National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | The Edwardians

Introduction

A decoration was once owned by Pickford Waller, an English designer and a collector of Conder’s work, as well as paintings by Spencer Gore, George Lambert, William Nicholson, Charles Shannon and Whistler. In his house in Pimlico, Waller placed this large decorative piece in a room that was entirely hung with Conder’s works. It includes features that are typical of Conder’s work, such as the oval medallion, wreaths and ribbons, and decorative borders.

The figures represented in The yellow screen (Family group) are Max Meldrum, his wife Jeanne and his eldest daughter Ida. Meldrum was greatly influenced by the work and technique of the Spanish artist Velasquez. As a result, this work becomes as a study of tone, the forms existing only as they are defined by light.

In the 1880s, British sculpture was revitalised with the introduction of ‘art bronzes’, or small-scale sculptures. The aim was to democratise sculpture, to make it an affordable domestic ornament for the increasingly affluent Victorian and later Edwardian middle classes.

In Greek mythology Orpheus is the musician who descended to the underworld in an attempt to retrieve his love, Eurydice, back to the living. Parker’s Orpheus plucks his lyre, a symbol of his divine talent, yet his melancholic gaze foreshadows his human vulnerability and the tragic end to his quest.

In June 1912 The Firebird was performed in London for the first time by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Gaudier-Brzeska portrayed the moment in Scene One when Ivan the Tsarevich captures the Firebird. He translated the figures into a series of simplified planes and conveyed movement through the crouching figure linking arms with the upwardly thrusting Firebird.

In this dreamy scene three elaborately gowned women with accessories of roses and richly coloured shawls and fans, pose together on a balcony. Nocturne is one of a series of night balcony scenes that Bunny painted which evoke a mood of intimacy and luxurious leisure, of perfume, poetry and distant music. Though ostensibly intimate, the scenario is theatrical.

The Negro gardener reflects Harold Gilman’s admiration of Velasquez and the Spanish tradition of portraiture. Gilman depicted his subject in the pose of a gentleman; with the gardener’s shovel replacing the gentleman’s walking cane. In portraying a servant as if someone of social standing, Gilman approached his subject in a similar fashion to Agnes Goodsir when she depicted a servant in La Femme de ménage.

Bathing hour is an image of leisure. Fox captured sunlight and colour in a scene of happy holiday-makers enjoying healthy outdoor pursuits. He showed a mother in a loose fitting dress drying her young child. Set apart in the intimacy of their domestic ritual, Fox emphasised the bond between mother and child. At the time it was painted Fox’s depiction of a naked child in such a setting was unconventional.

From around 1910 William Strang painted images of his family and friends wearing fashionable clothes and placed in imaginary settings in which he conveyed aspects of male–female relationships. In Bank holiday he suggested a young couple’s awkwardness when dining out, and included two symbols of devotion: the flowers and the pet. Strang created a deliberately understated image that allowed viewers to find their own interpretation.

Almina was the fifth daughter of the wealthy and well-known Bond Street dealer, Asher Wertheimer. The portrayal of European women as alluring ‘orientals’ was fashionable at the turn of the 20th century. Sargent portrayed Almina dressed in exotic costume with an ivory-white Persian dress, a turban entwined with pearls and holding a sarod, a musical instrument from northern India.