A bayside life on canvas

PAINTINGS from the National Gallery of Australia by the late Victorian arist Clarice Beckett are to be displayed at the Art Gallery of Ballarat from August.

Clarice Beckett: Paintings from the National Collection is set to showcase some of her early-20th century works which depicted bayside life and atmosphere in Melbourne with playful colour and light, just before the boom of modernism.

Beckett’s sister Hilda Mangan donated many of these works to the NGA in the 1970s.

“[My artistic aim is] to give a sincere and truthful representation of a portion of the beauty of nature and to show the charm of light and shade, which I try to set forth in correct tones so as to give as nearly as possible an exact illusion of reality,” Beckett said, who passed in 1935.

Beckett’s painting The Beach, which is in the Art Gallery of Ballarat collection, is set to be shown for the first time next to its study from the NGA collection.

“It’s fitting to have Clarice Beckett’s painting The Beach and its study seen together for the first time in Ballarat, where the artist developed much of her aptitude for art,” said Art Gallery of Ballarat director Louise Tegart.

The painter was born in Casterton, and received a progressive education for the time at Queens College, Ballarat where her art interest and talents first emerged.

Queens teacher and artist Eva Hopkins gave private art tuition to Beckett, and this tutelage and friendship continued after the student relocated to Bendigo. Max Meldrum, known as the founder of Australian tonalism, is also considered a huge influence on her style of art.

“Beckett lived a progressive life, as both an artist and a woman, and much of this was owed to her education at Queens College,” Ms Tegart said.

“To celebrate her extensive body of work at Art Gallery of Ballarat is a privilege.”

Assistant curator of Australian art at the National Gallery of Australia, Deidre Cannon will speak at the Art Gallery of Ballarat on Saturday 24 August.The exhibition will run from Saturday 24 August to Sunday 24 November.