Present Moment, The: The Art of Clarice Beckett

AUSTRALIAN ART
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Art Gallery of South Australia, 27 February – 16 May 2021, as part of the Adelaide Festival.

207 pages : colour illustrations, portraits ; 26 x 28 cm. Includes bibliography: page 205. #261022
Beckett, Clarice, 1887-1935 — Exhibitions. | Painting, Australian — 20th century — Exhibitions. | Australian
Clarice Marjoribanks Beckett (21 March 1887 – 7 July 1935) was an Australian artist and a key member of the Australian tonalist movement. Her works are featured in the collections of Australia’s major public galleries, including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Beckett is recognised as one of Australia’s most important Modernist artists, although some have classified her as a “daughter of Monet”.[8] In his review of the first of two exhibitions held at the Rosalind Humphrey Gallery in 1971 and 1972, Patrick McCaughey described Beckett as a remarkable Modernist, because of the “flatness of the surface in her painting”.[9][10] Despite a talent for portraiture and a keen public appreciation for her still lifes, the subject matter favoured by her teacher Meldrum, Beckett preferred the solo, outdoor process of painting landscapes.[11]

She persistently and diligently painted, and was highly productive, mounting a solo show every year from 1923 to 1933. Her subjects were sea and beachscapes, and rural and suburban scenes, often enveloped in the atmospheric effects of early mornings or evening. Candice Bruce describes “a sense of an ever-present melancholy: a vulnerability mixed with a calm that, even if one were in total ignorance of the details of the artist’s life, would still be felt”.[12] Her subjects were often drawn from the Beaumaris area, where she lived for the latter part of her life.[11] She was one of the first of her group to use a painting trolley, or mobile easel to make it easier to paint outdoors in different locations.[13][12]