A recent article published online by the National Gallery of Victoria discussing Australian artist Fred McCubbin got me thinking about a memorable exhibition from the mid 1980’s. “Golden Summers” was held at the NGV from October 1985 until January 1986 and it was the exhibition that left me convinced that my future would be an artistic one. (At the time I was studying for my Associate Diploma in Cartography – GROAN!!). I can remember taking a day off work to visit the exhibition thinking the crowds would be modest – wrong! Hell, it wasn’t even raining which is when many people think of visiting galleries.
The Golden Summers catalogue - a wonderful resource
The late 19th Century saw a blossoming of Australian landscape painting in and around Melbourne, and later, at Sydney Harbour which was part of a nationalistic fervour that was developing at the time. This was not a uniquely Australian phenomenon, there were similar movements happening in the Barbizon School in France and in Russian landscape painting at the time.
Walking around the NGV show, I could almost taste the dust and feel the heat emanating out of these works, constantly asking myself “how did they do it?” One of my favourite artists of this period has been Fred McCubbin whose work showed great development during his career. While, for me, the work of Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts seemed to plateau early on in their careers.
Fred McCubbin (arrowed) with his students at the National Gallery School, 1893. Note the large number of female students. A study in art was considered part of a woman’s deportment at the time.
McCubbin, or The Prof as friends liked to call him (he was an avid reader), was born in West Melbourne in 1855. The son of a baker, his mother encouraged his fondness for drawing while a local pastor lent him Cunningham’s Lives Of The Most Eminent British Painters to read and a set of landscape prints to copy. In 1869, McCubbin enrolled at the Artisans School of Design at the Trades Hall in Carlton and paid 2 shillings per term to study figure drawing under Thomas Clark. Fellow students included his close friend Louis Abraham and Charles D Richardson. According to McCubbin, “Clark was partly paralysed, he could only speak in the faintest whisper and was so feeble that he could hardly hold a crayon – so we youngsters did what we pretty well pleased.”
Among the artists he most admired early in his career was Louis Buvelot (1814 -1888), arguably the first artist to portray the Australian landscape as it really was rather than viewing it through European eyes. In 1871 McCubbin enrolled at the National Gallery School where he remained a student for 15 years before being appointed drawing master there – a post he held (much loved, apparently) until his death in 1917.
Home Again, 1884, oil on canvas, 85 x 123 cm. This early work shows the strong influence on McCubbin of his teacher G F Folingsby.
McCubbin married in 1889 and the following year he named his first son Louis, after his close friend Louis Abraham. Abraham reciprocated by naming his son Frederick. Abraham had shown great promise as a painter and founded, along with McCubbin and Tom Roberts, an artist’s camp at Box Hill in 1885, but he had to devote more time to managing his father’s cigar manufacturing business. During the 1890’s he became increasingly depressed, once writing to Roberts in Sydney of his lost artistic career. He committed suicide in the cellar of the factory in 1903.
A Bush Burial, 1890, oil on canvas, 123 x 225 cm
Whilst at Box Hill, McCubbin painted A Bush Burial in 1890. He dug the grave in his own backyard and the female figure is his wife, Anne. He initially intended to title the work Last Of The Pioneers, as by the 1880’s a nostalgic reverence for the pioneering early days of settlement was already widespread in the now largely urban community.
It’s instructive to contrast this painting with one of his later works, Autumn Morning, South Yarra from 1916. Over the decades, commentators have tended to focus on the narrative aspects of McCubbin’s work, yet in his own writings McCubbin discussed the craft of painting and his fascination with the painted surface together with the use of different materials and techniques.
Autumn Morning, South Yarra, 1916, oil on canvas, 68 cm x 135 cm
It is argued in the NGV article that the apparent spontaneity of Autumn Morning is misleading and the work is actually just as technically complex and fastidiously constructed as his early work. He would apply the paint layer, let it dry and then rub it back to reveal the layers underneath. He would manipulate the paint using palette knives, brush handles and even cloth. “Experimentation with the construction of the painting was clearly of far greater interest to McCubbin than was the subject itself”.
McCubbin’s preferences in supports changed over time as well as his technique. In Lost 1886, the paint is applied thinly over a finely woven canvas. However in Lost 1907, McCubbin used a much courser canvas to assist in the development of texture of the painted surface. In his early paintings, he concentrated on careful modelling of forms using predominately brushes and playing down the surface. Later in his career, he focussed on the development of the surface using a variety of techniques.
What The Girl Saw In The Bush, 1904, oil on canvas (private collection)
In What The Girl Saw In The Bush 1904, McCubbin appears to have applied the paint directly onto a cotton surface without any preparation of sizing and priming. This is thought to be bad practise and yet the painting has survived well. This highlights McCubbin’s keenness for experimentation.
So why the transformation in McCubbin’s technique, you may be wondering? I always thought it was his trip to Europe in 1907 which was the catalyst for change. But as I have discovered in this NGV article, his technique was undergoing transformation long before this which makes it all the more remarkable. It is his desire for innovation that stands McCubbin apart from almost all of his contemporaries.
The Pool Heidelberg, 1910 oil on canvas, 50 x 75 cm
For me, it is something of a relief to learn that McCubbin’s later work was not as spontaneous as it seems, that he worked and reworked the surface to get the effect he wanted. Patience, perseverance and a willingness to experiment is just as important in an artist’s armoury as raw talent.
References;
Golden Summers - exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Victoria, 1985
The Art of Frederick McCubbin, His Materials and Techniques - NGV Art Journal 33