by Whispering Gums

A post in our series featuring works published in 1924 (or by authors who died in 1924). This post offers something different, a review of an exhibition of Australian art, which was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 1 January 1914, and is by the New South Wales born Edith M. Fry.

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Edith May Fry (1883-1c.1950) is a different choice for us, not only because her writing was primarily art criticism, but also because she lived most of her life in London. However, she was born in the country town of Copeland, New South Wales, and lived in Australia until her twenties. Fry has a record in AustLit but none in ADB. However, ADB does have her sister, the feminist and social worker (Florence) Mildred Muscio (1882-1964). It tells us that Mildred’s parents (and presumably, therefore, Edith’s) were the English-born Charles Fry, a telegraph master, and his Australian-born wife Jane, née McLennan. According to AustLit, Edith (like Mildred) went to Sydney Girls’ High School, and thence the University of Sydney, from where Edith graduated with a B.A. in 1904. ADB says that in 1906, Edith and Mildred published a book titled Poems. However, while Mildred went on to teach, Edith was interested in art. She started art training in Sydney, but completed her training in Paris, where at one point she attended the Academie Colarossi.

I haven’t found dates for this part of her life, but AustLit says that after World War I, Fry moved to London, where she moved in expatriate art and literary circles. During the early 1920s her works appeared in exhibitions in Paris and London, and she also had articles published in art magazines, like Studio, Connoisseur, and Art in Australia, and in the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1924 she helped organise the ‘Australian Artists in Europe’ exhibition in London. She was also, for several years, “the motivating force within the Panton Arts Club”, which held exhibitions and literary events in London. AustLit also says she “appears” to have held editorial positions with Panton Magazine, the British Annual of Literature (which published her critical articles, poetry and reviews), and the British Authors’ Press.

Besides that early collaborative book of Poems, Fry seems to have written some short stories, and in 1923, produced a small hand-press book of previously-published poems, titled, simply, Short Poems. Zora Cross reviewed this briefly in The Australian Worker (1 August 1923). Cross described the actual book as “a beautiful piece of work … It is strong and simple, and the wood-block of a waratah on the cover gives it a firm Australian feeling”, but was more measured about the contents, describing “some of the work” as “pleasing”. Fry also edited a book of Australian writing, titled Tales by Australians (1939), which included pieces by some writers still known to us today, such as Katharine Susannah Prichard, Xavier Herbert, Kylie Tennant, Dame Mary Gilmore, and Mary Grant Bruce. And, she contributed a chapter on the Australian novel to Volume 1 of The British Annual of Literature (1938).

By far the greatest portion of her writing, however, seems to have been in the area of art criticism, which is not surprising given she was also a practising artist. It is one of these articles – from the Sydney Morning Herald – that we are sharing today. Fry was a critic and supporter of Australian artists abroad, and it’s this aspect of her life that interested University of Sydney academic, Victoria Souliman, who contributed a chapter on Fry to a book on Art and migration. The chapter’s abstract explains that in the early 20th century, Australian cultural custodians “marginalised expatriatism in favour of nationalistic and patriarchal narratives”, and “defined Australian art as being strictly produced within the geographical borders of Australia”. However, as early as the 1920s, Souliman argues, there were those who asserted that Australian art existed beyond the nation’s geographical boundaries. They “defended the work of Australian expatriate artists who travelled to Europe”. Edith Fry was one of these proponents. She “championed the tradition of Antipodean expatriatism, publishing articles and organising exhibitions to promote the achievements of Australian artists abroad”.

Australian art at Burlington House

By Edith M. Fry

In its main lines, London criticism of the Australian exhibition has been fairly unanimous. The show has been credited with no great originality, but recommended for a praiseworthy degree of craftsmanship, lightened by as much of the leaven of art as one can reasonably expect to find in the average London exhibition. The outstanding portraits were there of E. Phillips Fox, Hugh Ramsay, John Longstaff, and G. W. Lambert, all of whom owe much to their years of training in London or Paris. Strong figure-work was also shown by a group of artists who have definitely made their homes in Australia, some of them, however, becoming repatriated after spending a considerable time abroad—W. B. McInnes, Max Meldrum, Norman Carter, George Bell, Florence Rodway, Percy Leason, H. B. Harrison, Amy Bale. If this group be compared with the former one a gulf will be at once apparent between the two. It is, perhaps, not so wide as that which separates figure-painters resident in Australia from those who are accepted as naturalised Londoners, or, to a still more marked degree, naturalised Parisians. It must be admitted that European standards imply a very much more subtle quality of artistry, even the sound draughtsmanship of McInnes suggesting the life-class rather than the studio.

In all of the work shown there was a strong bias due to European and especially English tradition. The danger for a country as isolated as Australia is that it must of necessity take its tradition at second-hand. For instance, a whole school of so-called “low-toned painting” has arisen in Melbourne, under the leadership of Max Meldrum, which seems to be based on a total misconception of the art of Whistler. The term “low-toned” cannot be justly applied to work which is for the most part entirely lacking in tone. In Sydney Julian Ashton has been more successful in imparting the principles of impressionism, but there is a rather monotonous uniformity running through even the Sydney exhibits. One misses the spontaneity of technique which marks the impressionists as a school, and distinguishes one impressionist from another.

This criticism does not necessarily mean anything but that Australia has not yet produced the outstanding genius who is a law unto himself. Throughout the exhibition there was a marked tendency to run in grooves, and, while the artists incline to paint according to formulas, they use formulas which have long been familiar in Europe, and many of which are already out of date. Very few of the artists seem to have transcended these formulas to the point of arriving at real freshness of vision.

This is the case even with the strong landscape section. The keynote of Australian landscape is given by brilliant sunshine on dull grey-green foliage. Its effects are elusive and extremely difficult to render. Arthur Streeton succeeds in capturing something of its elusive quality in “Beneath the Rocks,” while Elioth Gruner realises it successfully in “Budding Spring.” The work of those two painters, even when it holds no distinctively national quality, has throughout the tonal unity that distinguishes the artist. Clewin Harcourt just misses this in “Spring,” which is nevertheless strongly painted and just in values. John Moore, while more of a realist than Gruner, is less of an artist. Hans Heyson’s colour has an underlying harmony, but on the whole he impresses rather by impeccable technique than by vision. The quiet beauty of Carl Hampel’s “The Desert” suggests an English landscape more strongly than an Australian one, nor do the rich colour harmonies of David Davies’s “Moonrise” seem distinctively Australian. The water-colours of J. J. Hilder are colour fantasies evolved from the sensitive imagination of the artist. “Collins Street, Melbourne,” by Ambrose Patterson, has true luminosity—but Patterson worked for years in Paris. Was it there that he learned the truth of vision that makes him more Australian than the Australians?

To sum up, Australian art seems to be as yet in the school room. Its brief history has been one of experimentation in the technical methods of Europe, and even Lambert’s “White Glove,” which is in the nature of a technical tour de force, leaves us in doubt as to whether the artist has anything to express. The work of Norman Lindsay, the greatest Australian personality in the realm of graphic art, is based almost entirely upon tradition.

Yet the mere fact that Australians have been experimenting so industriously for the last generation is hopeful for the future. They have shown astonishing facility in assimilating the art doctrines of Europe, and by sheer hard work in acquiring their craft they have made the way easier for the artist who is to come. Progress is bound to be made along these lines, provided they retain their former openness of mind. Self-complacency will be fatal to advancement, and it is to be hoped that the present Australian artists as a class do not share the distrust felt by Mr. Lionel Lindsay for “stunts,” if the talented author of the preface to the catalogue includes in this term the recent decorative movements which have compelled tolerance, if not respect, from the most conservative critics of Europe.

The great weakness of Australian art, as revealed in the late exhibition, lies in its failure to realise the importance of pattern and design. E. Barlow’s “Snow at Sassafras” shows a pleasing sense of arrangement in its grouping of trees, and H. Harold Herbert’s “A Country Town” has a well-planned composition. The best work of Gruner, too, possesses an instinctively decorative touch. Some of the wood-blocks—Lionel Lindsay’s “Pelican,” and Napier Waller’s “Guinea Fowls”—show an understanding of the placing of simple masses of light or shade. I. Rentoul Outhwaite is delightfully original as an illustrator, while greater boldness in the manipulation of colour-schemes is shown in the decorative work of Margaret Preston and Thea Proctor. It is noteworthy, however, that these two last named artists have but recently returned from Europe. The general mass of Australian artists seems to have remained singularly untouched by the new ideas which, during the last quarter of a century, have revolutionised European art. It would be a pity for those new ideas to be misunderstood, as they have too often been misunderstood by the European artists of the second rank who have misinterpreted them—but it is better to misunderstand than to ignore. The great danger for Australian art to-day is that, by wilfully cutting itself off from the fountain-head, it may grow stagnant and lose forever its opportunity of contributing a noble tributary to the great stream of world-art.

It would be unfair to conclude without a special word for the strong black-and-white section, in which Australians have always shown a gift for originality and research, and in which they may be said to have come nearest to a definitely national achievement. Here credit is largely due to the “Sydney Bulletin,” to which all our great illustrators have served their apprenticeship. Out of illustration has grown etching and the other branches of graphic art, and the work of Sydney Ure Smith, J. Shirlow, H. Van Raalte, Gayfield Shaw, Henry Fullwood, and others has attracted attention in London, and roused the interest of discerning print-collectors in Australian work.

Sources:

Edith M. Fry, “Australian art at Burlington House“, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 January 1924 [Accessed: 24 August 2024]
Edith M. Fry, AustLit [Accessed: 24 August 2024]
Meredith Foley and Gillian Fulloon, ‘Muscio, Florence Mildred (1882–1964)‘, Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB), National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1986, accessed online 27 August 2024.
Victoria Souliman, “Nobody’s darlings? Edith May Fry and Australian expatriate art in the 1920s”, in Art and migration: Revisioning the borders of community, ed. by Bénédicte Miyamoto, Marie Ruiz, Manchester University Press, 2021 (Abstract link) [Accessed 27 August 2024]

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