A STRENGTH OF GAZE
Miss Lily: A portrait of the artist Curzona Allport
Marian Jameson
Fullers Publishing, $75
How tenuous a person’s legacy can be. Tasmanian artist Lily Allport struggled to make a living, died nearly 70 years ago and had no descendants to cherish her memory.
She achieved a measure of recognition in her life, but her closest surviving relatives did not seem to appreciate the quality of her work. She was the eccentric old aunt and after her death, many of her things were stored in a garden shed, with a lawnmower and other bits and pieces. Precious artworks and almost all her correspondence succumbed to damp and had to be tossed away.
Yet here is a book that defies the odds, a beautiful celebration of the long-forgotten artist, with 250 illustrations, including family photos and examples of Lily’s delicate art.
Author Marian Jameson spent years on this project, recovering what she could of Lily’s life, and what a worthwhile rescue mission.
Sadly, Lily’s own voice is missing. While letters to her and about her survive, most of her own writing is gone. Other mysteries linger. Who are the people in her unnamed portraits? Why was one of her best paintings hidden behind another?
Lily’s life spanned two depressions and two world wars, from the horse-and-buggy era to the nuclear age. Born in 1860, she was tutored by her artist grandmother Mary Morton Allport and started painting simple watercolours. She decorated wooden knives to sell at the bazaar at her parish church, All Saints, South Hobart (which still has a monthly market today). She could have continued to pursue art as a genteel hobby but decided to forge an independent career. She had to overcome many challenges. Even her first name, Curzona, caused problems. One art critic from The Times of London mistook her for a man when writing a review of her work. Her family sometimes called her Zona. No wonder she was often known as Lily.
Lily Allport was fortunate to be part of a relatively well-off family of collectors, whose possessions now fill the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts in Hobart. The Allports, like other well-heeled colonial Australians, regarded England their spiritual home. Lily sailed to England with her mother and sister when 27, then branched off on her own and stayed in London, renting, studying and working there for decades. She liked to travel and was drawn to France at a time it was the centre of the art world. She was in Turkey on the eve of World War I. Even after her return to Tasmania in 1931, aged in her 70s, she continued to wander, and took off to Manila in 1939, just before the outbreak of another war.
Her upbringing was comfortable and she was educated and cultured but Lily had little personal wealth. Her brother, who managed the family’s affairs after the death of their father, gave her a limited allowance, which she had to supplement with sales of her work and teaching jobs. She taught drawing at a trade school in London for many years. It was not easy for a single woman from the colonies to earn recognition, yet she managed to be the first Tasmanian to have a painting hung by the Royal Academy of Arts in London and to have work exhibited in a Paris salon — significant achievements, reported in Tasmania’s press.
Mostly, it was Lily’s determination that got her through, exemplified by a striking photograph of her in her youth, looking directly at the camera, which sparked Marian Jameson’s interest in the artist.
Lily was inspired by styles from French impressionism to art deco and Japanese woodblock printing. She drew illustrations for books and magazines, and painted lovely portraits and evocative landscapes. By the end of her life in 1949 her home was an apartment in the old AMP building in Hobart (its only remnant is the arch at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens — see a photo of it on page 6). Upstairs was a press where she made linocut and woodcut prints.
An exhibition of some of her work is on show at the Allport Museum in the State Library until November 10. Miss Lily is a treasure of a book and Australia is richer for it.