close bond with Cossington Smith and was also interested in art, having studied woodcarving with Eirene Mort. Diddy worked as a nurse at the Parramatta Hospital and in later life Cossington Smith spent many years nursing her at home after she suffered a stroke.

Visual analysis

In Portrait of Diddy Cossington Smith concentrates the viewer’s attention on the face by framing it between the two parallel horizontal lines of the hat and the lower edge of the collar. The diagonals of the collar lead the eye to Diddy’s pensive, downcast face. Even at this early date it is possible to see how Cossington Smith challenged accepted drawing practice by using a repeated vertical stroke that defi nes the form with colour, rather than by following the contours of the object. This device can be seen much later in the painting Interior in yellow 1962, 1964.

Discussion points

•Describe Cossington Smith’s family and the artist’s place in it.•Discuss the different roles drawing took in the work of Cossington Smith.

Grace Cossington SmithPortrait of Diddy c. 1922

pastel, charcoal and pencil on paper

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Purchased 1974

F A M I L Y

Grace Cossington SmithThe sock knitter 1915

Although World War I took place on the other side of the world, it had a huge infl uence upon the Smith family. Both parents were born in England and many of their relatives remained there. Cossington Smith’s brother, Gordon, joined the British Army in 1916 after one term studying at Oxford and Cossington Smith worked regularly at the War Chest Flower Shop in Pitt Street, to help raise funds for the soldiers. It was here that she often met Mary Cunningham, whom she later visited at Lanyon, a property near Canberra. Cunningham was an impassioned defender of conscription and Cossington Smith supported her position during two referenda on the subject.

The sock knitter in this work is Cossington Smith’s younger sister Madge, seated in the garden studio of the family home at Turramurra. As well as being an intimate portrait of a family member it represents the type of work many women undertook during World War I: knitting socks for Australian soldiers fi ghting overseas.

Cossington Smith painted this portrait in 1915, while still a student at art school. It demonstrates her interest in Post-Impressionism, which was largely new in Australian art at the time. The sock knitter may have been inspired by reproductions of Cézanne’s paintings that were on display at Anthony Dattilo Rubbo’s atelier, where Cossington Smith took art classes. There is also some similarity to works by the British artists of the Camden Town Group, such as Harold Gilman and Charles Ginner, whose works she may have seen when in Europe between 1912 and 1914.

Visual analysis

The central fi gure is placed vertically in the composition. An oblique patch of dark blue in the top right connects the fi gure to the background and visually fl attens the composition. The two sections of pale, patterned fabric on either side of the fi gure also help to fl atten the space. The focal point of the painting is the face of Madge, looking down at her hands. Horizontal lines of background fabric, diagonal lines of shoulders and lower arms, and even the diagonals of her collar direct the viewer to this part of the painting.

Large areas of fl at colour, painted thickly, demonstrate that at this early stage of her career the artist had not yet developed her own idiosyncratic paint handling style – the small, mosaic-like brushstrokes that are central to her later work.

Discussion points

•Describe the artist’s feelings about conscription and the contribution of Australian women to the war effort.•Discuss how the artist has visually ‘fl attened’ the image.

W A R

Grace Cossington SmithThe sock knitter 1915

oil on canvas

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney © AGNSW

Photographed by Jenni Carter for AGNSW

Grace Cossington SmithDawn landing 1944

Grace Cossington Smith lived through two world wars. Although known as an artist of domestic interiors, still lifes, and portraits of family and friends, she was also interested in political and social issues. She painted royal visits, the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the D-day invasion of Normandy and a victory thanksgiving service in the parish church. In 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, the artist was 47 years old. She volunteered for war work as an air-raid warden for her street in Turramurra and created several major paintings on the theme of war at this time. These works stand apart from the responses of other Australian artists, as they convey her strongly patriotic support for the war and the empathy she felt for the sacrifi ce of young men for this gallant cause.

Inspired by the D-day landing in France in June 1944, Dawn landing depicts a column of soldiers disembarking from a landing craft. There is no death and carnage, just a column of young men walking forward with their heads bent. It is most likely that Cossington Smith used newspaper photographs published in the Sydney Morning Herald on the day that the attack was reported as the basis for this painting. She combines elements from two photographs and is therefore not interested in creating an accurate historical reconstruction of this event; rather she emphasises the individual’s sacrifi ce as the ultimate act of civic duty and patriotism. She later stated that she was particularly interested in D-day because her nephew Bill Pakenham-Walsh took part. He was probably the inspiration for the closest fi gure, with his golden colouring, and downcast, cherubic face.

Visual analysis

The ominous yawning hull of the troop carrier, with its doors enclosing a distant tank, is the focal point of this painting. Behind this vessel, stretching into the distance are massed hundreds of vessels that create a mosaic-like pattern of browns and purples. The diagonal stream of soldiers, mainly faceless and unarmed, wade forwards through the water. They are painted in glowing colours of brown and gold. The water is broken up into patches of vertical brushstrokes in a variety of warm shades. The cropped composition may indicate the photographic source of this image.

Discussion point

•How does this painting reveal the artist’s values and attitudes towards Australian participation in World War II?

W A R

Grace Cossington SmithDawn landing 1944

oil on pulpboard

Sir James and Lady Cruthers Collection, Perth

Grace Cossington SmithCentre of a city c. 1925

By the beginning of 1924 Grace Cossington Smith was fi nding herself isolated in Turramurra, estranged from the city. Her brother, Gordon, was studying at Oxford, Diddy was often away from home nursing and Madge had left Australia for the fi rst time to visit England. At the age of 30 she was certain of her identity as an artist but felt isolated from the world at large.

Centre of a city was painted around 1925. It is an affi rmation of Cossington Smith’s status as an artist. Technical assurance and compositional clarity convey the sombre essence of modern city life where humans, like black ants, are dominated by featureless windows within towering, geometric buildings. This is a ground-breaking work for Cossington Smith, as it is the fi rst painting to display the sky as a radiant aureole. The chopped brushstrokes and colour gradations sweeping above the hard-edged golden buildings suggest that there is more to life than the everyday 10 o’clock bustle of Martin Place in Sydney.

Visual analysis

A sketchbook reveals at least 10 preparatory pencil studies for this painting, which the artist only began when she felt assured of its perspective accuracy and tonal resolution. The vanishing point is related to the eye level of the artist and is therefore found above the centre of the right-hand pavement, at the point where the dark wedge of shadow overlaps the most distant building. All of the diagonal lines lead to this point. The little white rectangle above this point also attracts the eye to this part of the painting. The foreground is in deep shadow and is populated by a cart with horses, which visually connects with the rectangle of the far building. The artist emphasises the illusion of distance by sweeping the wide road down and up and reducing the size of the fi gures.

Discussion points

•How does Grace Cossington Smith reveal her attitude to the city in this painting?

•Photocopy the image and outline all of the perspectival/diagonal lines. See if you can fi nd the vanishing point.

C I T Y L I F E

Grace Cossington SmithCentre of a city c. 1925 oil on canvas on hardboard

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney © AGNSW

Photographed by Jenni Carter for AGNSW

Study for Centre of a city c. 1925 pencil on paper sketchbook 10 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1976

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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 radiating patterns, give paintings from this period a brilliant vitality.

Cossington Smith became interested in colour theory after reading a book by Beatrice Irwin, called New science of colour. The theory outlined in this book investigates the physical, mental and spiritual nature of colour, concluding that experiencing 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 tingles 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 Harbour Bridge began in 1923 and continued until its opening in March 1932. The new Bridge was a symbol of hope, unifi cation and progress at a time of fi nancial 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 radiating lines, and repeated rhythmic patterns of girders and cables conveys an uplifting sense of wonder at the magnifi cence of this structure.

The horizontal collection of bushes in the foreground creates a fi rm 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 suspended 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 colour in this painting.

C I T Y L I F E

Grace Cossington SmithThe Bridge in-curve c. 1930

tempera on cardboard

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Presented by the National Gallery Society of Victoria 1967

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

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Grace Cossington Smith has often been associated with the introduction of modernism to Australian art. Characteristics of modernism include simplifi ed compositions, decorative fl atness, clearly outlined shapes, emphasis on colour and rhythmic elements, and a reduction of forms to their essentials.

Along with Roy De Maistre and Roland Wakelin Cossington Smith was a student of Anthony Dattilo Rubbo, who introduced his students to the art of the Post-Impressionists Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin.

The paintings of Cossington Smith, with their singing colour, fan-shaped brushstrokes defi ning simplifi ed forms and dynamic, often asymmetrically balanced compositions place her fi rmly in the modernist tradition.

The Lacquer Room, painted in 1935–36, demonstrates many modernist characteristics. It depicts an American-style Art Deco café from the late 1920s called the Soda Fountain, located in David Jones, Sydney. The geometric forms in the painting are simplifi ed and fl attened, and the repeated shapes create rhythmic patterns.

Visual analysis

The curves of the red chairs and their vertical slats dominate the composition and are counter-pointed by the green rectangular tables and the chalky geometry of the background. There is no directed light source creating shadows and tone, instead the whole composition is bathed in an even glow.

The fi gures, although painted in darker, more muted colours, seem almost as inanimate as the furniture. They are captured as if looking at the artist making the preliminary drawing for this work, a practice she used for all of her paintings from this period.

Discussion point

•List the characteristics of modernism that this painting exhibits.

C I T Y L I F E

Grace Cossington SmithThe Lacquer Room 1935–36

oil on paperboard on plywood

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney © AGNSW

Photographed by Christopher Snee for AGNSW

Study for The Lacquer Room c. 1935 pencil on paper sketchbook 14 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1976

Grace Cossington SmithEastern Road, Turramurra c. 1926

Many of Grace Cossington Smith’s landscapes from the 1920s were painted near her home in the beautiful, elevated, semi-rural North Shore suburb of Turramurra. The subject of this work, Eastern Road, was close to Cossington Smith’s family home and the sharp decline and rise of the road offered her the chance to create this vertiginous composition of sweeping space and distant, oblique horizon.

This watercolour was developed from a pencil sketch in which she worked out the composition in great detail. Cossington Smith was a very deliberate artist; her drawings were made in front of the object and colour notes made on the margin. The drawings are quite specifi c and correspond closely to the recommendations of Beatrice Irwin, who had written the book New Science of colour. Irwin suggested that colours are imbued with certain properties, for example, olive green (sedative), rose madder, fawn, royal blue and emerald green (recuperative), and violet and chrome (stimulative). The squared drawing was then carefully transferred to the larger support and the watercolour applied according to the notes on the preparatory drawing.

Visual analysis

The strong diagonal of the road sweeps towards the centre of the painting and then curves upwards towards the oblique horizon. On either side the foreground intersects the sky via the large, framing green trees. The largest telegraph pole leans towards the left and this angle is emphasised by the three close-cropped sticks in the foreground. Note that the telephone lines do not continue back into the work (and do not appear at all on the right-hand side), as they would have made the composition too complex.

The verticality of the trees, poles and road is counterbalanced by many curving horizontal lines of the fi elds, trees and houses. The glowing curves of the sky lighten towards the horizon. The colour red is used almost like punctuation across the composition, attracting the eye from one side of the road to the other. A horse and cart, steamroller and distant person on the road enliven the composition and serve to create a sense of distance.

Discussion point

•Discuss the role of colour theory and the role of drawing in the work of Grace Cossington Smith.

L A N D S C A P E

Grace Cossington SmithEastern Road, Turramurra c. 1926 watercolour over pencil on paperboard

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Bequest of Mervyn Horton 1984

Study for Eastern Road, Turramurra c. 1926 pencil on paper sketchbook 10 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1976

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A thread that runs through the work of Grace Cossington Smith is her contented view of the world around her – the suburban life of North Shore Turramurra, where she lived for most of her life. Although much of her subject matter was fairly conservative – still lifes, landscapes, fl ower studies, portraits, interiors and cityscapes – her radical, adventurous treatment of these subjects placed her in a realm of her own. She often stated her interest in the works of European masters, such as Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin, and incorporated stylistic elements from these artists into her own art, which resulted in paintings of great vigour and originality.

Four panels for a screen: loquat tree, gum and wattle trees, waterfall, picnic in a gully was painted in 1929; it was commissioned by Gladys MacDermot a collector who, on a visit to Sydney, had admired and bought one of Cossington Smith’s Bridge paintings. The four panels were displayed individually in an exhibition in 1932 at the Walker’s Galleries in London before being made into a screen. Despite favourable reviews, MacDermot did not approve of the panels and they were left with Cossington Smith’s sister Mabel, who lived in England. There they stayed until they were purchased for the National Gallery of Australia in 1976.

The fi rst two panels illustrate fl owers and trees from the artist’s garden in Turramurra, while the second two are bushland panels that describe the bush nearby.

Visual analysis

The unusual, tall format suits the subject matter of trees, waterfalls and rocky outcrops. To counteract this verticality Cossington Smith uses many horizontal curved forms that describe foliage, the foreground, rocks, falling water and the sky. The colour is high-keyed and opaque, with each brushstroke applied deftly.

Discussion point

•In what way was Grace Cossington Smith pushing the boundaries of contemporary art?

L A N D S C A P E

Grace Cossington SmithFour panels for a screen: loquat tree, gum and wattle trees,

waterfall, picnic in a gully 1929 oil on cardboard

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Purchased 1976

Grace Cossington SmithPoinsettias 1931

Grace Cossington Smith’s mother died in 1931 and this event shattered the close-knit Smith family. Her mother’s declining health and mortality also led Cossington Smith to think about what it meant to be alive on this earth. In historical ‘vanitas’ paintings the subject of fl owers is often associated with the transience of life.

Poinsettias 1931 was painted in the year of Cossington Smith’s mother’s death. The cyclical nature of life is suggested by the fragility of these blooms, their curling, dying leaves and their downcast form. However, the vivid colour and radiating composition is also an affi rmation of life.

Lily growing in a fi eld by the sea c. 1927 has a strange iconic quality. Cropped from their leaves, the large blossoms fi ll the top half of the canvas. Neither in a vase nor a garden, isolated against a distant fence line, this image creates an edgy quality not normally associated with fl ower paintings. Similarly unconventional, the closely focused dusky red and white petals of Hippeastrums growing 1931 fi ll the frame.

Cossington Smith often painted fl owers. Her sense of structure, combined with the delicate quality of Australian native fl ora resulted in works that were lighter and less dramatic than those of her peer Margaret Preston. As Cossington Smith said in an interview with Alan Roberts in 1970, ‘to me the whole point of Australian fl owers is that they are extremely light … they have an atmosphere of their own … very beautiful and light’.

Visual analysis

Cossington Smith, like Cézanne, was not interested in symmetry or stability. Many of her compositions included angled forms that direct the eye through the picture plane. Note the angle of the vase, the table and the curved stem that ends in a small, curled brown leaf in the top right. The three circular red blooms are intricately painted over a careful preliminary drawing and the cloth behind them echoes the movement of the spinning bracts.

Discussion point

•Why were fl owers an important subject for this artist? Discuss the symbolic nature of fl ower paintings.

F L O W E R S

Grace Cossington SmithPoinsettias 1931

oil on pulpboard

Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Ivor Francis Bequest Fund 1995

Hippeastrums growing 1931 oil on pulpboard Private collection

Lily growing in a fi eld by the sea c. 1927 oil on pulpboard Private collection Photographed by Brenton McGeachie for NGA

Grace Cossington SmithChurch interior c. 1941–42

Grace Cossington Smith was born into a devoutly Anglican family. Both of her parents were born in England and the Smiths had many relatives living there. In 1890 Ernest Smith, a solicitor, married the beautiful and musical Grace Fisher, whose father was a clergyman. The family was relatively affl uent. The Smith children’s early education was conducted at home by governesses and private tutors, an accepted practice for their social standing. Ernest Smith played a distant role in the rearing of the family, supervising prayers in the evening and reading stories. He oversaw the spiritual instruction of the children with priestly authority. His was a non-dogmatic faith, but steadfast and unchallenged, and was to be a determining factor not only in the artist’s life but in her art.

Church interior was painted during World War II. It depicts St James’ Anglican Church in Turramurra, a signifi cant place for the Smith family, as they had worshipped there regularly since 1913. This particular church had been rebuilt during 1941 and Cossington Smith’s painting would have been one of the fi rst images of the new interior. The stained-glass window depicted in Church interior was designed by Cossington Smith’s good friend Ethel Anderson. By positioning herself at the back of the church the artist became both an observer and a worshipper. Missing in this painting are the young men who have gone to war, and many of the women are wearing black, lending a somber feel to the painting. The enclosing shape of the church roof, the calmly ordered pews and choir, and diagonal blue carpet leading to the cross beneath the glowing window convey a safe-haven at this time of war and sacrifi ce.

Visual analysis

The sense of order in Church interior is created by careful geometric drawing. The female fi gure in the pink coat is centered in the foreground and it seems that through her eyes we see the altar as the focal point of all the diagonal lines in the composition.

Discussion point

•How does this painting reveal the artist’s religious background and her feelings about World War II?

R E L I G I O N

Grace Cossington SmithChurch interior c. 1941–42

oil with pencil on pulpboard

Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

Purchased 2001 with funds raised through

Grace Cossington Smith Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Appeal

Grace Cossington SmithInterior with wardrobe mirror 1955

During the 1950s Grace Cossington Smith was spending most of her time at home in Turramurra nursing her sister Diddy, who had suffered a stroke. Advised by a friend to increase the size of her paintings, Cossington Smith’s fi rst large interior, Interior with verandah doors, was painted in 1954. All of the following interiors have a similar personal, but unpopulated, appearance. The artist is invisibly present; she captures her own memories and dreams in these images of rooms in the family home. Her presence is felt in the open cupboards, the rug, books and paintings that make her room personal. Pictures within pictures, views through windows and refl ected in mirrors typify Cossington Smith’s works from this point.

Interior with wardrobe mirror was painted in 1955 when the artist was 63. The dramatic use of diagonal planes creates a composition that is both visually complex and intellectually intriguing. Although by this stage Cossington Smith was no longer relying on sketches to prepare her compositions, the careful placement of angled forms that touch and refl ect each other indicates that the composition was carefully worked out prior to painting.

Visual analysis

The open cupboard door and the bed on the right are both cropped, bringing the viewer right into the space of the painting. The artist’s characteristic use of diagonals in her composition lead the eye to the bottom point of the mirrored door. The mirror refl ects the bed, verandah and sunny garden beyond the room, and hidden behind the mirror is the suggestion of another door leading to another part of the house.

Cossington Smith’s use of small, square brushstrokes capture a shimmering light with their fragmented colours, however, in this work they do follow the direction of the form evident on the fl oor and rug. The artist stated in an interview with Hazel de Berg in 1965: ‘I use squares in the way I paint … because I feel in that way … light can be put into the colour, whereas just to put colour onto the surface in a fl at way, I feel that it gives it a dead look.’

Discussion points

•Discuss the way Grace Cossington Smith reveals not only her environment but her personality in this painting.

•Cossington Smith was a painter of light. Discuss.

I N T E R I O R S

Grace Cossington SmithInterior with wardrobe mirror 1955

oil on canvas on paperboard

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney © AGNSW

Photographed by Ray Woodbury for AGNSW

Grace Cossington SmithInterior in yellow 1962, 1964

Since 1911, in her earliest sketchbooks Grace Cossington Smith had been interested in doorways, creating suggestions of space beyond. She exhibited small paintings of interiors intermittently in the 1930s and regularly in the 1940s. Her 1947 exhibition included 10 interior views of her home. Their signifi cance lies in the opportunities they offered for experimentation and as a precursor to the great interiors of her later life. The framing device of a doorway creates an immediate illusion of depth, a feature of the work of Pierre Bonnard, whose paintings Cossington Smith would have seen on her last visit overseas, between 1948 and 1951. However, she states that it was Cézanne who was more important to her; his use of unstable compositions and form-defi ning brushstrokes can be seen as an inspiration for many of her paintings.

In her later years the artist’s use of brighter, more fragmented colour may have refl ected her sense of liberation, freed from the pressures of having to prove herself. These late interiors with their brilliant use of colour, especially yellow, represent an emphasis on the emotional aspects of colour. For Cossington Smith seeing and feeling were inseparable. As she said in an interview with Alan Roberts in 1970, ‘I see something and it makes me feel a colour and that is what I try to get’. In fact the interior rooms of Cossington were not particularly bright, the verandahs obstructing most of the direct sunlight that seems to permeate these paintings.

While painting Interior in yellow Cossington Smith fell and broke her hip. She fi nished the painting two years after beginning it, and it is tempting to read into the enclosed feel of the room something of her confi nement during this time.

Visual analysis

The angled bed and chair dominate the foreground of this dramatically glowing painting, with the strong diagonal of the fl oor and walls leading the viewer’s eye to the far corner of the work. Another spatial illusion is created with the sunny refection of the verandah and garden seen in the mirrored door of the wardrobe. Completed almost nine years after Interior with wardrobe mirror, the composition is more stable and the brushstrokes are invariably vertical. This device creates a dynamic tension between the surface of the painting and the illusion of space created by the diagonal forms.

Discussion points

•Discuss the artist’s feeling for and use of colour in her art.

•How did the work of Cézanne infl uence Cossington Smith?

I N T E R I O R S

Grace Cossington SmithInterior in yellow 1962, 1964

oil on composition board

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Purchased 1965

Study for A passageway at Church Cottage, Bowral 1911–12 pencil on paper sketchbook 2 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1976

Grace Cossington SmithTop deck, the Arawa, Shaw Savill Line c. 1949

Grace Cossington Smith spent most of her life living in the family home in Turramurra. During her student days she spent more time in the city, traveling there by train. She traveled overseas twice. The fi rst trip was with her father and older sister, Mabel, in 1912 when Cossington Smith was 19. During this time she briefl y attended art school at Winchester in England and also attended art classes during a three-month stay in Stettin, Germany.

Separated by some 34 years and two world wars, the artist’s second period overseas spanned December 1948 to February 1951. By this time she was a mature and established artist. Accompanied by her two younger sisters, Madge and Diddy, Cossington Smith fi lled 26 sketchbooks over this period. Drawing was her primary mode of making art while overseas, and the drawings present a chronological and geographical survey of her journeys to new and familiar places. In these later drawings she replaced pastels with graphite pencil, coloured pencil, and pen and ink.

Over her artistic life Cossington Smith fi lled many sketchbooks with drawings, 52 of which are in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. Many of these sketchbooks are fi lled with sketches made during her second trip abroad and a number are fi nished drawings rather than working drawings for later paintings.

Top deck, the Arawa, Shaw Savill Line c. 1949 was created on the way to Europe. Cossington Smith spent many hours observing and drawing life on deck, the heaving ocean, and the luminous light of sky and water. She used coloured pencils lightly, letting the paper show through, concentrating on their lineal rather than tonal quality. As in her paintings, the direction of the pencil strokes in her drawings animate the surface and convey movement and light.

Visual analysis

The artist’s characteristic use of oblique lines and angled structures can be seen in this composition. The converging lines of the deck lead the eye into the distance, with the overlapping and tilting forms on the left conveying the heaving motion of the vessel.

Discussion points

•Discuss the signifi cance of drawing in the art of Grace Cossington Smith.

•Discuss the difference between a fi nished drawing and a sketch. Look at Top Deck, the Arawa, Shaw Savill Line in this context.

T R A V E L

Grace Cossington SmithTop deck, the Arawa, Shaw Savill Line c. 1949

ink and pen, pencil, and coloured pencil

sketchbook 25 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased 1976