Modigliani – my daily art display

Amedeo Modigliani. Part 4 – His lovers and the tragic end.

Modigliani - the woman's — Modigliani – the woman’s man

Today’s blog is the final one of four about the life of Amedeo Modigliani, the Livorno-born artist, who at the age of twenty-two moved to Paris where he lived out the last fourteen years of his life. As an artist he employed a number of models for his works of art and like many artists of the time the relationship between artist and model became much more than just a working relationship. Mothers were horrified if their daughters agreed to model for the artists, as an artist’s model was looked upon as just being one step from being his lover and thus the artist model was accused of almost prostituting herself in the name of art. It is almost certain that Modigliani had very close and intimate relationships with his models as he believed, in the case of his female nude portrayals, to achieve a great painting he had first to make love to the model ! I wonder if that is how he sold that argument to the model !!! However one must remember that Modigliani for all his faults and transgressions was an extremely handsome man. Although the models, who sat for his nude collection, are unknown we do know that he had intimate and serious relationships with three named women and it is those ladies, who featured in many of his works of art that I would like to highlight in today’s blog.

Anna Akhmatova.by Modigliani (c. 1911) — Anna Akhmatova by Modigliani (c. 1911)

In 1910, whilst living in Paris, Modigliani met Anna Akmahtova. Anna was born Anna Gorenko, in Odessa in 1889, and was five years younger than Modigliani. She came from a well-to-do family and from an early age was fascinated by poetry. Her love of poetry was denounced by her parents as being foolish, self-indulgent and something which would they feared would have a corrupt influence on their daughter. However she persisted and started writing poetry when she was just eleven years of age and had her first works published when she was seventeen. She would become one of Russia’s greatest twentieth century poets.

Anna Akhmatova as ‘Acrobat’ by Modigliani

The one person who constantly encouraged Anna to write her poetry was the young Russian poet, Nikolay Gumilev. However, to placate her parents all her writings were published under her pseudonym, Akhmatova, which was the surname of her maternal grandmother. After a prolonged “chase” Nikolay finally persuaded Anna to marry him but in a letter to her friend she outlined how she was unsure that she had made the right decision. She wrote about her feelings for her future husband:

“…He has loved me for three years now, and I believe that it is my fate to be his wife. Whether or not I love him, I do not know, but it seems to me that I do…”

The couple were married in Kiev in April 1910. Her family were totally against the marriage and refused to attend the service. The young couple left Russia and travelled to Paris for their short honeymoon and it was then that she met and became a friend of Amedeo Modigliani, who like her, had a love of poetry. Modigliani was undoubtedly attracted by her beauty as well as her poetry. She was slim and elegant and everywhere she went in Paris, men’s heads would turn to admire her good looks. Her husband was unimpressed by this attention and especially with the attention Modigliani gave his wife. Anna returned to Russia with her husband but she and Modigliani continued to correspond for the next twelve months. He was obsessed with her. His letters to Anna became ever more intense and passionate and Anna recalled her short time with him during her honeymoon and their correspondence. In a letter to a friend, she wrote:

“…In 1910, I saw him very rarely, just a few times. But he wrote to me during the whole winter. I remember some sentences from his letters. One was: Vous êtes en moi comme une hantise (You are obsessively part of me). He did not tell me that he was writing poems…”

In 1911 she returned alone to Paris and met up with Modigliani and this was the start of a short but passionate love affair. Their affair had to remain a secret. She dared not be seen in public with Modigliani in the guise of his lover in case word of it got back to her husband in Russia. The affair lasted just two months and Anna returned to St Petersburg and her husband and never saw Modigliani again.

The second lady with whom Modigliani had an affair was Beatrice Hastings. Beatrice was born in London in 1879, and was five years older than Modigliani. She was the fifth of seven children. Her real name was actually Emily Alice Haigh, but she used Hastings as her pen name. Her father was John Walker Haigh, a Yorkshire wool trader. He and his family immigrated to South Africa in the 1880’s. Beatrix was a writer, poet and literary critic, and wrote extensively for the weekly British political and literary magazine, New Age. During her life, she had a number of lovers, both men and women. She was a fiery and self-willed character and in her youth caused her parents innumerable problems. She was briefly married to Alexander Hasting, whom she said was a boxer. Although a headstrong person she was also very able and was a talented singer and a gifted pianist. She moved to Paris in April 1914 as a correspondent for the New Age journal, just before the onset of the First World War. She contributed a regular column until 1916, entitled Impressions de Paris, which went down well with the English public who wanted to know about the bohemian lifestyle of the Parisian literati and the bohemian lifestyle of the Montmartre artists.

Beatrice first set eyes on Modigliani in July 1914 when she was in the Café Rosalie in Paris. Later she was introduced to him by a mutual friend, the sculptor, Ossip Zadkine, at La Rotonde café, which was situated in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris. It was a famous café, opened in 1911 by Victor Libion, and was a favourite haunt of the aspiring writers and artists of the time, such as Picasso and Diego Rivera. In her memoirs, Beatrix recalled those first meetings with Modigliani. She wrote:

“…A complex character. A swine and a pearl. I sat opposite him. Hashish and brandy. Not at all impressed. Didn’t know who he was. He looked ugly, ferocious, greedy. Met him again at the Café Rotonde. He was shaved and charming. Raised his cap with a pretty gesture, blushed to his eyes and asked me to come and see his work And I went. He always had a book in his pocket. Lautremont’s Maldoror. The first painting was of Kisling. He had no respect for anyone except Picasso and Max Jacob. Detested Cocteau. Never completed anything good under the influence of hashish…”

Modigliani was thirty and she was thirty-five when they first met. He was down on his luck, almost penniless despite his mother still sending a monthly allowance but which was frittered away on alcohol and drugs. The sale of his paintings had almost dried up and what he did sell went for a few francs. His former patron Paul Alexandre, an avid buyer of his work, had gone to fight at the Front and at this time, he had nobody to promote or sell his art.

Portrait of Beatrice Hastings before a door bny Modigliani (1915)

Beatrice and Modigliani had a stormy love affair, which was to last until 1916. In 1915 Modigliani moved in to Beatrix’s flat in the Rue Norvain which was on the Butte Montmartre. In those two years they were together, Beatrice became Modigliani’s favourite model and he immortalised her in many of his paintings.

Modigliani’s final love affair was with Jeanne Hébuterne. Jeanne was born in Paris in April 1898 and was fourteen years younger than Modigliani. Her elder brother André was an aspiring artist and he introduced Jeanne to many of the artists who lived around Montparnasse, some of whom she modelled for. Following her own desire to become an artist she enrolled in 1917 at the Académie Colarossi and it was whilst studying at this establishment that she was introduced to Modigliani. If nothing else, Modigliani was a woman’s man who had a certain magnetism and charisma which charmed the females he encountered. She was nineteen and he was thirty-three. She was a very beautiful young woman with the most amazing almond-shaped eyes. She was slim, pale-skinned and had long light-brown braids. Jeanne soon fell under his magical charm and before long, the pair became lovers. They were very much in love and after a short while, she moved in to his lodgings on Rue de la Grande Chaumière. Her parents, who were staunch Catholics, were horrified with this turn of events – their daughter had taken up with a penniless artist, shared his bed and to make things worse he was Jewish.

Jeanne Hebuterne with Hat and Necklace by Modigliani (1917)

Jeanne was all Modigliani could ask for. Besides her beauty which he admired, she seemed to be his soul mate. For her it was a case of “unconditional love”. She asked for very little in return from Amedeo and she put up with his excessive drinking. In 1918, despite the terror of the First World War, Jeanne became pregnant. If the horrors of war and being pregnant were not enough of a burden, Modigliani’s health was in decline. It was fortuitous that two years earlier Modigliani had struck up a friendship with a Polish émigré and small-time art dealer Léopold Zborowski. The art dealer had initiated a deal with Modigliani, that in return for his paintings, he would provide him with comfortable lodgings and studio space. Now in 1918, Zborowski once again came to Modigliani’s rescue by arranging for him and Hébuterne to leave Paris and go to the warmer climes of Provence in Southern France and it was here on November 29^th 1918, in the town of Nice that Jeanne gave birth to Modigliani’s daughter, Jeanne.

Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne by Modigliani (1919)

Modigliani, Jeanne and their daughter returned to Paris in the Spring of 1919 and that summer Jeanne became pregnant once again. In August of that year Modigliani was supposed to have gone to London to be present at an exhibition of some of his work but by then he was much too ill to travel. Although he continued to paint, it was becoming increasingly more difficult as he would frequently have to stop to lie down and rest. Eventually by the end of 1919 he was bed-ridden. On January 22^nd 1920 he was found unconscious in the apartment and was rushed to the pauper’s Hôpital de la Charité. Two days later he died. The medical report stated that he choked on his own blood. The official cause of death was tubercular meningitis. Reputedly his last words harked back to his love for the country where he was born. His dying words being:

“…Italia, Cara, Italia…”

Amedeo Modigliani 1919. The year before his death — Amedeo Modigliani 1919.
The year before his death

His girlfriend, Jeanne Hébuterne,whom he had promised to marry, and who was eight months pregnant with Modigliani’s second child was inconsolable. She had been staying at her parents’ apartment whilst Modigliani was in hospital and her loss was so great that at 3am the day after her lover had died, she threw herself out of her parents’ fifth floor apartment window, killing herself and her unborn child. Her parents had her buried in a grave in the Paris suburb of Bagneux with little ceremony, mortified and embarrassed at the life she had led with Modigliani and the way in which she had decided to end her own life. Modigliani’s mother was unhappy that her son and the mother of his child were not at rest together and fought hard for this to be achieved. Modigliani’s mother was also adamant that Jeanne’s daughter should be recognised as her son’s child.

Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne's grave at Piere Lachaise Cemetry Paris — Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne’s grave at Piere Lachaise Cemetry Paris

After three years of arguing with Jeanne’s parents, the body of Jeanne Hébuternes was exhumed and laid to rest in Modigliani’s grave at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and their daughter, Jeanne Hébuternes, who by this time was three and a half years old was recognised as Modigliani’s daughter, took his surname and inherited her share (one-fifth) of the proceeds from the sale of his paintings. The dealers retained four-fifths!

Having read so much about Modigliani I have tried hard not to be too judgemental. It would be easy to say that he brought about his own downfall with his extensive use of drugs and bouts of heavy drinking but I think we need to look more carefully at his physical state before we pass judgement. From his pre-teens days we know he had been unwell with pleurisy and later tuberculosis. Tuberculosis at the time was a killer disease which was highly infectious and one train of thought is that Modigliani’s use of drugs and alcohol was not only to ease his suffering but was to mask his illness. Unfortunately we are only too well aware how one can become drug and alcohol dependent and that, as was the case of Maurice Utrillo who had suffered a similar addiction due to mental issues, happened to Modigliani who had become totally reliant on alcohol and drugs.

I have enjoyed looking at all Modigliani’s paintings and despite some who believe his drug and alcohol abuse added to his artistic talent I believe that had he been a well man, drug and alcohol-free, and lived longer, then who knows what masterpiece.

For those of you who would like to read more about Modigliani, try looking at these websites:

http://www.geni.com/people/Olimpia-Lumbroso-Modigliani/6000000014620610421

http://chez-edmea.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/jeanne-hebuterne.html#.UjAUzn80QWf

http://artinthestudio.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/modigliani-part-two.html

http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/11174/lot/53/

http://secretmodigliani.com/bio2.html

http://ineedartandcoffee.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/cubisms-birthplace-bateau-lavoir.html

http://www.abcgallery.com/M/modigliani/modigliani10.html

http://www.modigliani-drawings.com/paul_alexandre.htm

http://www.modigliani-drawings.com/Introduction.htm

http://www.artandantiquesmag.com/2011/02/modigliani-finds-a-dealer/

Amedeo Modigliani. Part 3. The female nude paintings

I have changed my intended blog for today. At the end of my last blog, I said that in the next one I would conclude Modigliani’s life story and look at some of the women in his life. However, after careful consideration, I decided that it would not be right to end Modigliani’s life story without looking at his favourite artistic genre, the painting of female nudes. In all between 1916 and 1919 he completed no fewer than twenty-six paintings of female nudes, some of whom are seated whilst others are seen lying back languorously.

We know that Amedeo’s love of painting females nude started back in Livorno where, at the age of fourteen, he attended the Villa Baiocchi workshop of the artist Guglielmo Micheli. Later in 1902, when his mother took him away from their home in Livorno to aid his failing health, they visited Florence and in May 1902, just before his eighteenth birthday, he enrolled at the Scuola Libera di Nudo of the city’s Accademia di Belle Arti which was the beginning of his serious study of life drawing and which cultivated his love of painting female nudes. In 1903 when he was in Venice he enrolled at the life drawing classes at the Accademia di Belle Arti and three years later, when he arrived in Paris at the end of 1906, he attended the Académie Colarossi where he attended life drawing classes. The Académie Colarossi was a private institution, founded at the end of the nineteenth century, which offered its students an alternative to the very formalised state Academies. It was very progressive and it is certain that Modigliani received some alternative approaches on how to depict the female nude. In the Académie Colarossi life-drawing classes the students were encouraged to decide themselves on how the model should pose. This was totally contrary to the strict rules and formalisation imposed by the likes of the state Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Without doubt, Modigliani’s most powerful compositions are his female nude paintings. There is something simplistic and yet graceful about them but such simplicity does not decrease the erotic and sensuous nature of the works. In many cases one feels that he has drawn upon earlier female nude paintings by other great artists for the resultant poses of his sitters. The Italian art critic Giovanni Scheiwiller, who wrote a biography of Modigliani, wrote of the artist’s nude paintings and the artist’s relationship with his sitters, saying:

“…[it was] a completely spiritual unity between the artist and the creature he has chosen as his model…”

This bond between Modigliani and his models of course led to many racy stories of his penchant for the fairer sex and his belief that to completely capture the inner beauty of his female sitter he must first make love to them! It is maybe this kind of legend that contributes to our desire to see his work.

Nude on a Blue Cushion by Modigliani (1917) National Gallery of Art, Washington DC — Nude on a Blue Cushion by Modigliani (1917)
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Let us first look at Amedeo Modigliani’s oil on linen work entitled Nude on a Blue Cushion, which he completed in 1917. It is part of the Chester Dale Collection at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The naked female lies back against a blue cushion and looks out at us with a challenging stare. There is no hint of her being shy or introverted. The look she gives us is one that almost suggests that she is tempting us with her body, which she is very proud of.

If one looks at the famous 1863 painting, Olympia, by Edouard Manet (see My Daily Art Display Oct 12^th 2011) we see in the sitter’s posture the same brazen look as she awaits her next client.

Sleeping Nude with Arms Open (Red Nude) by Modigliani (1917) Gianni Mattioli Collection, Milan — Sleeping Nude with Arms Open (Red Nude) by Modigliani (1917)
Gianni Mattioli Collection, Milan

In his 1917 work entitled Sleeping Nude with Arms Open (Red Nude) Modigliani has depicted the female laying back on a red blanket. Her right arm lies at the side of her head whilst her left hand is placed beneath her head. She is unashamedly offering her body to us.

This pose is very like Goya’s female nude painting entitled, La Maja Desnuda (My Daily Art Display Sept 9^th 2012), which he painted around 1800. She too lies naked before us albeit her upper torso is propped up by cushions but she, like Modigliani’s female has her hands behind her head. Despite her very revealing pose, there is a certain vulnerability about Modigliani’s female in this work. Her eyes are closed and we have therefore no idea of what she is thinking. Our eyes are drawn to her red lips which are full and slightly pouted. In a way it is as if she is giving herself to us. She is offering us her ultimate gift – her body.

Nude with Coral Neclace by Modigliani (1917) Allen Memorial Art Museum Oberlin College, Ohio — Nude with Coral Neclace by Modigliani (1917)
Allen Memorial Art Museum Oberlin College, Ohio

In another female nude painting which Modigliani completed in 1917 entitled Nude with a Coral Necklace and which is housed in the Allen Memorial College at Oberlin, Ohio, we can see a similarity between the pose of the Modigliani’s female sitter with the poses of the females in two of the greatest nude paintings of all times, Giorgione’s 1508 painting entitled, Sleeping Venus

and Titian’s 1558 work entitled, Venus of Urbino (My Daily Art Display Feb 15^th 2011).

In all three cases the models left hand is placed between her thighs in an effort to retain a modicum of modesty. In the Modigliani’s work our eyes are drawn to her breasts because of his use of red to depict the areolas. Unlike the other nude works the face of the women in this painting shows a hardness which I believe counteracts any sensuality. Her facial expression differs from the other female nudes. Her almond shaped eyes and tight-lipped mouth warn us off. There is no hint of a “come-hither” look about this woman.

Red-haired Young Woman in Chemise by Modigliani (1918)

His nude painting Red-haired Young Woman in Chemise was completed by Modigliani in 1918 in some ways reminds one of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.

Although in this work she is seated, she, like Botticelli’s nude, inclines her head slightly to one side and her right hand lies across her body, over her heart and touches her breast. There is a definite sensuality about Modigliani’s painting in the way he has depicted the woman with her head at an angle. She clutches her white chemise in an attempt to cover herself but she has failed. The strap of the chemise has slid down her left shoulder. Her right breast is fully exposed whilst her right hand hides her left breast from our view. The way Modigliani has depicted her mouth with reddened lips, which are slightly parted, adds to the eroticism of this work. Her facial expression is one of inquisitiveness as if she is questioning our presence.

Of all his female nude paintings, my favourite is the one which hangs in the Courtaulds Gallery in London. It is simply entitled Female Nude and was completed by Modigliani in 1916. The female in this work is seated, which is unlike most of his other female nude works. Her head rests on her shoulder. Her eyes are closed. Her full lips touch the delicate skin of her chest. Her long black hair cascades down her back, but a few strands lie delicately across her right breast. The unknown female sitter holds a demure expression. Hers is an hour-glass figure. The shading and the skin tone Modigliani has used reveals a slight swelling of her stomach. She is a veritable beauty. Once again the figure has an elongated face, a trademark of Modigliani. Her cheeks are flushed with a rose-coloured tint. Is this a sign of her embarrassment at posing for Modigliani or is she just being coy? The painting was completed a year before he set about painting his large series of female nudes and was at a time when he was engaged in painting portraits of his friends and lovers.

Vénus (Nu debout, nu médicis) by Modigliani (1917)

Modigliani’s works command very high prices. The Modigliani Venus which he completed in 1917 when it last came up for sale had an estimated price of between $6 and $9 million but it sold for $14,200,000 and his work Nu assis au collier (Seated Nude with Necklace) had, in 1995, sold for $12.5 million.

Seated Nude on Divan by Modigliani (1917) — Seated Nude on Divan
Nu assis sur un divan (La Belle Romaine)
by Modigliani (1917)

However the highest price paid for a Modigliani nude came in November 2010 when his painting Nu assis sur un divan (La Belle Romaine), came up at Sotheby’s New York auction. Its estimated price was $40 million but with five bidders competing for the work its sale price reached $68.9 million, four times the price it realised when it was sold at Sotheby’s in 1999.

Price Evolution in Modigliani's paintings — Price Evolution in Modigliani’s paintings

I came across an interesting graph (above) on the website (http://secretmodigliani.com/auctions.html) which showed how Modigliani’s paintings have consistently risen in value. Who says art is a bad investment?

Poster for Berthe Weill's 1917 exhibition of Modigliani's works — Poster for Berthe Weill’s 1917 exhibition of Modigliani’s works

I could not end this blog about Modigliani’s nude paintings without recounting the well known tale of Modigliani’s first and only, one-man show which his patron and friend, Leopold Zborovski had managed to cajole the art dealer Berthe Weill to hold at her Paris gallery, Galerie B. Weill. Weill had first opened her gallery in 1901 and in 1917 moved to a more spacious one at 50 rue Taitbout in Paris’ 9^th arrondissement, close to the Paris Opera. Weill was dedicated to the cause of giving young up-and-coming artists, like Modigliani a chance to become recognised. Over almost forty years, until the gallery closed in 1939, works by all the modern greats such as Raoul Dufy, Kees van Dongen, André Derain, Georges Braque,Vlaminck, Diego Rivera and mother and son Suzanne Valadon and Maurice Utrillo had their works exhibited at her gallery.

Modigliani’s one man show was set for December 3^rd 1917 and being exhibited at it were thirty drawings and paintings including a number of his female nude paintings, one of which was in the window of the gallery and attracted a lot of public attention. Unfortunately for Weill and Modigliani, across from the gallery was a police station and the police, to their horror, soon noticed the crowds gathering to look through the window of the gallery at the nude figures. The police commissioner ordered Weill to close the exhibition describing the paintings as being “filth”. So why this strange decision and this prudish statement? Female nudes had been painted for many years and life classes were part of the artistic syllabus at the formal Academies? However that was the nub of the matter as the Academies taught that the female nude should be depicted only in certain poses and Modigliani’s nudes did not conform to that dictate but even more horrifying to the police commissioner was that Modigliani had depicted his female nudes as having pubic hair…shocking!!!!! Modigliani had gone back to the pre-Academy days when strict rules regarding the posture of female nudes did not exist. Goodness knows what the police commissioner would have made of the works of Egon Schiele !!!!! Despite Weill’s argument that it was art, the commissioner of police would not change his mind and the exhibition closed before it began !

My final look at the life of Modigliani in my next blog will take in his final years and look at some of the women with whom he developed a close relationship.

……to be continued.

The Rabbiter and his Family by Russell Drysdale

I thought as I had spent the last three weeks in Australia I should feature a work by an Australian artist. I was based in Cairns during my stay and visited a number of small galleries. Around this area the majority of galleries were displaying indigenous art, which although very colourful, was very similar in many aspects. The main gallery in the city was, at the time I visited it, devoted to young artists and a display by the local art society. I think to see major works of art one has to be in either Sydney or Melbourne. However today I am going to showcase the work of one of the leading twentieth century Australian artists, albeit he was born in England and didn’t move to Australia until he was eleven years of age. My featured artist is George Russell Drysdale, later to become Sir George Russell Drysdale.

Russell Drysdale was born in Bognor Regis, a Sussex seaside town on the south coast of England in 1912. His grandfather was an affluent Scottish landowner and livestock farmer as was his father, George, who built on the family wealth by carrying on working the family estate. Drysdale’s mother, Isobel Gates was English by birth. Russell Drysdale father had moved to Northern Queensland, Australia where he owned and ran a sugar plantation along the Burdekin River. The rest of the family moved out to Australia to be with him four years later in 1923. It was at this time that the family moved and settled in Melbourne and Russell boarded at the nearby Geelong Church of England Grammar School.

In 1926 his father bought Boxwood Park, an estate in the Riverina district, a pastoral region in the south-western part of New South Wales, which was a main source of beef and wool to markets in Australia and for export. It was also the homeland of the Aboriginal people who were thought to have settled on this land for more than 40,000 years. In 1929 Drysdale developed a detached retina in his left eye, a condition which was to trouble him for the rest of his life and left him virtually blind in that eye. He left school and in the following year spent six months working with his uncle, Cluny Drysdale, at the Pioneer estate, later acting as an overseer at the family property, Boxwood Park, in northern Victoria while his family travelled abroad. Russell had initially intended to follow the family tradition and become a farmer but a quirk of fate changed his destiny. It was whilst he was an in-patient at a Melbourne hospital, recovering from eye treatment, that he amused himself by drawing in pen and ink. His doctor Julian Smith, who was an amateur photographer, showed the drawings to Daryl Lindsay, a noted artist and who would later become Director of the National Gallery of Victoria. Lindsay was impressed by the drawings and persuaded Drysdale to consider a possible artistic career.

In 1935, at the age of twenty-four, he enrolled at the Bourke Street Studio School of Art in Melbourne, which was run by the artist, George Bell. Bell had a profound and lasting influence on Drysdale and twenty-five years later, at the opening of Drysdale’s retrospective exhibition in 1960, Bell proudly stated: “He is my boy”. Thus began the road to a very successful artistic career. In 1935 he married Elizabeth ‘Bon’ Stephen, the daughter of an old Riverina family who were also of Scottish descent and who lived near the Drysdales in Albury. The wedding took place on Drysdale’s twenty-third birthday. They went on to have two children, a son Tim and a daughter Lynne. After finishing the three year course in 1938 he embarked on one of his many trips to Europe, where he spent time at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. It was during his time in Paris that he came under the influence of the great French painters of the day such as Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse. Drysdale was also gratly influenced by the works of the Italian painter Modigliani.

By 1939 he was looked upon as a great aspiring artist but as yet Drysdale had not decided what genre of art he should concentrate on. In 1940 he left Melbourne and moved first to Albury, the second largest town in the Riverina and later Sydney, where the art world was awakening to European influences, and he immediately found himself at home in this artistic environment. It was whilst living in the Riverina region that Russell focused on life in this somewhat desolate region.

In the early 1940’s Drysdale began to illustrate the life of Australia’s rural frontiers in his own enigmatic style. His paintings often depicted the barren ochre-hued heartland of his country and the harsh conditions experienced by the people that had to work the land. He held his first solo exhibition in the Riddell Galleries in Melbourne in 1938 and his second four years later in Sydney. The latter received great acclaim and at that time Russell Drysdale was acknowledged as being in the forefront of the modernist movement in Sydney. He received many commissions including one from the Sydney Morning Herald who wanted him to do a series of works depicting the devastating drought conditions in western New South Wales and the demise of the deserted mining town of Hill End. The series of paintings he produced immediately enhanced his artistic reputation.

At the request of the art historian Sir Kenneth Clarke, Drysdale staged an exhibition of his work at the Leicester Galleries in London. Up until this time, critics had looked upon Australian art and Australian artists as being simply provincial but this exhibition was to change the minds of the art critics and finally they were willing to look more carefully at the Australian art scene. Drysdale spent much of the 1950’s and 1960’s painting scenes from the remote Australian outback. The early 1960’s was to prove a tragic time for Drysdale as his son Tim committed suicide aged just twenty-one and the following year his wife also took her own life. A year later in 1964 Drysdale married again, this time to Maisie Purves Smith who had been his long time friend.

In 1969 Drysdale was knighted for his services to art and in 1980, a year before his death he was awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia. In 1980 Drysdale suffered a stroke which ended his painting career. He died in Sydney in 1981 aged 69.

My Daily Art Display’s featured painting today is by Russell Drysdale and is entitled The Rabbiter and his Family which he completed early on in his career in 1938 and which now hangs in the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra In this painting we can clearly see that Drysdale was influenced by the work of Modigliani. Look at the expressions on the faces of the older members of the family. It is very obvious they are not pleased to see us and there is no question of them asking us to come and join them inside. There is a defensive attitude about their stance with them spread out wide as if to prevent us from getting past. It may well be that they, in this remote outback area, are unused to visitors or maybe they believe we are in some way going to force change to their lives. It has to be said that the two young girls and the baby don’t have the same hostile expressions as seen on the faces of the mother, father and grown-up son. They are probably too young to be suspicious of our intentions.

The son stands next to his father. He is probably about twelve years of age. He, like is sisters, stands before us barefooted and like his mother his head is tilted slightly sideways in a questioning expression. His arms are folded across his chest in an uncompromising and belligerent fashion. To the left of him is the large brown family dog who eyes us menacingly. His young sister is next to him. Note how she too has tilted her head in an enquiring manner. She is somewhat concerned by our presence. See how she wraps her arm around her father’s waist which affords her some comfort.

In the centre of the group is the father. His arm and hand lies protectively around the shoulder of his daughter. His other hand is hooked into the belt around his waist. He has the darkest skin of all the family members which is probably due to the number of hours he works outside under the ferocity of the unforgiving sun. Next to him but slightly behind him is the mother. She is dressed in a shapeless orange dress and on her feet she wears what look like a pair of blue bedroom slippers. Clutched to her breastm is a very inquisitive baby, who is wrapped in a white shawl the colour of which matches the shirt worn by the son. On the far right of the group is the younger of the two daughters whose bright reddish orange hair matches the colour of her mother’s dress and the little girl’s pale blue dress tones in with the colour of her mother’s slippers. Finally to the right of the group is the second family dog, which show no interest in us and is concentrating on relieving an itch on the back of its neck as it scratches away unconcernedly.

In the background we have a dark-blue meadow dotted with flowers and one art historian has likened this with the designs on the Lady with the Unicorn series of tapestries which are at the Musée de Cluny in Paris. In the background to the right of the family and in front of their yellow-walled house we see a ploughed area with vegetables. The precious rainwater is collected in a large tin water tank which is connected to the guttering of the house. The fields depicted in this painting are in triangular curving segments and we get a great sense of the undulation of the land.

Some say that there is a naiveté about Drysdale use of colour in this painting but maybe that is what makes the work so appealing. Although there is a somewhat menacing look upon the faces of the elders in this picture the cartoon-like way in which Drysdale has portrayed them all has added a little humour to the scene and may in some way elicit an affectionate sentiment from us, the viewer.