Women of Australian impressionism emerge from the shadows
Découvrez les femmes impressionnistes australiennes.
Connaissez-vous Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts ou encore Charles Conder ? Il est probable que non. Pourtant, en Australie, ces impressionnistes, contemporains de Monet et Renoir, sont aussi célèbres que leurs homologues francophones. Une nouvelle exposition leur rend hommage, non sans mettre l'accent sur d'autres talents : May Vale, Jane Price ou encore Ina Gregory, des femmes impressionnistes souvent oubliées par l'Histoire...
Iexpected an exhibition of Australian Impressionism to be predominantly pictures of men sitting on logs, landscapes upon landscapes, and there are plenty of both – but SheOak and Sunlight puts these in a larger context. The images are imbued with emotion. These are fleeting moments that we feel lucky now to see.
2. “It’s about capturing an experience of being in a place,” says Angela Hesson, NGV’s curator of Australian painting, sculpture and decorative arts to 1980. The exact definition of Australian Impressionism can be difficult to nail down, she clarifies – the work produced during the period between 1883 and 1895 was diverse, and often deviated from the loose rules the artists set themselves – but NGV Australia’s new exhibition attempts to represent the breadth of that diversity.
3. Hesson quotes the catalogue put out by the artists of the 9 by 5 exhibition: “An effect is only momentary; so an impressionist tries to find his place.” She pauses, then repeats back a word. “His … curious, but anyway.”
WHO WERE THE AUSTRALIAN IMPRESSIONISTS?
4. It’s difficult, over 100 years later, to think of such familiar images as revolutionary or rebellious, but that’s exactly what Australian Impressionism was. “Impressionism generally was criticised for what was perceived as a lack of discipline and a lack of technique – Impressionist artists were accused of kind of lazily exhibiting sketches,” says Hesson. “And women were particularly subject to those kinds of criticisms.”
5. The main tale of She-Oak and Sunlight is of four leading figures of the movement in Australia: Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and Charles Conder. It starts off with a wall of pictures of artists as illustrated either by themselves or by fellow artists, and draws out connections from there: letters they wrote to each other; influences. One wall shows the same scene painted years apart from two different artists’ perspectives. Two violent seascapes, one by Claude Monet and one by John Russell, are placed side by side, each distinct and yet almost mirrored, showing how the friendship between the two men influenced each other’s work.
6. While their stories are interesting in both how they evolve and intertwine, NGV has also newly acquired works by artists Iso Rae, May Vale, Jane Price and Ina Gregory – and it’s the lesser-known works by the women who painted alongside the now-famous men that allow the exhibition to tell a fuller story.
7. “This isn’t specific to Impressionism,” Hesson explains. “This is a much broader art history problem … women are underrepresented in our collection, and in most collections – and so we have been looking wherever possible to rectify that.”
8. Despite many women painters being involved in Impressionism at the time, most of them were barely represented within the movement. “There was a strong network of mutual support among all the artists, so I think it was really a mark of much broader gender politics of the period,” says Hesson.
LESS MONEY AND FAME
9. Women were held to different standards from their male counterparts. “The first solo exhibition of Ina Gregory’s work, for example, was compared to a shopkeeper’s window,” Hesson explains. “The reviewer said that [Gregory] didn’t know how to edit her work – so there’s this idea that a lack of discipline is potentially gendered.”
10. There was also the pressure to marry, and the idea that for women especially, art should be a hobby, not a living. “Even the fact that, for example, women couldn’t stay overnight at artists camps, completely changes their capacity to immerse themselves in those kinds of landscapes,” says Hesson.
11. Despite the challenges, the quality of the women’s work is clear; hung alongside the paintings of their male counterparts they easily hold their own – though there are some key and consistent differences.
12. One of the rooms features two images of women artists at work, side by side – one painted by a male artist and one by a female artist. Both are candid and intimate; they feel like photographs taken without the subjects’ knowledge. The quality of the work is the same – but the difference in their size is striking. In E Phillips Fox’s painting, the figures are almost life-size. Ina Gregory’s, by comparison, is tiny; the entirety of her painting is about the same size as the paint palette depicted in her male counterpart’s work.
13. “A lot of the women from this period are painting on a smaller scale,” says Hesson. For female Impressionists we see “very few large-scale works, in part because they often didn’t have the commercial success of their male counterparts, and artists’ materials were expensive.”
14. Even though they often sold their work for 10% of what their male counterparts received, even though their works are often literally smaller, they kept creating – and now those works are being appreciated and included.
Many women were part of the impressionist movement, but most of them were barely represented.
1. to expect (s’) attendre (à) / exhibition exposition / log rondin / landscape paysage / oak chêne / to be imbued with être imprégné/empreint de / fleeting fugace, bref, furtif.
2. NGV = National Gallery of Victoria / curator conservateur (musée), commissaire (exposition) / to nail down déterminer / loose peu rigoureux, souple / rule règle / to set, set, set fixer, établir / to attempt to tenter de / breadth ampleur.
3. to quote citer / to put, put, put out réaliser /
anyway ici, peu importe.
4. lack manque / kind of en quelque sorte, d'une certaine façon (kind genre, sorte) / sketch dessin, croquis.
5. main principal / tale histoire, récit / fellow ici, autres / to draw, drew, drawn out établir /
seascape paysage marin / side by side côte à côte. 6. to intertwine s'entremêler / alongside aux côtés de / to allow permettre.
7. broad large.
8. despite malgré (le fait que) / to involve faire partie de, prendre part à / barely à peine / within au sein de / network réseau.
9. to hold, held, held ici, être soumis / standard norme, critère / counterpart homologue / shopkeeper commerçant / window ici, vitrine /
reviewer critique / to edit retravailler, retoucher en vue d'une exposition.
10. overnight toute la nuit / landscape ici, milieu.
11. to hang, hanged or hung, hanged or hung accrocher, suspendre / to hold, held, held one's own ici, se défendre, être à sa place / consistent ici, important, significatif.
12. to feature présenter /
knowledge (inv.) savoir; ici, ...à l'insu des sujets... / size taille / striking frappant, marquant / tiny minuscule / to depict représenter.
13. scale échelle.
14. works oeuvres, tableaux / to include intégrer; ici, exposer.