ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

I’ve been thinking about this latest beautiful book from Wakefield Press during my (almost) daily walk with Amber*…

You might think, with Melbourne in the depths of winter, that our suburban gardens would be a bit bleak.  But you’d be wrong: already there are jonquils and daffodils in the avenue; there’s a stunning white camellia lush with blooms next door; purple and white hardenbergias are weaving through the fence in our street’s most ambitious garden (created by a Vietnamese couple who are an inspiration to us all); on the trellis outside my library window there is one stubborn spray of white jasmine that has no business flowering in July; and there’s a wattle just about ready to burst into bloom — early next week, by the look of it.   I’ve tried photographing these gorgeous splashes of colour that brighten a dull day, but really, they need an artist to paint them…

And when it’s bucketing down, like it did last week, the flowers are outside, and I’m not.  Which is where this stunning book comes into its own.  Curled up by the fire, with a nice cup of tea and some crumpets, I’ve been reading Blooms and Brushstrokes with delight.

Created by mother-and-daughter team Penelope and Tansy Curtin, Blooms and Brushstrokes is an A-Z of flower types, as painted by Australia’s best practitioners of floral art, but also showcasing the art-historical trajectory of Australian art.  The task of selecting the artworks was difficult: still lifes were very popular in the first half of the 20th century and many of them were painted by well-known names: Nora Heysen, Vida Lahey, Adrian Feint and Margaret Preston.  Margaret Olley’s passion for painting flowers means that just about the whole book could have featured her still lifes.  But Bendigo Art Gallery curatorial manager Tansy, and her mother Penelope, a passionate gardener and freelance editor, wanted the book to be representative of the art canon as well as of the flowers.  So there also are beautiful artworks by artists you’ve probably never heard of.

And surprisingly, some flowers just didn’t make the cut.  The humble violet that makes its uninvited way under the banksia in our front garden hasn’t been featured in an art work of any note, and the same is true of the snowdrops which used to herald warmer weather in my mother’s Melbourne garden (before she debunked to the Gold Coast).  So the book skips from — Sweet Peas in ‘Floral Still Life’ (1917) by Horace Trenerry and ‘Tulips and Wild Hyacinths (c1920) by George Lambert which you can see here in the Art Gallery of NSW — to Lucien Henry’s ‘Waratah**’ (1887) ; Water Lilies in Riddle of the Koi (1994) by Yorta Yorta artist Lin Onus; and the Wisteria in the exquisite ‘Chatelaine’ by Robyn Stacey also in the Art Gallery of NSW.   (The book is worth having for this one photographic tableau alone.  I don’t often wish to be rich but I want this artwork.  I want it in my house, where I can see it every day.  I want this one too. And all of these — especially the one with the books.   (Maybe not the watermelon, I can get by without that one.)

The striking artwork on the front cover is by the Melbourne artist Polixeni Papapetrou who died in 2018 aged only 57.  The work is called ‘Blinded’, and it’s a portrait of her daughter Olympia, from a series called Eden. The series was commissioned by the Centre for Contemporary Photography, to create works that respond to the Melbourne General Cemetery:

These highly evocative works, created as Papapetrou contemplated her own mortality and the legacy she would leave, also explore the language of flowers and ‘the metamorphosis from child to adolescent and adolescent to adult, and a oneness with the world, fertility and the cycles of life.’ This transition was an ongoing theme throughout Papapetrou’s oeuvre, with the artist’s own daughter, Olympia, at times providing inspiration; this series includes portraits of Olympia and her friends.  In this work the crown imperials represent majesty, while the rose is the well-known symbol for love.

The Eden series also contains a strong religious or spiritual sensibility, appearing to allude to representations of catholic saints.  Blinded invites us to consider the stories of saints and the miracles they perform. The girls [in Papapetrou’s Eden series] are enclosed in a floral embrace that symbolises their unity and acceptance of this miraculous thing we call life. (p.80)

Fritillaria imperialis ‘Rubra Maxima’ (Wikipedia*)

The plant that’s featured is one I’ve never heard of: fritillaries, which are rare, especially the large and flamboyant crown imperials. They belong to the lily family, endemic to mountainous ares of Turkey, western Iran and east of Kashmir, but they were once grown in English cottage gardens.

Blooms and Brushstrokes is a sublime work of art.  My favourite pictures (after ‘Chatelaine’) have literary associations: one is Joshua Smith’s ‘Dame Mary Gilmore’ (1943) and the other is ‘Sitting Room, Mulberry Hill, (1927) by George Bell.  We have this one at the NGV, and it’s almost certain that the woman reading beside a sumptuous flower arrangement is Joan Lindsay herself.

But I also love the striking B&W photography of Viva Gillian Smith (‘Still Life with Daffodils’ 1995) and Max Dupain’s Angel’s Trumpet (‘Salvadorium Dalii, 1982), and  I’m impressed by the subtext in the internationally famous Indigenous artist Tracey Moffat’s Cherbourg No 1, from the ironically series Picturesque Cherbourg: stunning red ‘native’ bottlebrush not contained by the white picket fence.   There is so much to love in this book, it would make a beautiful gift, but it would take strength of character to actually give it away.

Highly recommended.

**I have to say that I much prefer Margaret Preston’s Waratahs.  She painted many of them, and we have one of the best in the NGV.  IMHO in the painting by Lucien Henry, the turquoise of the vase and the background compete with the rich ruby red of the waratah and leach out some of the colour.

* Just in case you didn’t know, (and any excuse to show off her cute and lovable self will do), this is Amber, an occasional guest reviewer here at ANZ LitLovers.

Image credit: Fritillaria imperialis ‘Rubra Maxima’ (Wikipedia) by mhaller1979 – https://www.flickr.com/photos/mhaller1979/2455437824/sizes/l/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18731325

Authors: Penelope Curtin and Tansy Curtin
Title: Blooms and Brushstrokes, A Floral history of Australian Art
Publisher: Wakefield Press, 2019, 210 pages, 23 x 28cm
ISBN: 9781743056493 (hbk.)
Review copy courtesy of Wakefield Press

Available direct from Wakefield Press and from Fishpond: Blooms and Brushstrokes: A floral history of Australian art