Australian portraiture

About Artist

Ford Madox Brown, although English, was born in Calais in 1821. (jonathan5485, 2019)  His father, Ford Brown was a retired purser in the navy and his mother, Caroline Madox, came from an old Kentish family.  He initially studied art in Belgium, France and Italy before coming to England in 1845.  Married twice, firstly in 1841 to his cousin, Elizabeth Bromley who died of consumption in 1846 (jonathan5485, 2019) and shortly after married for a second time, to his model, Emma Hill.   He had a varied career but although he was highly thought of by his contemporaries, he never achieved popular success.  Although older than the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood he associated with them and at one time tutored Dante Rossetti.    Madox Brown painted many historical pictures and for most of the 1880’s he worked on subjects of local social history for Manchester Town Hall.  Ford Madox Brown will always be remembered for what most believe was his greatest work of art, The Last of England. (jonathan5485, 2019)

Painting

The painting, The Last of England, depicts a family leaving the shores of England for a better life and a fresh start in Australia.  This oval, almost circular, painting makes us concentrate our focus on the faces of the couple, who have literally turned their backs on their homeland.   In the picture we see a father, mother and two children wrapped up well against the cold sea breezes as the ship leaves the shores of their English homeland.   The picture, in some way was inspired by the emigration to Australia of Maddox Brown’s friend, the sculptor Thomas Woolner in 1852 (jonathan5485, 2019).  It is ironic that although Maddox Brown started the painting the year Woolner departed from England, he had returned to England the following year, disillusioned by the false promises of wealth to be had from the gold rush.  This was some two years before Brown had completed the work.  In the mid-nineteenth century there was almost a mass exodus of people from England to America and Australia.  Thousands of working-class and lower middle-class people, who were totally disillusioned with their life of poverty and slum-like dwellings, just packed up the few possessions they had and made this long and momentous journey to the other side of the world.  They were following their dream and although they believed the “grass would be greener” for them in Australia, they could not but help to worry a little whether they had made the right decision.(jonathan5485, 2019)

About Artist

Arnold Shore, a lifelong inhabitant of Melbourne, was apprenticed to a stained glass and leadlight company called Brooks, Robinson soon after leaving school at the age of twelve. He worked there for more than twenty years, and there, he met his lifelong friend, artist Jock Frater. For five years before World War 1 he trained at the NGV School under Frederick McCubbin, but left before completing his qualifications, transferring to the tuition of Max Meldrum until 1923. Meanwhile, he read up on modern European art when he got the chance. Over the 1930s  ("Arnold Shore, National Portrait Gallery", 2019)he developed a reputation for flower studies before turning to the bush, which became a favourite subject. He exhibited with the Twenty Melbourne Painters’ Society, a breakaway group from the dominant Victorian Artists’ Society, from 1923 to 1946. In 1932, with the older and wealthier George Bell, an established art critic, he founded the Bell-Shore School. Bell had been classically trained; as Shore put it, ‘Bell’s training and experience was balanced by my enthusiasm and sense of art . . . He generally trusted to logic. I depended on feeling.’ The school quickly became an important influence on the development of Melbourne modernism but tensions developed between the founders and the partnership dissolved in 1936. In 1935 HV ‘Doc’ Evatt and his wife Mary Alice gave Shore his first portrait commission (amongst the first works acquired for the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in 1998). The National Gallery of Victoria first purchased one of Shore’s works in 1937, and for some years he gave annual lectures there about modern art. ("Arnold Shore, National Portrait Gallery", 2019)

Painting

Their is very little known about this painting in particular, but given the title of the painting it appears that the artist may have know the subject given the title "Melbourne's oldest chief". The painting technique is very much akin to that of impressionists, with a rough texture and paint application. One thing I found interesting about this work is the great detail given on the chiefs belly. The use of color in this work is also interesting the white of the chiefs uniform and the fleshy tones on his face contrast greatly with the background of the work.

Arnold Shore, National Portrait Gallery. (2019). Retrieved 5 August 2019, from https://www.portrait.gov.au/people/arnold-shore-1897

jonathan5485, V. (2019). The Last of England by Ford Madox Brown. Retrieved 5 August 2019, from https://mydailyartdisplay.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/the-last-of-england-by-ford-madox-brown/