Working en plein air on a small scale, the modernist, tonalist painter Clarice Beckett (1887– 1935) possessed a remarkable ability to capture not only the likeness of a place, but also how it felt to be there. Looking at her paintings, one can almost feel the misty rain clinging to the suburban streets of Melbourne—where she lived and worked—and smell the fresh, salty air billowing in from Port Phillip Bay.
Curated for Geelong Gallery, Atmosphere covers Beckett’s work from 1919 to the early 1930s and focuses on locations around Victoria, with natural phenomena a key subject. “Compared to the grand landscape narratives being painted by her tutor Frederick McCubbin (1855–1917), Beckett focused on everyday locales,” says Atmosphere co-curator Lisa Sullivan. “They were places she knew and this connection to place comes through in the way she painted—there was a familiarity and lightness of touch that enabled her to respond to fleeting environmental conditions like rain, sunlight and mist.”
“She really transformed the way we see the Australian landscape by conveying so much about a landscape in a very direct way.”
Central to the exhibition is a series of paintings Beckett completed during a six-month stay at Naringal, a sheep station in rural Victoria. Vastly different from the coastal environments she was accustomed to, the farmhouse at Naringal and its surrounding landscape allowed Beckett to experiment with new tones and textures.
“Beckett had an economy of means in the way she blurred tones together,” Sullivan explains. “She really transformed the way we see the Australian landscape by conveying so much about a landscape in a very direct way.
“We often apply that thinking to the early Australian Impressionists working in the 1880s, but I think of artists like Beckett, Grace Cossington Smith, Godfrey Miller, Fred Williams, Rosalie Gascoigne and Emily Kame Kngwarreye—those artists have all shaped how I see the Australian landscape in an enduring and long-standing way.
This article on ‘Atmosphere’ at the Geelong Gallery was originally published in the March/April 2023 print edition of Art Guide Australia.
Clarice Beckett: Paintings from the national collection
Clarice Beckett
Cairns Art Gallery
9 March—19 May
Suggested Reading
Laure Prouvost meets the real with the ludicrous
French-born/Belgium-based Laure Prouvost animates her first major Australian survey with her hallmark absurdism. ‘Oui Move In You’ is showing now at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
Josephine Mead
Archie Moore wins Golden Lion Award
Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore has won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the Venice Biennale for his monumental work, kith and kin. It marks the first time Australia has won the award in the event’s 130-year history.
Briony Downes
Talking pageantry with Scotty So
Endlessly inventive, the work of Hong Kong-born, Melbourne-based artist Scotty So spans photography, painting, video work, and drag performance. With a dual exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, So talks about pageantry, begonias and queens.
Amelia Wallin
Parrtjima lights up Alice Springs
Parrtjima—the Northern Territory’s annual festival of lights at the Alice Springs Desert Park—is entering its ninth year, and this time the immersive festival’s focus is interconnectedness.
Sally Gearon
Ellen Dahl wins the 2024 National Photography Prize
Congratulations to Ellen Dahl, who has won the $30,000 2024 National Photography Prize for her work, Four Days Before Winter, a four-part piece exploring the devastating effects of climate change on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
Art Guide Australia
Why are we so hungry to get close to artists?
From revelling in biography to what artists wear to creative workshops, Jane O’Sullivan writes on a new artistic retreat, revealing the joys of learning directly from artists.