An Australian in Paris

Girl With Cigarette, by Agnes Noyes Goodsir; a portrait of Rachael Dunn, or Cherry, as Goodsir called her long-term partnerAgnes Noyes Goodsir (1864-1939)There is an Australian painter of the early twentieth century who is often referred to as the ‘Australian in Paris’: Rupert Bunny; but there is another expatriate – a woman named Agnes Noyes Goodsir – who can equally be so referred to.

I recently stumbled across Goodsir while researching another story and marvelled that I had never heard of her, not at art school or subsequently, and I can find very little written about her. She must be one of the most unsung artists in our history. There is such a lovely quietness and serenity in the few paintings I can find of hers, I was immediately struck by their melancholy beauty.

Chinese Skirt, by Agnes Noyes Goodsir, 1933Goodsir was born in Portland, Victoria in 1864, and was one of eleven children. She studied at the Bendigo School of Mines until 1899 and was encouraged by her teacher to study in Paris. She took his advice. After a ten-year hiatus in England, Goodsir returned to Paris in 1921.

Flowers and Green Beads, by Agnes Noyes GoodsirIn Paris, she established herself chiefly as a portrait painter, still lifes and interiors, capturing the stories and ambience of the Parisian lifestyle during the Roaring Twenties. Goodsir’s paintings were acclaimed in Europe, but even after visiting Australia in 1927 for two exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney, she received little recognition and sold only a small number of works. She returned to Paris and lived there until her death in 1939.

A cup of tea (title unknown), by Agnes Noyes GoodsirA Letter, by Agnes Noyes Goodsir, 1915The Parisienne, by Agnes Noyes Goodsir, 1924Hydrangeas, by Agnes Noyes Goodsir, 1938

Happy April, No Fooling

Sports & Summer Fashions, June 1930. Illustration by Eduardo Benito.Happy April! One day late! That was my little April Fool’s joke … Actually I couldn’t tear myself away from the drawing board to go to the computer – I am feeling so retro these days, making art the traditional way.

I do like the blithe and airy mood of this illustration by the Spaniard Eduardo Benito, the April page on my Vogue calendar. This looks like it has been painted in gouache, in a very painterly and relaxed style.

I remember learning how to use this medium at TAFE (an intermediary tertiary college in between high school and art college), and owing to our lecturer’s obsession with flat planes of colour, it was also a medium difficult to master. Apparently, the only way to paint with gouache was in a very graphic style of simple shapes and flat areas of colour – not only flat in terms of no shading (or perhaps, imperceptibly graduating colour was allowed), but NO brushmarks were permitted to be visible. We were marked on that. I hated it.

So this Benito illustration is quite liberating. It perfectly suits the carefree pastime of running elegantly (jumper insouciantly tossed around your shoulders) beside your lissom greyhound, tossing a ball.

Have a lovely and carefree month Snapettes.

A (Star)Light Touch

I came across this Georges Lepape illustration today while flipping through a fashion magazine. Isn’t it lovely? There is such a delicacy of touch in it – it looks like Lepape has used pencil, with perhaps a watercolour wash.

I haven’t seen it before (it’s more usual to see covers rather than editorial illustrations in books on vintage illustration), so it’s great that magazines are dipping into their archives and exposing these treasures to the light of day. Or the starlight as in this case. 

Tropicana!

Click the image to jump through and buy this posterOn this rather overcast (although sultry) day in Melbourne, I bring you some tropical relief! Aren’t these two pictures – a PanAm travel poster and a Tahitian painting by Paul Gauguin – awesomely colourful? They make me want to immediately book a tropical holiday, but alas, my bank account scoffs and I must merely hope to visit there in my dreams …

Where Are You Going?, or Woman Holding a Fruit, by Paul Gaugin, 1893

Man in Astrakhan

I was trawling through my computer archives the other night looking for a scan of an old oil pastel illustration (I didn’t find it). I did find however this fashion drawing I created in the 90s, of a man wearing an astrakhan-lapelled quilted robe and red silk scarf, à la the dandified fashions of the nineteenth century.

This looks like a mixed-media piece in ink and oil pastel, and I am not sure if it was a life drawing, or whether I was using a fashion photograph as reference. He does look a little like a Jean Paul Gaultier model. Whatever the case, I like this rather powerful drawing. I did a pretty good job on the astrakhan too, if I may say so myself!