Form and substance
In
something of a break with tradition, this year’s Balnaves
Sculpture Project highlighted the work of a, well, “traditional”
sculptor. For previous editions of the project, the focus has
been on innovative contemporary artists, either individually or
collectively. This time though, the project delved into history
to present the work of Melbourne-born sculptor Bertram Mackennal
(1863-1931).
During the Edwardian and Georgian periods between
the 1890s and the 1910s, Mackennal (who was based in London) became
the most internationally successful artist that Australia had
produced to that time.
He was one of a first generation of Australian born
artists to travel to Europe to seek greater work opportunities
and success. He was also the first Australian artist to be elected
to membership of the British Royal Academy, the first Australian
to have work purchased for the British nation and the first Australian
artist to be knighted.
Under the patronage of King George V, Mackennal
became one of Britain’s leading establishment artists in
the early 20th Century, with works located throughout that country
and in India. His reputation in Britain far outshone that of contemporaries
Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, George Lambert and Rupert Bunny
for example, who had similarly travelled overseas to attempt success
in Europe. Mackennal designed the 1908 London Olympic Games medals,
the Coronation medal of 1911 and was the first non-Briton to design
British coinage and postal stamps, which were in circulation throughout
the Empire during the Georgian era.
While Mackennal remained an expatriate, travelling
back to Australia only three times, he maintained close links
to local sculptors. He had a large impact on the growth and directions
of sculpture in Australia. He completed a number of public works,
including the Martin Place cenotaph, the figures of Archbishop
Kelly and Cardinal Moran at St Mary’s Cathedral, and the
Shakespeare memorial opposite the State Library – along
with the monument to Edward VII, located on North Terrace in Adelaide,
the monumental statue of Queen Victoria in Ballarat, the King
Edward VII and Springthorpe memorials in Melbourne, and various
statues of civic dignitaries in Brisbane and Perth. Mackennal’s
Springthorpe memorial is the most spectacular example of Art nouveau
and Symbolist-inspired sculpture in this country.
In England, Mackennal rose to considerable sculptural
prominence by creating the memorial tomb to King Edward VII and
Queen Alexandra. He created Britain’s national memorial
to Thomas Gainsborough in Suffolk (Gainsborough’s birthplace)
and completed various sculptural projects for Britain’s
royalty, including those executed for Lord Curzon, the Viceroy
of India, and for the Duke of Norfolk at Arundel Castle. The national
memorial to Edward VII, an equestrian statue of the King in the
centre of London at Waterloo Place, is Mackennal’s, as are
works in Westminster Abbey, York Minster, Winchester Cathedral,
the Palace of Westminster and St Paul’s Cathedral.
Mackennal is certainly one of the two most important
sculptors Australia has produced. He became an exceptional avant-garde
artist in the 1890s. Living in Paris in the mid 1880s and in contact
with Rodin, Mackennal was strongly influenced by the progressive
French interest in Florentine Renaissance traditions – a
fact which British critics later attributed to the artist’s
marked preoccupation with the eroticised body.
Counting Sarah Bernhardt and Nellie Melba as intimate
associates (he also produced busts of both women), Mackennal became
renowned as the creator of beautiful, empathetic portraits of
many of the era’s leading ‘new women’ (actresses,
singers and socialites). Two of the most arresting of these works,
the artist’s busts of Nellie Melba and young American socialite
Miss Grace Dunham, will be included in the exhibition. Similarly
Mackennal established a reputation in both Paris and London as
the creator of bold, sensual, female nudes, His mythological female
figures, such as Circe, Truth 1894, Salome c1897 and Venus, will
also be included in the exhibition.
The Bertram Mackennal exhibition, the Fifth Balnaves
Foundation Sculpture Project, features 55 sculptures and an accompanying
monograph on the artist – the first of its kind –
which also includes a fully illustrated catalogue raisonné
of Mackennal’s sculptures on CD-ROM. The monograph, featuring
essays by leading sculpture experts in Australia, Britain, America
and New Zealand, including eminent British historian Benedict
Read, illustrates all of Mackennal’s major works.
'The Earth and the elements' and the life-size figure
'Diana wounded' will be part of the exhibition courtesy of the
Tate in London.
David Edwards
