‘The First Homosexuals’: Connecting Australian art and design to the world

Jeffrey Smart AO (1921–2013) was born in Adelaide, though spent most of his working life abroad in Italy, leaving Australia for Rome in 1963. Smart passed away at home in Arezzo, Tuscany in 2013. During his long and significant career, Smart established himself as a popular and critically regarded artist in Australia. Despite his success being focused particularly within his country of birth, Smart connected with international styles and approaches, looking to the work of the French painter Paul Cézanne, Italian painter Piero della Francesca and northern Renaissance artist Rogier van der Weyden as points of inspiration. In 1948, Smart travelled to Paris to study under the French cubist Fernand Léger at the Académie Montmartre. Smart was acclaimed especially for his urban and industrial landscapes which sustained a distinctive, highly-finished style that generate an uncanny sense of reality. Within Smart's urban scenes, human figures are frequently divided by the architecture of city space, suggesting a quality of alienation from modern living, perhaps relevant to the artist's sexuality and sense of dislocation from Australian culture. The late artist's paintings are held in major public and private collections in Australia and also overseas including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Grace Crowley (1890-1979) was a key Sydney Modernist painter in the inter-war period who studied in Paris under the cubist artists André Lhôte and Albert Gleizes. Her paintings have been categorised as modified academic cubism based on planar geometry and dynamic symmetry. Together with her collaborator and close friend Ralph Balson, she is often credited with introducing abstract painting to Australia. In 1907 Crowley moved to Sydney to study painting part-time at the Julian Ashton Art School, where from 1915 she studied and taught alongside Anne Dangar. In their many letters, Dangar referred to Crowley affectionately as her "dear Smudge", and the pair were believed to have been in a relationship between 1915 and 1929. They spend several years together in France from 1926 and 1929, where they both studied painting. Peter DiScascio notes that "Dangar’s niece, Norah Singleton, recalled their parodies of conventional gender roles both in private conversation and public appearances.” In 1930 Crowley returned to Sydney and held her first solo exhibition at Dorrit Black’s Modern Art Centre in 1932. Crowley exhibited her first fully abstract painting in 1942, later becoming an internationally recognised abstract painter with her work being included in *Dictionary of Abstract Painting* by the Belgian art historian Michel Seuphor in 1957. In 1971 Crowley was forced to vacate her George Street studio in Sydney, consequently, only a small body of her work exists, many of which are held in public collections. Crowley’s paintings have been recognised in retrospectives at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney in 1975 and in 2006 at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Crowley died on 21 April 1979 in Sydney.

Anne Dangar (1885–1951) was an Australian-born artist who was renowned for her innovative pottery designs which fused traditional techniques with modernist motifs. Dangar was trained in Sydney as a painter under Horace Moore-Jones and later at Julian Ashton’s School of Art, where she taught from 1920 with fellow artist and rumoured lover Grace Crowley. Dangar travelled to Paris, France with Crowley, studying at the Paris academy of French Cubist André Lhôte. Dangar briefly returned to Sydney, attempting to introduce the modernist ideas she had learnt in France but was met with resistance amongst her conservative colleagues. In 1930 Dangar returned to France where she would remain until she died in 1951. Upon her return to France, she joined the Moly-Sabata artists’ commune where she learnt the traditional skills of local village pottery. firstly at the Poterie Clovis Nicolas, in St Désirat, Ardèche, in 1930-31, and from 1932 under Jean-Marie Paquaud at the Poterie Bert, Roussillon, Isère. She also became an active art and craft teacher to the local village children. Despite her physical distance, Dangar played a pivotal role in the development of Sydney’s cultural and artistic landscape through her letters to Crowley. Dangar’s work is found in several collections in Australia and France including the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris.

Janet Agnes Cumbrae Stewart (1883-1960) was a successful Australian painter born in Brighton, Victoria. Most well-known for her female nudes, she was considered one of the leading pastel artists of her generation. Originally trained at the Melbourne National Gallery School under the tutelage of Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall, Stewart participated in the First Exhibition of Women's Work in Melbourne in 1907. She left Australia for London in 1922, holding her first solo exhibition at Walkers Gallery in London in 1924, where her work *A Young Woman Seated on the Bed* was acquired for the Royal Collection, possibly at the request of Queen Mary. In the 1920s and 30s she travelled extensively, exhibiting in France, Britain and Italy while continuing to present solo shows in Melbourne, Brisbane, South Australia and Sydney. She returned to Australia with her "companion" Miss Argemore Farrington Bellairs ("Billy") on board the Dutch ship Meliskerk from Antwerp in 1937. According to Peter Di Sciasco, Billy was a "distinctive and enterprising woman of independent means who dressed in masculine attire". The pair lived together in South Yarra and at a property in Hurstbridge until Cumbrae Stewart's death in 1960. Her work is held in numerous collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia, the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Bendigo Regional Gallery, the Royal Collection London and the Museo del Novocento in Milan. Despite her achievements during her lifetime, her work has been sparsely exhibited in Australia.

Born in Portland in southwest Victoria, Agnes Goodsir (1864–1939) initially painted still lifes before applying herself to the challenge of portraiture. During the late 19th century she studied at the Bendigo School of Mines in Victoria under the tutelage of the artist Arthur Woodward, who insisted that students be exposed to international cultural circles. Goodsir set her sights on Great Britain and France, venturing overseas to “find herself” at the mature age of 36. She enrolled at the Parisian art schools of the day: the Académie Delécluse, the Académie Colarossi, and the Académie Julian. Her works were featured in the seasonal salons of Paris, gaining her significant attention and resulting in a steady flow of commissions. She moved to London (where she also exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Royal Institute) prior to the onset of the First World War. Resettling in Paris in 1921, Goodsir made her home in Rue de l’Odeon on the Left Bank with her companion and muse, Rachel Dunn, who appeared in many of her paintings. In 1926, Goodsir was made a member of France's Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, one of few Australians to receive the honour. She returned to Australia in 1927 for several months, bringing a large selection of her work for solo exhibitions in both Melbourne and Sydney, and receiving significant media attention as a result. Goodsir died in Paris in 1939, leaving the majority of her estate to Dunn.

Sir William Dobell (1899–1970) was an acclaimed painter known for his expressive and vivid portraits. He was an apprentice to an architect and studied in Sydney before leaving for Europe in 1929. In Europe he studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London under Henry Tonks and Philip Wilson. He paid close attention and studied works by Rembrandt, Renoir, Turner, Constable, Van Gogh and Ingres. During his time in London he developed a close friendship with the Australian artist Donald Friend. In 1939 Dobell returned to Sydney after the passing of his father. After his return to Sydney he worked on a series of Australian ‘types’ that exuded the characteristics of the European tradition her had observed in London. He was conscripted in 1941 and served as an official war artist, documenting the efforts of the Civil Construction Corps. In 1942 Dobell shared an exhibition with Margaret Preston at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 1954 Dobell represented Australia at the Venice Biennale alongside Russell Drysdale and Sidney Nolan.