Clarice Marjoribanks Beckett (21 March 1887 – 7 July 1935) was an Australian artist and a key member of theAustralian tonalist movement. Known for her subtle, misty landscapes ofMelbourne and its suburbs, Beckett developed a personal style that contributed to the development ofmodernism in Australia. Disregarded by the art establishment during her lifetime, and largely forgotten in the decades after her death, she is now considered one of Australia's greatest artists.
Born and raised in the country town ofCasterton, Victoria, Beckett was seen as extremely shy from a young age, as well as bright and artistic.[1] In 1914, after moving to Melbourne with her family, she began a three-year study at theNational Gallery School underAustralian impressionist painterFrederick McCubbin, then for nine months attended the rival school of art theoristMax Meldrum, a controversial outlier of the Australian art world who propounded his own tonalist painting system drawn from scientific principles. Beckett and others in Meldrum's circle, derided as "Meldrumites" by his critics, began staging group exhibitions in 1919. Beckett also exhibited with the Meldrum-inspiredTwenty Melbourne Painters Society, and staged the first of her ten annual solo exhibitions in 1923.
Beckett never left Victoria and rarely travelled outside Melbourne,[2] much of her adult life being spent caring for her ailing parents at their home in baysideBeaumaris. She did however paint prolifically, oftenen plein air in and around Beaumaris, and mostly at daybreak or towards evening, when she was exempted from domestic duties. In her method and choice of "everyday" subject matter, Beckett remained indebted to Meldrum, but her work also differed from that of other tonalists, in part due to its emotional and spiritual qualities, reflecting her interest inBuddhism,Theosophy andFreud.[3] By 1926, she was creating landscapes unprecedented in Australian art for their "radical simplicity", and from 1930, she experimented further with a broader colour palette and more challenging compositions. In 1935, while painting the sea off Beaumaris during a winter storm, Beckett contracted pneumonia and died four days later, aged 48.
In what has been called "one of the great disasters of Australian art history",[4] well over one thousand of Beckett's works were destroyed in the decades after her death, including many by her father that he deemed "unfinished"—works from her final years that were said by friends to be more abstracted and spiritual. More works were lost in a bush fire, and in 1970, in an open-sided shed in country Victoria, as many as two thousand works were found abandoned, two thirds of which had been destroyed by the elements. Those that did survive were exhibited the following year in Melbourne, precipitating a resurgence of interest in Beckett. Catalogues, biographies and major exhibitions followed, and today she is represented in Australia's national and state galleries.
Beckett was born on 21 March 1887 in the town ofCasteron in country Victoria, the eldest daughter of Elizabeth Kate (née Brown) and Joseph Clifden Beckett, aFreemason, organist[5] and manager of the Casteron's Colonial Bank,[6] the site of Clarice's birth.[7] Beckett had one sister, Hilda. Their grandfather was John Brown, a Scottish master builder, who had designed and builtComo House, and its gardens, in theMelbourne suburb ofSouth Yarra.[8]
Undertaking her primary education in Casterton, for secondary school Beckett was a boarder atQueen's College,Ballarat, until 1903, where she revealed strong drawing ability and wrote a play, including a part for herself, which was performed by the students,[9] and in 1905 won a competition for writing on the moral lessons of Walter Melville's playA Girl's Cross Roads.[10] To foster her artistic skill, she took private lessons in charcoal drawing in Ballarat. After her family's relocation to 22 Kensington Road, South Yarra,[10] she finished her final year of school at the nearby Merton Hall campus ofMelbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar School. The Beckett family then moved toBendigo, where Beckett continued to pursue her art, and her and her sister's social engagements were reported on in the local press.[11][12]
In 1919, Beckett became the first National Gallery student to break from the school and study under rival teacherMax Meldrum, whose controversial theories became a pivotal factor in her own art practice. Beckett had met Meldrum as early as 1906, when, through the friendship of Beatrix Hoile and her husbandAlexander Colquhoun, she became associated with an artistic circle that he frequented. She studied under Meldrum for nine months, adopting aspects of his unique tonalist system of painting, the "Scientific Order of Impressions", which resulted in a style now known asAustralian tonalism, characterised by a particular "misty" or atmospheric quality created by building "tone on tone". Meldrum maintained that art "should be a pure science based on optical analysis; its sole purpose being to place on the canvas the first ordered tonal impressions that the eye received. All adornments and narrative and literary references should be rejected".[14]
The Australian tonalists opposedimpressionism andmodernist art styles,[15][16] and for decades the movement was the subject of fierce controversy. Its practitioners were unpopular amongst other artists, and derided as "Meldrumites".[17][18][19] Influential Melbourne modernist artist and teacherGeorge Bell, founder of theContemporary Art Society, described Australian Tonalism as a "cult which muffles everything in a pall of opaque density".[20]
The same year that Beckett joined Meldrum's school, her family moved from Bendigo to Melbourne's then-undeveloped bayside suburb ofBeaumaris, into an existing dwelling on a double block at 14 Dalgetty Road on the corner of Tramway Parade,[3] which they namedSt. Enoch's after their Bendigo home.[21][22]
With her parents' health failing, and after her sister's marriage in 1922, Beckett assumed household responsibilities that dictated the structure of the rest of her life, limiting her artistic endeavours.[23] She did however regularly exhibit with other Australian tonalists at theMelbourne Athenaeum, and also with the Meldrum-inspiredTwenty Melbourne Painters Society. She also joined painting and camping excursions with groups of other Australian tonalists, including the artists Lily andJustus Jorgensen,Percy Leason andColin Colahan and their families into the hills ofEltham,Olinda, and toAnglesea (c. 1929),Lorne andSan Remo (c. 1930s) on the coast, as her paintings of these locations attest, and she often met with them at the Café Latin inExhibition Street, Melbourne.
Summer Fields, 1926, painted during her stay at Naringal
In 1926, Beckett painted during a six-month sojourn in Victoria'sWestern District using as a studio the upper level of a shearing shed at the Naringal property of the brother of her good friend, Maud Rowe.[3] At home in Beaumaris, Beckett could only go out during the dawn and dusk to paint as most of her day was spent caring for her parents, more intensively from 1932 when her mother became seriously ill, before dying in 1934.[8][3] Beckett's father, though becoming frail, moved from Beaumaris, after burning her paintings he considered were 'unfinished,' and died 12 June 1936 inSt Kilda,[24] leaving an estate of £2520 to Hilda.[25]
While painting the sea off Beaumaris during a storm in 1935, Beckett developed pneumonia and died four days later, aged 48, in a hospital atSandringham.[26] She was buried in the Cheltenham Memorial Park.[27] A retrospective solo exhibition of Beckett's work was held at the Melbourne Athenaeum. During this time, Meldrum, despite being of the opinion that "There would never be a great woman artist",[28][29] described Beckett as his most skilled pupil, saying that "she worked like a man", that she had done work "of which any nation would be proud", and that she "ranked as a great artist."[30][31]
Beckett elucidated her artistic aims in what is her only known surviving written statement, published in the catalogue accompanying the sixth annual exhibition of theTwenty Melbourne Painters Society, held in 1924:[32]
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 give forth in correct tones so as to give as nearly as possible an exact illusion of reality.
Beckett persistently and diligently painted, extending Meldrum's principles to subjectsen plein air, and was highly productive. Her subjects were sea and beachscapes, and rural and suburban scenes, often enveloped in the atmospheric effects of early mornings or evening. Early critical appraisal of her paintings was mixed, with members of the conservative art establishment often finding fault in their "opaque" quality. Many critics found her difficult to categorise. Surveying her work in 1931, a critic forThe Age recalled that, "When Miss Clarice Beckett held her first show at the Athenæum gallery in 1923 her work certainly found admirers, but the admiration was by no means general, and there was a good deal of confusion in the public mind as to whether she was a futurist, or only a new and dangerous variety of Meldrumite."[33] Reviewing one of her shows, an earlier critic fromThe Age wrote that "one would imagine from the little scenes that Miss Beckett has gathered, in the name of Australian art, that Australia was in a continual state of fog—all kinds of fogs—pink, blue, green and grey with an occasional mist that surely was never on land or sea."[34]
In 1925,Herald reviewer and staunch anti-modernistJames S. MacDonald[35] was especially derogatory, favouring, if anything, the flower studies that Beckett regarded as minor in comparison with her landscapes.[36] By 1931, however, her friend and fellow Australian tonalistPercy Leason,[37] writing a long review inTable Talk,[38] said that Beckett's work showed "a convincing illusion of actual space and air and light; the same refinement and delicacy of true color; the same regard for true form and character; and the same complete indifference to conventions and the mere clever handling of paint for the sake of it."
Despite a talent for portraiture and a keen public appreciation for herstill lifes, the subject matter favoured by her teacher Meldrum, Beckett preferred the solo, outdoor process of painting landscapes.[27] Her subjects were often drawn from the Beaumaris area, where she lived for the latter part of her life.[27] She was one of the first of Meldrum's group to use a painting trolley, or mobileeasel to make it easier to paint outdoors in different locations.[16][39]
As Beckett developed her own style, she departed from Meldrum's dictum that tone should take precedence over colour.[40] While Meldrum blamed social decadence for 'modern' artists' exaggerated interest in colour over tone and proportion,[14] an uncreditedAge reviewer of her 1932Atheneum show[41] expressed her particular version of his principles as being "an adaptation of art to nature, which belongs neither to the realm of the orthodox normalist or the avowed modern, but is a purely individual expression of certain sensations in light, form and color."
Sunset, 1932
Rosalind Hollinrake, who was largely responsible for Beckett's revival in 1970,[42][43] notes a use of colour to reinforce form, and more daring design, in the later years of the artist's short life.[8] In 1971The Age criticPatrick McCaughey considered Beckett "a remarkable modernist,"[44] situating her as an equal toGrace Cossington Smith andMargaret Preston, and "both a Meldrumite and a pioneering modernist."[45] Artist and criticNancy Borlase wrote on the occasion of Beckett's 1979 Macquarie Galleries retrospective that launched Hollinrake'sClarice Beckett-The Artist and Her Circle. Her review draws attention to Beckett's reductionism that "presage the work ofBarnett Newman and [Jules]Olitski," of forty years later, and "solitude and stillness" as herleitmotif.[46]
However, even in 2001, Tim Bonyhady, discussing the "Modern Australian Women" exhibition in which Beckett was included at the Art Gallery of South Australia, acknowledges its directorRon Radford's observation that women artists Margaret Preston, Clarice Beckett, Grace Cossington Smith,Grace Crowley,Dorrit Black andKathleen O'Connor were "more adventurous than their male counterparts in what and how they painted," but baulks at his notion that they were "the major Australian artists of the 1920s and 1930s."[47]
Morning Shadows (c. 1932) was acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1979, making it the first of Beckett's works to enter the collection. The painting was the subject of a two-hour lecture byGermaine Greer, who said Beckett was "the first to paint the suburbs of Australia ... Australia as it really is, as we know it."[48]
During her lifetime, Beckett was not represented in any public collection in Australia, though her sister donated one work[49] and friend Maud Rowe bequeathed three to the Castlemaine Art Museum shortly after her death,[50] with others going to the Art Gallery of Ballarat in 1937;[3] now almost every major Australian gallery holds examples of her work, including theNational Gallery of Australia, which purchased eight of her works on the recommendation of artistFred Williams in 1971.[3] Williams wrote on Beckett:
She really was ahead of her time. I found it very interesting to compare her early best work withBlackman's early paintings, that same lyrical feeling ...[51]
By 2001, her paintings had achieved six figure sums at auction.[43]In 1936, a major memorial exhibition of 79 works was presented over 4–16 May at theMelbourne Athenaeum by Beckett's sister and father, with prices ranging from 75 guineas (a value of A$7,228.00 in 2022) forAlong the Coast, with most at 10–40, to 3 guineas each for 'ten sketches.'[52] An unnamed reviewer forThe Age reviewed the show reverently, quoted Meldrum's comment that she "had done work of which any nation should be proud," and concluded that;
No European critic would say that Miss Beckett belonged to any particular school, and that would be the highest compliment one could bestow. She ranked as a great artist.[53]
In 1971, Beckett's sister alerted Hollinrake to a tragedy;[54] more than 2,000 of her works had been left abandoned to the elements and vermin in an open-sided hay shed nearBenalla.[55] Most were unsalvageable, but thirty well-preserved but neglected works were discovered at theMontsalvat artist colony, sent there when the Beaumaris home was cleared.[56][57] An image of at least one of the lost works survives (see external links below).
Five commercial gallery exhibitions of Beckett's work were staged from 1971 to 1980. The first museum exhibition of her work, "In a Certain Light" (a two-person show with photographerOlive Cotton) was curated by Felicity Fenner and artist Jenny Bell for UNSW'sIvan Dougherty Gallery in 1995. Over 1999 and 2000, the retrospective exhibition "Politically incorrect: Clarice Beckett" was organised by theIan Potter Museum of Art,University of Melbourne, and Rosalind Hollinrake. It toured eight national galleries.[30]
During the 2021Adelaide Festival, the Art Gallery of South Australia staged the exhibition "Clarice Beckett: The Present Moment". Her most comprehensive retrospective to date, it featured 160 works, including a long-lost portrait that had recently been rediscovered. It drew large crowds and was the most successful ticketed solo exhibition in the museum's 140-year history.[58][59] Between April and July 2023,Geelong Art Gallery staged the retrospective "Clarice Beckett—Atmosphere".[60]
She is memorialised in Clarice Beckett's Lane in the Melbourne suburb ofBlack Rock, and in the naming of Beckett Ward, one of sevenCity of Bayside municipal wards.Ballarat Grammar, where the artist studied, awards the Clarice Beckett Prize annually to a student for outstanding achievement in the study of Art at VCE level.[9] She is also the eponym ofBeckett, a crater on the planetMercury, discovered in 2008 and named by theInternational Astronomical Union.[61]
A number of Beckett's paintings feature as a plot point in the 2022 filmPoker Face, directed by and starringRussell Crowe. An avid collector of Beckett's work, Crowe used real Beckett paintings from his personal collection, as well as some from the Art Gallery of New South Wales.[65]
1979 Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, accompanying launch of Rosalind Hollinrake's bookClarice Beckett–The Artist and Her Circle[83][46]
1980 Gallery Huntly, Canberra
1995 "In a Certain Light" (with Olive Cotton), The University of New South Wales Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney
1999–2000 "Politically incorrect: Clarice Beckett" A retrospective touring exhibition organised by The lan Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne:
Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria: 5 February 1999 – 28 March 1999
S. H. Ervin Gallery (National Trust of Australia NSW), Sydney, NSW: 24 April 1999 – 13 June 1999
Orange Regional Gallery, Orange, NSW: 19 June 1999 – 18 July 1999
Margaret E. McGuire,The Singular Career of Clarice Beckett: Painting and Society in Melbourne 1916-1936, 1984. Thesis for Master of Arts, Department of Fine Arts, University of Melbourne.
^McCulloch, Alan; McCulloch, Susan; McCulloch Childs, Emily (2006).The new McCulloch's encyclopedia of Australian art (Fourth ed.). Fitzroy BC, Vic.ISBN0-522-85317-X.OCLC80568976.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^abcdefLock, Tracey (20 September 2023). Game, Cathryn (ed.).The present moment: the art of Clarice Beckett. Fisherman's Bend, Victoria: Art Gallery of South Australia, Distributed in Australia by Thames & Hudson.ISBN978-1-921668-46-3.
^"THE GUESTS".Bendigo Independent. 1 July 1914. p. 6. Retrieved8 March 2023.
^"SOCIAL NOTES".The Bendigo Independent. No. 14064. Victoria, Australia. 19 February 1916. p. 5. Retrieved22 November 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
^Lock-Weir, Tracey (22 September 2009), "The sound of silence: twentieth-century Australian tonalism.(art feature)",Art and Australia,46 (3), Art and Australia Pty. Ltd.: 448(6),ISSN0004-301X
^abCatalogue: "Misty Moderns – Australian Tonalists 1915–1950", written by curator Tracey Lock-Weir, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide 2008
^""BLACKBALLING CANDIDATES"".The Herald. No. 13, 377. Victoria, Australia. 19 December 1918. p. 10. Retrieved4 November 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
^"ARTISTS' TROUBLES REVIEWED".The Herald. No. 13, 381. Victoria, Australia. 24 December 1918. p. 8. Retrieved4 November 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
^Haese, Richard (1982), "Rebels and precursors",Modern Australian art, Alpine Fine Arts Collection,ISBN978-0-933516-50-2
^Hollinrake, Rosalind (3 April 1985). "Painting against the tide".The Age.
^"Advertising".Bendigo Advertiser. 19 November 1918. p. 1. Retrieved8 March 2023.
^Lake, Marilyn; Kelly, Farley (1985).Doubletime, women in Victoria, 150 years. Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin Books.ISBN0-14-006002-2.OCLC29002268.
^"Family Notices".Argus. 13 June 1936. p. 17. Retrieved8 March 2023.
^"Wills And Estates".The Age. Melbourne. 22 July 1936. p. 12. Retrieved8 March 2023.
^"Beckett art joins Misty Moderns in Langwarrin" by Teresa Murphy,Hastings Leader, 12 November 2009
^abc"THE LATE CLARICE BECKETT".The Age. No. 25, 033. Victoria, Australia. 9 July 1935. p. 7. Retrieved27 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
^"Marriage Before Career".The Herald. No. 19, 245. Victoria, Australia. 21 January 1939. p. 8. Retrieved10 August 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
^Gray, Anne; Jordan, Caroline; Hooper, Juliana, eds. (2020).Modern Australian Women Artists : Paintings Prints and Potters : The Andree Harkness Collection. Amaled Pty 2020. Amaled. p. 28.ISBN9780646817569.
^Cosic, Miriam (1 April 2021). "Clarice Beckett: The Present Moment. Art Gallery of South Australia, until May 16".The Monthly. p. 65.
^Patrick, McCaughey (2014).Strange country : why Australian painting matters. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Publishing. p. 133.ISBN978-0-522-86120-4.OCLC874555989.
^abBorlase, Nancy (8 December 1979). "In Hostility".The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 16.
^Bonyhady, Tim (27 January 2001). "A land of sweeping claims".The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 187.
^Smee, S. (24 April 1999). "Painter put her soul into suburbia",The Sydney Morning Herald, p. 5
^ab"Work of Clarice Beckett".The Age. No. 25, 289. Victoria, Australia. 5 May 1936. p. 9. Retrieved27 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
^Summers, Anne (2009),The lost mother : a story of art and love, Melbourne University Publishing,ISBN978-0-522-85635-4
^Beckett, Clarice."Silent approach".Item held by National Gallery of Australia. Retrieved28 July 2019.
^Jorgensen, Sigmund (2014),Montsalvat : the intimate story of Australia's most exciting artists' colony, Cross, Malcolm, (artist.), Allen & Unwin,ISBN978-1-74331-272-8
^Strickland, Katrina (2013),Affairs of the art : love, loss and power in the art world, Melbourne University Publishing,ISBN978-0-522-85862-4
^"Art Exhibition".The Argus (Melbourne). No. 23, 971. Victoria, Australia. 5 June 1923. p. 4. Retrieved28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
^"Art Notes".The Age. No. 21, 271. Victoria, Australia. 5 June 1923. p. 5. Retrieved28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
^"Art Notes".The Age. No. 22244. Victoria, Australia. 21 July 1926. p. 13. Retrieved27 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
^"Woman's Work in Oils".The Herald. No. 15, 711. Victoria, Australia. 26 September 1927. p. 15. Retrieved27 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
^"Women's World".Advocate. Vol. LX, no. 3868. Victoria, Australia. 6 October 1927. p. 38. Retrieved27 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
^"Miss Beckett's Art".The Age. No. 22870. Victoria, Australia. 25 July 1928. p. 13. Retrieved28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
^"Current Art Shows".Table Talk. No. 3212. Victoria, Australia. 28 November 1929. p. 15. Retrieved28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
^"Miss Beckett's Art Exhibition".The Age. No. 23, 570. Victoria, Australia. 24 October 1930. p. 8. Retrieved28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
^"Art Exhibition".The Argus (Melbourne). No. 26, 264. Victoria, Australia. 17 October 1930. p. 13. Retrieved28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
^"A Woman's Letter".Cairns Post. No. 9286. Queensland, Australia. 3 November 1931. p. 8. Retrieved28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
^"PAINTING".Advocate. Vol. LII, no. 2750. Victoria, Australia. 10 June 1920. p. 21. Retrieved28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
^"SOCIAL NOTES".Australasian. 20 September 1930. p. 10. Retrieved8 March 2023.
^"ART".The Australasian. Vol. CXXXIV, no. 4, 397. Victoria, Australia. 15 April 1933. p. 17. Retrieved28 July 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
Colahan, Colin (1996).Colin Colahan: A Portrait. Melbourne University Publishing.ISBN0522847102.
Fenner, Felicity (1995).In a Certain Light: Clarice Beckett, Olive Cotton. Ivan Dougherty Gallery.ISBN0733410014.
Hollinrake, Rosalind (1979a).Clarice Beckett, the Artist and Her Circle. Macmillan.ISBN0333252438.
Hollinrake, Rosalind (1999).Clarice Beckett: Politically Incorrect. Ian Potter Museum of Art.ISBN0734015933.
Jorgensen, Sigmund (2014).Montsalvat: The Intimate Story of an Australian Artists' Colony. Allen & Unwin.ISBN978-1743312728.
Lock, Tracey (2008).Misty Moderns: Australian Tonalists 1915-1950. Art Gallery of South Australia.ISBN978-0730830153.
Lock, Tracey (2021).The Present Moment: the Art of Clarice Beckett. Art Gallery of South Australia.ISBN978-1921668463.
McAuliffe, Chris (1996).Art and Suburbia: A World Art Book. Craftsman House.ISBN9766410291.
Perry, John R.; Perry, Peter W. (1996).Max Meldrum and Associates: Their Art, Lives and Influences. Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum.ISBN0959806679.
Tasca, Margot (2014).Percy Leason: An Artist's Life. Thames & Hudson Australia.ISBN978-0500500798.
Ziegler, Edith M. (2022).The Worlds and Work of Clarice Beckett. Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty, Limited.ISBN978-1922669384.
Journals
Bell, Jenny (2003). "Clarice Beckett: A Private Conversation".Art and Australia.41 (1). Art and Australia Pty. Ltd.:108–114.
Holt, Stephanie (1995). "Woman About Town: Urban Images of the 1920s and 1930s".Art and Australia.33 (2). Art and Australia Pty. Ltd.:232–243.
McFarlane, Jenny (1999). "Clarice Beckett's Open Road: Suggestions of an Unseen Dimension to the Familiar".Art and Australia.37 (2). Art and Australia Pty. Ltd.
McGuire, M. A. (1986). "'Life and Your Imagining': The Art of Clarice Beckett".Australian Journal of Art.5 (1). Art Association of Australia:90–103.doi:10.1080/03146464.1986.11432882.
McGuire, Peg (2012). "'The Silver Thread': Clarice Beckett and Her Brother".Victorian Historical Journal.83 (2). Royal Historical Society of Victoria:276–285.
Thomas, Daniel (2021). "Clarice Beckett's Edgy Calm".Art Monthly Australasia (329). Art Monthly Australia Ltd.:68–73.
Wallace-Crabbe, Robin (1999). "Eloquent Silence: Paintings by Clarice Beckett".Art and Australia.35 (2). Art and Australia Pty. Ltd.
