Hidden gems in collection
THE Gould Collection is an eclectic assortment of decorative and fine art that includes glassware, porcelain, drawings, paintings, silverware, bronzes, and ornate furniture.
This veritable cabinet of curiosities is one of the bequests that are housed and cared for by the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery.
Gifted to the city by inveterate collectors Fred and Lucy Gould in 1950, the accumulation reflects the couple’s passion for the unusual, the exotic, and the beautiful.
There are many “hero” pieces in this marvellous magpie collection but a popular highlight is “Hydrangeas” c. 1922, a small painting by Lloyd Rees.
This gem is more than a flower study; it is painting that shares the physical joy of using colour-laden brushstrokes to shape and define the single petals that unite to create the blowsy heads of the hydrangeas.
Lloyd Rees (1895-1988) was born in Brisbane and worked as an artist with the State Government Printing Office.
He also attended art classes taught by LJ Harvey and Godfrey Rivers at the Central Technical College.
Rees was inspired by the works of Turner, Constable, and Corot, but the architectural drawings by Joseph Pennell held a special interest.
Rees made many sketches of Brisbane buildings such as St John’s Cathedral and St Brigid’s Catholic Church in Red Hill.
The “Fred and Lucy Gould Collection” includes a pen and ink drawing of the interior of St John’s Cathedral and a detailed study of Notre Dame in Paris made during one of
Rees’s trips to Europe.
Another work in the collection is his pencil drawing, “Old Moreton Bay fig”, that captures the tree’s sinuous contours with subtle shading.
Rees moved to Sydney and worked as a commercial artist before teaching drawing and art history in the School of Architecture at the University of Sydney, a position he held for more than 40 years.
The flexible hours gave him time to pursue his own practice.
The delicate watercolour style developed in Europe was replaced by more robust oil techniques.
In works such as “The Village of North Ryde” and “The Timeless Land”, layered glazes give way to vigorous scumbling, flattened space, and encrusted surfaces.
Other methods included throwing handfuls of turpentine on to the canvas, when the colours ran Rees used a rag to wipe, then rebuild some areas.
Interestingly, Rees’s landscape “The Road to Berry”, encouraged a teenage Brett Whiteley to believe he could become a painter.
Years later Whiteley painted his tribute, “Lloyd Rees: The Road to Berry”.
Rees was fascinated by the play of light and shade on surfaces, and in the 1980s his failing eyesight added a new sensory perception.
He called the paintings created at this time his “visionary” works, such as “The Sunlit Tower” in which veils of ethereal colour suggest, rather than describe, the subject.