GAB 75 (Grishin’s Art Blog number 75)

Grace Crowley & Ralph Balson at NGV, Federation Square

Grace Crowley, Mirmande, 1928, oil on canvas, 81 x 100.5 cm, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide Bequest of Grace Crowley, 1981, © Art Gallery of South Australia

Grace Crowley (1890-1979) and Ralph Balson (1890-1964) belonged to the first flowering of dynamic modernism in the Sydney art scene in the 1930s that culminated in Exhibition 1: paintings and sculptures, which was opened at the David Jones Art Gallery in August 1939 by the Labor politician HV ‘Doc’ Evatt. The general apathy and hostility to modern art in the Sydney art world, personal rivalries among some of the artists, and the looming threat of another world war put an end to dreams of further exhibitions by the group. However, Crowley and Balson largely withdrew from the thrust of the Sydney scene and worked in relative isolation producing some of their most adventurous work.
 
There have been solo exhibitions of both Crowley’s and Balson’s work before in various Australian public galleries, the innovative masterstroke of this exhibition was to bring together, for the first time, work of the two artists, who in life had spent so many decades working together. This is a perfect example of Aristotle’s pronouncement that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The work of the two artists creates a dialogue from which we learn quite a bit concerning their ideas on non-figurative art. This reflects the growing curatorial trend of exhibiting the work of creative couples, for example, the work of Anni and Josef Albers presently on display at the NGA.
 

Grace Crowley, Girl with goats, 1928, oil on canvas, 54.4 x 73.4 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Presented by the National Gallery Society of Victoria, 1967, © National Gallery of Victoria

 
Born in 1890 into a family of wealthy graziers in north-west New South Wales, early in life Grace Crowley was influenced by Julian Ashton and the Sydney School of Art. In late 1914 she met Anne Dangar, with whom she formed a close relationship. Together they attended classes at Ashton’s Sydney Art School, where later they both taught, and together they set out for Paris in 1926. They stayed together until 1928, attending classes with André Lhote at his popular l’Académie Lhote à Montparnasse teaching a form of academic Cubist and this became a mecca for French, American, Japanese, Slav, German and Australian art students.
 
Subsequently Dangar became a disciple of another Cubist painter, Albert Gleizes, and spent the rest of her life at his art colony at Moly-Sabata on the Rhône, where she devoted her life to making traditional ‘peasant pottery’. Dangar maintained an extensive correspondence with Crowley for the rest of her life and this has become a valuable source of information on Crowley’s ideas on abstraction.

Grace Crowley, The artist and his model, 1938, oil on hardboard, 86.0 x 54.0 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Gift of the artist, 1975, © Grace Crowley Estate

Grace Crowley returned to Australia in 1930 and was to spend the remaining forty-nine years of her life based mainly in New South Wales. In the stifling provincialism of Sydney, she may have longed for the artistic adrenaline of Paris, however, armed with her family’s wealth she soon re-established herself and held her first solo exhibition in 1932 in Dorrit Black’s Modern Art Centre, where she also taught a life-drawing class.
 
Late in 1932, Crowley with Rah Fizelle set up the Crowley-Fizelle School in George Street in central Sydney. The Crowley-Fizelle School became a gathering place for Sydney-based modernists with all of the interwoven personal complexities of private lives and clashing artistic egos that characterises most small art groupings. Crowley emerged as the senior artist teaching the Lhote and Gleizes brand of dynamic Cubism. Frequent visitors to the school included Ralph Balson—a former student from the Sydney Art School whom Crowley had taught when Ashton was absent.
 

Ralph Balson, Portrait of Grace Crowley, 1939 oil on canvas on cardboard 108.8 x 64.3 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Bequest of Grace Crowley 1980 © Ralph Balson Estate, Photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales

As Crowley’s relationship with Fizelle foundered, so did their art school, closing its doors late in 1937. Subsequently she formed a close relationship with Balson, one that was to last until Balson’s death in 1964. Crowley in 1954 moved to Mittagong, and a studio was set up for Balson and this became one of the most prolific and fruitful periods of work for him.
 
Crowley’s The artist and his model, 1938, is essentially a portrait of Balson working from the model in her rooftop garden. It is a painting in which she combines Lhote’s flattened Cubist forms with possibly Matisse’s The piano lesson, 1916. It was Crowley’s most radical work to date and one of her most successful, where she approaches abstraction, but without completely letting go of the figurative and narrative content.
 

Grace Crowley, Abstract painting, 1952, oil on composition board, 61.2 × 90.8 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Bequest of the artist, 1981, © National Gallery of Victoria

Painted a year later, Balson’s Portrait of Grace Crowley 1939, reflects his debt to his teacher, friend and mentor. Subsequently, the two artists worked in intimately related styles, if we compare Crowley’s Abstract painting, 1952 with Balson’s Painting, 1954. Late in his career, Balson was to branch out into his own direction to paint such major mesmerising paintings like Non-objective painting, 1958 on which his reputation as one of Australia’s earliest non-figurative artists in part rests.
 

Ralph Balson, Painting, 1954, oil on composition board, 70.0 × 95.5 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne The Joseph Brown Collection. Presented through the NGV Foundation by Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE, Honorary Life Benefactor, 2004 © National Gallery of Victoria

 
Balson predeceased Crowley by about fifteen years with Crowley spending the final years of her life promoting Balson’s work, minimising her contribution, and apparently destroying some of her paintings.
 
This is a major and extensive exhibition that rewrites an important episode in the history of Australian modernism.

Ralph Balson, Non-objective painting, 1958, oil on composition board, 135.8 × 151.0 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1968, © National Gallery of Victoria

Grace Crowley & Ralph Balson
National Gallery of Victoria, Federation Square
23 May – 22 September 2024
Free Admission