Finally saw the Arthur Streeton retrospective at the AGNSW today.
Sydney hasn’t had a community transmitted covid case for 20 days, so people were out in force. it was quite strange to be standing side by side with strangers.
The early works had too many people in the room so we were moved on, but that was ok, because there were rooms and rooms.
The man went on his honeymoon (at the age of 40) for 60 days in Venice. He made 80 works (on top of, i assume, a lot of sex). His wife was independently wealthy, a singer, but she refused to actually marry him till he was making a living from his art. Interesting.
I didn’t take a heap of photographs, but i did like his fast watercolour drawings from the WWII battlefields. And how his timid, controlled brushstrokes from a 3 – 5mm brush in his twenties turned to confident strokes with a 10 – 15mm brush (even when the canvas sizes were tiny) by his 40s.
here are the pix I actually took.
