Reflections on Clarice Beckett
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Until 1970, 2,000 paintings by Clarice Beckett were left in a shed near Benalla, Victoria. Benalla is situated on a floodplain, in country Victoria, and on a number of occasions it has been described as swampy. So as you can imagine, an open-faced shed could not shelter or protect the thousands of forgotten paintings that were nestled away after her passing in 1935. No shed could safely protect these paintings from the weather outside or clever little vermin inside, and unfortunately most of them did not survive.
It’s difficult to imagine that many paintings abandoned that way. I visualise them all hiding away, distant and forgotten. Usually when I try to see it, I can’t make a clear picture in my mind.
To give a perspective, there are about 800 artworks currently hanging in the Elder Wing. Five of which were painted by Clarice Beckett: Hawthorn Tea Gardens, Passing trams, Morning Shadows, Nocturne and a Beach Scene. When looking at these paintings, I feel like I’m gazing at a memory. There is a lilac haze, a warm summer glow that radiates through these paintings. When I think of them tucked away, piled on top of each other in the shed, it leaves a heavy weight in my chest. Sometimes I feel weighed down by it, as though if I linger on the thought too long it would begin to calcify, creating a hard lump resting in my sternum. Unsettled by that feeling, I find myself letting out a long drawn-out sigh, so heavy, it could turn my chest concave.
There’s often a sigh when you mention Clarice Beckett’s work. When I first started investigating these paintings, I called the front desk of the Art Gallery of South Australia to ask of their location. After moment on hold, the volunteer picked up the phone and out a pleased sigh before mentioning how she loved them too.
When myself and the other performers met with fine print in preparation for this talk, I pointed out the five Becketts hanging on the wall and Elle Freak let out a kind sigh. It quietly fell out her mouth, like a yawn when you awake from a wistful daydream, and washed over us for half a moment.
Beckett’s works are calming, they are soft, mist cast over its subjects, creating a feeling of distance, memory, sensations of dusk and dawn. A lilac glow turns to a cold indigo fog, with a whispering passing white light. Warm yellows and reds create the warmth of a summer afternoon. You can feel the weather of that moment on your face when you look at them.
Beckett’s subjects are things often left unnoticed, moments of the everyday. Her paintings were visual poetry. She painted the essence of a scene, whatever it seemed to be: white light bouncing off the summer sand, a cloaking shadow over a Melbourne morning, two trams crossing paths like ships in the night, a moment of closeness before two ever distancing paths.
Beckett was considered by many of her peers as shy, but with a determination that was legendary. While her Tonalist peers attempted to depict bright light, she made quieter gestures, soft everyday interactions on the canvas, an illusion of her reality. There’s a disconnection between her self and her surroundings on the canvas. An ability to depict her environment with a subtle use of colour and shape that shares intimate moments at a distance.
Although she was perhaps shy, Beckett was prolific, dedicated and enduring. Usually the first to rise in the mornings, she spent many years painting in dawn and dusk. Her life itself seemed to glow at the dawn and the dusk of her career. As a young age she as considered a talented artist, taking drawing classes in Ballarat and studying at the Melbourne’s National Gallery School. She was a devoted student of Max Meldrum, and although her work was commercially overlooked, she exhibited regularly.
Unfortunately, Clarice Beckett befell the the unwilling task of many female artists of her time: the role as the dutiful, unmarried daughter who must care for her family home and elderly parents. She continued to paint in the moments she had, usually the early hours of the morning or the twilight of evening. With no studio of her own, she often worked outside or at the kitchen table.
A year after her mother’s passing, she braved a cold seaside day and developed a cold. On July 7, 1935, at age 47, Clarice Beckett died of pneumonia.
We often neglect or embellish the beauty of the everyday, but she did not. Her subject matter was simple, honest, the small moments that pass us as we are asleep or in a daze. But we cannot neglect her work, it’s too enduring. It endured her peers harsh criticism, it endured scathing reviews from male art critics (a common disservice to many female Modernists) and it endured her father’s disapproval. Just enough of it endured decades of abandonment in a shed, in the ruthless elements of rural Victoria. Because of that, we can’t neglect her drive, her prolific nature, as without it we wouldn’t have found our way back to her paintings. We wouldn’t be gifted with the moment of appreciation we can feel for them now.
Five small paintings found their way here, nestled and treasured alongside 795, or so, other artworks that live in this wing.
Hawthorne Tea Gardens, Passing trams, Morning Shadows, Nocturne, and a Beach Scene.
