Considered one of Australia's greatest landscape painters, Hans Heysen reached critical acclaim—as well as knighthood—during his lifetime for his art, particularly his expressive watercolor paintings. This collection discusses the progress of his career as seen through his watercolors as well as the technique he employed in the paintings. A brief biography is also included.
Hahndorf artist Nora Heysen was the first woman to win the Archibald Prize, and Australia's first female painter to be appointed as an official war artist. A portraitist and a flower painter, Nora Heysen's life was defined by an all-consuming drive to draw and paint. In 1989, aged 78, Nora re-emerged on the Australian art scene when the nation's major art institutions restored her position after years of artistic obscurity. Extensively researched, and containing artworks and photographs from the painter's life, this is the first biography of the artist, and it has been enthusiastically embraced by the Heysen family. This authorized biography coincides with a major retrospective of the works of Nora and her father, landscape painter Hans Heysen, to be held at the National Gallery of Victoria in March 2019.
This book celebrates the work of Hans Heysen and is timed to mark the fortieth anniversary of the artist's death. Enormously popular, Heysen is South Australia's best-known artist. He is also recognized across the country as one of the most influential of Australian artists, one whose work was pivotal to development of Australian art and culture in the twentieth century. In addition to his will-known landscapes, the book reappraises his lesser-known work, tracing its development from his early student days painting in Europe between 1899 and 1903. Heysen was the first artist to use eucalyptus as a persistent motif in his art, celebrating the grandeur of certain species and presenting them as symbols of heroic endurance and includes many other subject areas, such as toilers of the land, quarries, the River Murray, the South Coast and Pewsey Vale, and also portraits and still-lifes.
Nora Heysen grew up at The Cedars near the Adelaide Hills town of Hahndorf, and was deeply influenced by her father, Hans Heysen. Nora Heysen: Light and life explores a notable career spanning seven decades, during which the artist painted some of Australia's most outstanding self-portraits, became the country's first female war artist, and was the first woman to win the prestigious Archibald Prize. Curator and author Jane Hylton has written extensively on Australian art and has curated numerous exhibitions. In 2000 she left the position of Curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia to become a freelance consultant.
Every Sunday evening hundreds of thousands of South Australians tune in at five-thirty to watch Channel Nine's Postcards program. The team, led by 'Mr South Australia' Keith Conlon, showcases the state's remarkable places and characters.
The story of Australian art does not begin and end with landscape. This book puts flowers front and centre, because they have often been ignored in preference for more masculine themes. Departing from where studies of single flower artists leave off, Useless Beauty embraces the general topic of flowers in Australian art and shines new light on a slice of Australian art history that extends from 1880 to 1950. It is the first book of broad chronology to discuss Australian art through blossoms, which it does by addressing stories of major figures including Hans Heysen, Margaret Preston and Sidney Nolan, as well as specific objects such as surreal flowers, Aboriginal flowers and war flowers. Whether modern or conservative, the artists in this study shared an intellectual and emotional passion for flora. This was true for men as well as women, despite blossoms being a more traditionally feminine subject. Through spectacular reproductions of historical and contemporary artworks drawn from collections in Australia, the United States, Britain and New Zealand, Useless Beauty explores how flowers influenced the psyche, governed rituals, defined identity and brought a psychological dimension to the everyday. The peak years for flower-centricity in Australian art were between 1920 and 1940 when flowers were known as the apotheosis of useless beauty.
