National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Grace Cossington Smith

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, The Lacquer Room 1935-36, oil on paperboard on plywood, 74.0 (h) x 90.8 (w) cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales Purchased 1967 © Art Gallery New South Wales

Centre of a city has a monumental presence: the impressive architectural forms rising up to a luminous blue sky. The painting was preceded by numerous sketchbook drawings. In 1971 the artist told Daniel Thomas: ‘I suddenly liked the subject – the Centre of the City! I liked the going downhill of Moore Street, the feeling that the Post Office at the bottom was the centre of the city … I would stand with this [sketch] book. I was just aware that people would look over my shoulder … they never said anything – that was nice’.

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Rushing c.1922, oil on canvas on paperboard, 65.6 (h) x 91.3 (w) cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales Purchased 1967 © Art Gallery New South Wales

By time she did this painting Cossington Smith had moved beyond her early art training with Dattilo Rubbo. She recalled that while her art teacher was concerned about depth in representing a scene, she had become more interested in depicting radiating, concentric forms in luminous colour. As she said: ‘In those days I saw things as a pattern expressed in colour. It was quite a natural thing. I didn’t force myself to do it … I believe you’ve got to have a feeling about what you want to paint. It’s half unconscious, but you do know what you don’t want to do’. (Interview with Alan Roberts, 1970)

By 1932 the Sydney moderns were in full swing with the opening of Dorrit Black’s Modern Art Centre. Encouraged by the mood and pace set by Black and other artists returning from Europe, Cossington Smith showed adventurous works at the Centre inspired by Paul Gauguin and Franz Marc. Her mentor at the time, Ethel Anderson, had long been an admirer of Gauguin’s work. Following the death of her mother, Cossington Smith’s visits to Anderson increased and she began to paint works informed by Gauguin, such as Landscape at Pentecost (road and trees) and Horses.

In Interior with wardrobe mirror the artist recreates her bedroom from multiple perspectives. Two wardrobe doors are open; one revealing a close-up of drawers within the cupboard, the other with a mirror reflecting the garden and sky outside. It is a miraculous, poetic integration of intimate interior space and the exterior sun-filled environment – the parts and the whole illuminated by vibrant colour. As in all of Cossington Smith’s late interiors, we become aware of spaces in which complexity is made to look effortless.

While in the bush Cossington Smith often adopted Cézanne’s strategy of meditating on the motif in nature for long periods of time. She said that of all the painters she admired, ‘there aren’t any others that impress me like Cézanne ... I think that he painted what I wanted … that was a help, to see that done’. (Interview with Alan Roberts, 1970)

Grace COSSINGTON SMITH, Self portrait 1948, oil on cardboard 40.0 (h) x 30.0 (w) cm, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased 2002

Cossington Smith painted church interiors related to theme of the Second World War. They depict St James’ Anglican Church in Turramurra, a place of great significance for Cossington Smith and her family as their regular place of worship since their arrival in the area in 1913. In the painting Church interior there are women, children and older men. Missing are the men who had gone to war, giving an added poignancy to the image.

Cossington Smith’s daring painting of Enid Cambridge is a portrait of a long-held friendship. Rather than attempting to depict her friend’s features, she conveys her in flamboyant dress, relaxed in an interior world. At the time of Cambridge’s death in 1976, Cossington Smith wrote: ‘Everyone loved Enid. She is my dearest art friend … A special quality of Enid’s is a devoted religious Faith which shone through all her perplexities and difficulties and never left her … Enid is a shining Personality.’ (National Gallery of Australia research library)