Nationalism, Britishness and the ‘Souring’ of Australian National Art

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the nationalist historiography of the Heidelberg School, an Australian art movement from the Federation period, known for its iconic representations of national life and landscape. Drawing on recent scholarship of Australian nationalism, it questions conventional accounts of the Heidelberg School in Australian art history, especially those based on Bernard Smith’s radical interpretation of this movement. For Bernard Smith, and the generations of Australian art historians he influenced, the nationalism of the 1890s was a progressive force for national culture. Yet, in the post-Federation decades, national art declined (or ‘soured’) into a reactionary form of insular nationalism. By focusing on the ‘souring’ narrative of Australian national art, this article critiques the nationalist interpretation of the Heidelberg School. It explores an apparent contradiction: the role of Britishness in the construction of a distinctly Australian national art.

KEYWORDS:

• Australian nationalism
• Britishness
• Heidelberg School
• national art
• Australian national identity
• Bernard Smith

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See, for example, Serle, From Deserts the Prophets Come; Clark, History of Australia; Stephensen, Foundations of Culture in Australia.

2. Scates, A New Australia, 207.

3. White, ‘The Imagined Community’, 39.

4. Royal Academy, Australia.

5. See, for example, Grishin, Australian Art.

6. Smith, Australian Painting, 196.

7. Hutchinson, ‘Cultural Nationalism’.

8. Leoussi, ‘Ethno-cultural Roots of National Art’, 145.

9. Long, ‘The Trend of Australian Art’, 263.

10. Smith, Place, Taste and Tradition, 102.

11. Lindsay, ‘Streeton’, n.p.

12. Turnbull, ‘Colonial Art’, 4. Text prepared as a catalogue for the exhibition Australian Painting at the Tate Gallery in London, 1962.

13. McLean, White Aborigines.

14. Smith, Place, Taste and Tradition, 136.

15. White, Inventing Australia.

16. Moore, Story of Australian Art.

17. Croll, ed., Smike to Bulldog.

18. Williams, The Quarantined Culture.

19. Hoorn, Australian Pastoral.

20. Hughes, ‘Painting’, 137.

21. MacDonald, ‘Arthur Streeton’, 97.

22. Smith, ‘Nationalism’, 233.

23. Under the pseudonym ‘Goya’, Smith published an unedited version of this chapter called ‘The Fascist Mentality in Australian Art and Criticism’ in the Communist Review.

24. This view is prevalent in standard accounts of Australian modernism. For example, Haese, Rebels and Precursors; McQueen, Black Swan of Trespass.

25. Smith, Australian Painting, 168.

26. Hughes, The Art of Australia, 59.

27. Spate, Tom Roberts, 127.

28. Meaney, ‘Britishness and Australia’, 122.

29. Ibid., 126.

30. See, for example, Ward, Britishness since 1870; Robbins, Great Britain.

31. Burn, National Life and Landscapes.

32. For example, Clark and Whitelaw, Golden Summers.

33. Galbally, ‘National Life and Landscape’, 72.

34. Ibid., 82–83.

35. Smith, Australian Painting, 84.

36. Meaney, ‘Britishness and Australian Identity’, 76–77.

37. Smith, Place, Taste and Tradition, 123.

38. Classic accounts include Palmer, The Legend of the Nineties; Phillips, The Australian Tradition.

39. For example, McQueen, A New Britannia; Melleuish, Cultural Liberalism in Australia.

40. Meaney, ‘Britishness and Australian Identity’, 77.

41. Ibid.

42. Smith, Place, Taste and Tradition, 168.

43. Ward, The Australian Legend.

44. Smith, Australian Painting, 85.

45. Smith, ‘An Impressionist Exhibition’, 203

46. Lane, Australian Impressionism.

47. Smith, Place, Taste and Tradition, 125.

48. Astbury, City Bushmen, 12.

49. Galbally and Gray, eds, Letters from Smike, 14.

50. Streeton, ‘Letter to Frederick Delmer’, 84.

51. Streeton, ‘Letter to Tom Roberts’, 66.

52. McGregor, ‘The Necessity of Britishness’.

53. Ibid., 494.

54. Lindsay, ‘Art of the Middle Period’, 14.

55. McCubbin, ‘Some Remarks’, 91.

56. Galbally, ‘National Life and Landscape’, 75.

57. Smith, ‘An Australian Impressionism?’.

58. Galbally, ‘National Life and Landscape’, 82.

59. Hansen, ‘National Naturalism’.

60. Galbally, ‘National Life and Landscape’, 74.

61. Smith, The Nineteenth Century, 76.

62. Ibid., 91.

63. Ibid.

64. Lindsay, ‘Australian Art’, n.p.

65. MacDonald, ‘The Art of Young Counties’, 12.