Australian Bandstands in the Federation Era

Who in the blogging world might be interested in Victorian-era bandstands? Leaves of Grass blog has the most amazing coll­ection of Brasil’s bandstands I've seen. They had various shapes, colours and building materials, one more splendid than the next. Alas she did not include any building dates. Carol­ine's Miscellany examined the source of Taunton (1895) and Bridgwater (1908)’s late 19th century Bandstands. Her examination of British sites inspired my search for Australian equivalents. Clueless in Boston presented a truly lovely image of Parkman Bandstand 1912 in Boston Common.

The best collection of British Edwardian band stands is in Rose C'est La Vie blog. Rose loved the bandstands because "they're whimsical in design, sometimes oriental, sometimes wedding cakey, and evocative of the innocent pleasures of promenading on a fine day and settling down on a deckchair to listen to a very jolly brass band, a military orchestra, local musicians."

In my state, Victoria, Johnstone Park Geelong was created in March 1872. In December that year, the first band concert was held by a local military band. Then an octagonal wooden bandstand was built right in centre of the park as early as November 1873. As soon as WW1 ended, a war memorial was built in the centre of the park as a memorial to the fine young men killed in battle, and the old bandstand was modernised.

Geelong, Johnstone Park

The late 1870s saw the discovery of deep leads of gold in the Creswick region and these underground mines brought further wealth to the town. This enabled solid public buildings to be constructed, as well as the development of public open spaces, like Park Lake. Creswick Jubilee Bandstand 1879 was erected to celebrate Queen Victor­ia's Diamond Jubilee. It dominated the town's open area in the centre.

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Creswick Jubilee Bandstand

Oppos­ite the Beaufort gardens was an octagonal band rotunda 1903, build to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Reign. The Beaufort rotunda was crowned by an octagonal lantern with iron-grille décor­ation and a four-faced clock. Queen Victoria’s death created a virtual cottage industry. The rotunda built as her memorial and opened in Buninyong in 1901 was the earliest memorial in this state, and preceded the band­stands built in Beaufort 1903, Bendigo 1903, Geelong 1904 and Melbourne 1907.

An attractive and slightly differently shaped bandstand was built in Burra in 1911. This small South Australian town wanted to honour King Edward VII.

Beaufort Rotunda

Sturt St Ballarat already had beautiful blue gums, grown for 45 years before the first bandstand was designed. By 1905 the cent­re of Sturt St looked like an interlinked group of lovely gardens. The position was perfect. Queen Alexander Bandstand 1908 was named by the Duke of York after his mother, wife of King Edward VII. It was an innovative bandstand de­sign, using a polygonal form surmounted by a Moor­ish onion dome. The bandstand had very fine wrought iron decoration that, approp­riat­e­ly, included musical motifs. Built during the heyday of the band move­ment, it is now one of the few remaining examples of Edwardian band­stands in Victoria and reminds us of a popular form of outdoor entertainment.

For an amazing bandstand that looks like small Edwardian house, examine New Farm Park in Brisabne in Your Brisbane blog. The park was taken over in 1913 by the Council, and they added this handsome bandstand and a kiosk. It has more gables and more timber lace work than my grandmother's house.

Ballarat's Titanic Memorial Bandstand 1915 was another unusual example of creative bandstand design in rural Australia, an exotic composition with orientalist roofs. Designed by local architect, GW Clegg and man­u­factured at a local foundry, the Titanic Bandstand has survived well. It was created as a memorial to the SS Titanic disaster, in particular to those musicians who heroically continued playing as the unsinkable ship sunk.

Ballarat, Queen Alexander (left) and Titanic Memorial (right) bandstands *

Since the royals were 15,000 ks away and there were very few Australians lost on the Titanic, we might ask why there was a rush to spend community money on bandstands? Listening to music played by the town band was a popular form of amusement in the Edwardian period and most municip­alities thought the money would be well spent. And perhaps there was a pride in nationalism, in quietly and democratically uniting the Australian states into one Federation.

Or the connection to WW1. The Port Melbourne war memorial is an octagonal brick band stand with a metal roof and steps on the north side. An inlaid marble tablet from the Port Melbourne Women's Welcome Home Committee honours the gallant Australians who fought in the Great War 1914 - 1918.

The only bandstand and park image I have from the turn of the century was taken in Hyde Park Sydney.

Sydney, Hyde Park

These late Victorian and Edwardian structures, within their well-developed gardens, have now been given heritage protection. At the time, the bandstands, iron seating and garden displays must have given great pleasure to ordinary families, every summer.

Melbourne's Trams

Melbourne’s first form of public transport from the suburbs into the city centre, and vice versa, were the railways; they had started in 1854. This was quite impres­s­ive since Londoner Robert Hoddle had only arrived in the Port Phillip settlement in March 1837 and was appointed senior surveyor for the new town.

Another serious public transport system started up in 1885 when the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company grabbed a 30-year monopoly franchise for Melbourne’s new cable tram network. The first non-horse service ran from Spencer St/Flinders St in the centre of town, out to Haw­th­orn Bridge. It was a simple mechanism. The grip man/driver would grab one of the levers connected to the cable which in turn pulled the tram along the tram lines. When he want­ed to stop the tram, he’d let go of the grip on the cable and applied the brake.

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First cable tram, 1885

The network grew quickly and within six years of the first cable tram being on the road, 1891, the cable tramway network consisted of spoke lines running from the city out into all inner suburbs. However, as the population moved further away from the centre of town, it became clear that the cable tram system became could not reach further and further out, without any limit.

In 1906, the first electric trams were being built, not to replace cable cars but to extend the ends of cable tram lines to more distant suburbs. They “topped up” the cable car system. The initial monopoly ended in 1916 and, appropriately, the cable network was taken over by the State government. The newly formed Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board was now fully responsible. Almost immediately the MMTB started converting the old cable tram lines and the most famous of the new electric trams was the W class. From 1923 on, the W class was truly an Australian design, with compartments at either end closed by sliding doors and an open space in the middle. It was green, quiet, clean and wonderful.

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Melbourne's archetypal green tram

The final cable tram bowed out in 1940, only a year after World War 2 broke out. In time the entire population was serviced by tram lines that all started in town and extended as far as the outer suburbs. When most other cities in the world ripped out their trams and substituted smelly, smoke-filled buses, Melbourne kept her elegant, green ladies that were able to glide graciously through the tree-lined streets without petrol.

Of course Melbourne bloggers are very proud of their trams. I recom­mend you read “Review: Time-line history of Melbourne's Government Cable and Electric Trams and Buses” in melbourne on transit: April 2006.  And the beaut High Riser blog. Even foreigners unfavourably compare their own tram system to Melbourne's eg Poneke who wrote Bumblebee trams roll proudly through Melbourne while Wellington bumbles timidly on.

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Today Melbourne's trams are still petrol-free, but they are no longer green and are alas both ultra-streamlined and privatised. It feels like our city was taken over by foreign trams. In any case, there are other important public transport issues to be considered, as discussed by Hailing From Georgia blog in Guidelines for Effective Mass-Transit, discuss. However my favourite place to take overseas visitors is still a 3-hour tour in the splendidly refurbished 1927 Colonial Tramcar Restaurant.

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Colonial Tramcar Restaurant

The Great Synagogue Sydney, 1878

For an excellent history of Sydney’s first Jewish congregation, read Rabbi Apple in OzTorah » Blog Archive » A history of the Great Synagogue, Sydney. The formal establishment of Sydney’s first Jewish congregation came in Nov 1831 when “The Jews of the colony assembled at the Jews’ Synagogue held over Mr Rowell’s shop in George St”. Later interior alterations were made by Barnett Aaron Phil­l­ips, a carpenter who had worked at Drury Lane and built Aust­ralia’s first stage scenery in the Theatre Royal. The synagogue ark 1830s was one of the earliest pieces of religious furniture in the country.

Eventually numbers of congregants grew to over 300 adults, so larger premises were leased in Bridge St Sydney. When even bigger facilities were required, a building went up in York St Sydney. This new synagogue had comfortable space for 500 seats and was elab­or­ately furnished. Its ark, larger and even more impressive than that in Bridge St, also survives. The final move came in the 1870s when a site in Elizabeth St was purchased.

Pest Synagogue, 1854-9 [above] ..Brussels Synagogue 1875 [below]

The Great Synagogue in Sydney was to reflect the important Great Synagogue in the City of London 1788-90 in its practices and possibly its appearance. However the Sydney arch­itecture may have derived its inspiration from a number of different sources, including the Great Synagogue Pest 1854-9 or the Great Synagogue Brussels 1875 built in the Romanesque-Byzantine style.

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A comp­et­ition for the design for the new building was won by Sydney architect Thomas Rowe, who planned a building in the French Gothic taste. For financial reasons his plans had to be modified, so Rowe did not get to create his elaborate, dream building. But it didn’t matter; the foundation stone was laid in 1875.

Great Synagogue, Elizabeth St entrance, Sydney, 1878

Great Synagogue, rose window

The Great Synagogue was consecrated in 1878. This cathedral synagogue was built in sandstone in the neo-gothic style of course, but with some clear Byzantine elements. The most cathedral-like element was the giant rose window in the front wall, facing Elizabeth St and the gorgeous Hyde Park outside. Two square towers flanked the central compart­ment, terminating in beautiful domes, and the entire front was enclosed by ornate cast-iron gates (as seen in The Great Synagogue: Sydney sandstone tour Part 12, in the Sydney Daily Photo blog.

The interior of the synagogue was designed to maximise the sense of space, due to the height of the cast iron columns. The main décor­at­ive elements were the moulded plaster decorations, the panelled and groined ceiling, carved timber work, stained glass windows and gas-light pendants. As fas as I can see, the deep blue ceiling and silvery stars represented the night sky.

Interior space, men on the ground floor, women in the upper gallery.

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Sydney City and Suburbs blog showed a delightful photo of The Great Synagogue as it appears now, still beautiful but hemmed in between the two adjoining buildings. The building is heritage listed.

St David's Church Haberfield, 1869. Another Sydney building designed by Rowe

Keith's Site - Sydney Life - the suburb of Haberfield showed St David’s Uniting Church 1869 that was designed by the same architect, Thomas Rowe. In particular, note the square Norman style tower, not totally dissimilar to the square towers in front of the Great Synagogue, created just a few years later.

New West End Synagogue London, 1879

Another comparison will prove useful. The New West End Synagogue 1879 in St Petersburgh Place Bayswater, is one of the oldest and most impressive synagogues in London. Compare the date and the architecture with the Great Synagogue in Sydney.

Heritage architecture

Yea may not be the biggest rural town in Australia, but it is very pretty. 100 km north of Melbourne in the rich and hilly Yarra Valley, Yea (current population 1051) was originally settled in 1837. These first settlers left New South Wales, guided by the explorers William Hovell and Hamilton Hume and their team.

Unlike other towns that grew up after the 1850s gold rush, Yea was desirable because of its great agricultural opportunities. But Muddy Creek Settlement, as it was known, was not even laid out as a proper town until 1855. So the first sale of town lots did not occur until 1856 and a primary school was begun by the Anglican and Presbyterian churches only in 1859.

Purcell's mixed business, now Marmalades. Yea

Eaton S Purcell left County Cork in Ireland in 1861 and first opened a mixed-business shop in Yea in the late 1860s. Purcell's General Store, the family’s second establishment, was built in Yea’s main street in 1887 in the Victorian Free Classical style. Times were good for Yea and for the Purcells - a branch railway line from Seymour reached Yea in 1883 when travel and trading both became easier.

Thanks to the National Trust, we know that the shop was a single-storey brick structure with a wide trussed gable roof, concealed at the front by a rendered and decorated parapet with a raised central pediment. A varnished and mirrored central partition divided the store centrally and an ornate balustrade surrounded a stairway to a large cellar.

Two recessed entrances opened to separate departments, with groceries and hardware on one side, and clothing and textiles on the other side. In fact the Purcells must have handled every product needed by good pioneering families of Yea and district, and even did deliveries by horse and cart to all the farms within 20 ks out of Yea.

Original timber fittings

Many of the original fittings still exist in the shop and are heritage protected, especially the three large polished counters. My favourite features were the timber framed display windows and recessed shop entrances, and the wide timber veranda. I also like the portraits of the original owners (Eaton and Annie Purcell) hanging proudly over the original fire place.

I am not sure when Marmalades Café and Restaurant took over the old Yea shop. But it probably doesn’t matter - the old Purcell's General Store is still of architectural and historical importance, especially relating to the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

More recently, artists in the area have moved to country towns to avoid the hustle and bustle of the big cities. However that means they largely flourish (or flounder), depending on work they can sell to tourists. Yea council suggests that a feature of the town is the use of fine historical buildings as the site for fine restaurants - often combining the function of art galleries. At Marmalades, as well, the owners display and sell a number of works from local painters, sculptors, ceramics and printmakers. Above the country breads, jams, chutneys and berry sauces.

Yea townscape, 1910, Museum of Victoria

Carlo Catani: planning Melbourne's foreshores

Carlo Catani (1852-1918) was born in Florence where he learned engineering at the Technical Institute. After graduation he was employed in railway con­struction. Early in 1876 Catani and two of his colleagues decided to move to New Zealand. They sailed out of Europe but on arriving in New Zealand, they found no professional work for the new arrivals. Catani and his friends decided instead to push on to Melbourne.

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Within a few weeks all three had joined the Department of Lands and Survey as draftsmen. In 1880 Catani was registered as a surveyor under the Land Act. Two years later he and his friends were transferred to the Public Works Dept, where they were employed as engin­eer­ing draughtsmen preparing plans for harbours, jetties and coast works, and by early 1886 they were assistant engineers. Melbourne was booming and needed keen, young, skilled men.

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Catani Gardens, main path looking towards the rotunda/bandstand built for the 1988 bi-centenary.

This Italian civil engineer supervised many significant projects in and around Melbourne. Casey Cardinia blog wrote that Carlo Catani was one of the Engineers in charge of the Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp Drainage scheme just outside Melbourne and was Catani also responsible for the first mechanical equipment used on the Swamp. This transformed the area into prime farmland.
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Catani’s other work with the Public Works Dept included flood mitigation works on the Yarra River. He was responsible for planting the now-magnificent elm trees along Alexandra Avenue. And he designed the Morrell bridge.

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St Kilda Council created a foreshore committee in 1906. By that year Catani, who was Chief Engineer of the Public Works Dept, was con­tract­ed to reclaim and beautify the foreshore from St Kilda south-wards down the bay. His successful plan resulted in our famous strolling district, leaving space for beach facilities that became core parts of Melbourne’s foreshore incl Luna Park 1912, the Palais Theatre and Palais de Danse 1926 and just before World War 2, St Moritz Ice Rink 1939. As a result, several landmarks along the fore­shore were his creations. The gardens he designed at the end of Fitzroy Street were named after him, as was the Catani arch bridge on the St Kilda foreshore.

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Catani clock tower, with Catani's bust

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The clock tower is a very fine copper domed, classical construction that stands with pride on the StKilda esplanade/foreshore. Carlo Catani’s bust, as you can see in the photo, still appears on the Clock tower and it is this monument to a young Italian adventurer that I knew best. Alas, as Melbourne Heritage Watch wrote, the Catani Clock was stopped by rats.

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The hot sea baths and hotel on St Kilda main beach in 1910, which replaced the 1862 Gymnasium Baths. In time, the hot sea baths themselves burned down

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I was surprised and delighted to read that the Afrilog Construction, Kenya blog, in CON­STRUCTION NEWS AROUND AUST­RAL­IA, urged that the design of any new development in St Kilda (still being debated in 2009) should remain true to Federation-era legacy of Carlo Catani. Of course our Kenyan blogger colleague is quite correct.

Saving Australia's Maritime Architecture

The preservation of late 18th and early 19th century lighthouses is urgent for two reasons. Firstly Australia’s maritime history was what connected the New World with the rest of the world. It was the sole source of convicts, free population, finished prod­ucts in one direction and raw materials in the other. Secondly a nation that loses its own architectural past is in danger of losing its way. Australia has already destroyed too many of its precious architectural relics, and needs to protect what is left.

Wilson's Promontory was first sight­ed by Bass and Flinders in 1798, and was named by Gov. Hunter in honour of the trader Thomas Wilson. The promontory marks the southern-most point of mainland Australia, and overlooks the narrow shipping channel in Bass Strait between Tasmania and Victoria. Uniquely, from its 100m cliff on the peninsular, the lighthouse site has almost 360° views of Bass Strait. So it was an ideal location for its task: to protect shipping in Bass Strait.

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Wilson's Promontory and Bass Strait

Although Victoria had no convicts, this Victorian lighthouse was built by convict labourers. Thus, we must assume, the convicts were shipped in from NSW or Tasmania, to complete the project. The Wilson's Promontory Lighthouse (19 ms tall) and keep­ers' cottages were built from 1853 to 1859, using granite that was quarried locally. The works were supervised by the Public Works Department, and contracted to a North Melbourne company. The building costs were shared between the Victorian and NSW governments.

English master mariner and adventurer Captain Thomas Musgrave was one of the first head keepers of the Wilson’s Promontory Lighthouse, moving to the site in 1869. He and later keepers kept the oil lamps burning, recorded weather details and signalled ships. The white light, 119 metres above sea level, was visible for 40ks at sea.
Keeper's cottage granite lighthouse, Wilson's Promontory

There were four keepers' cottages, built out of local granite as the lighthouse was, but with roofs made of corrugated iron. One of the cottages was rebuilt in 1924, and two others rebuilt in 1952 after being destroyed during a bushfire.

The parabolic mirrors were replaced in 1975 by a generator-powered electric lamp array when the light was converted to electricity, which in turn was converted to solar power in 1993. The light-house was then fully automated; staffing & regular maintenance were no longer seen as necessary. Even though the rough sea weather ruins every exposed surface, funding was withdrawn.

2009 is the 150th anniversary of the lighthouse’s opening for business in 1869. The lighthouse and keepers' cottages are located within the Wilson's Promontory National Park, so funding for all repairs and maintenance now comes from a new source. The tower has been completely restored to the original granite finish and the surfaces of the out-buildings are all sparkly white again.

There is no road to the lighthouse. Visitors must hike the 18k walk from the nearest town, Tidal River. The good news is that accommod­ation is now available at a reasonable price, in the buildings clustered around the light-house. Australia was fortunate to protect this amazing part of its maritime history.

I found many excellent blogs on lighthouses (eg The Keeper's Blog, Old Salt Blog, Shed Some Light on Lighthouses Blog, New England Lighthouse Treasures, Montauk Point) but few of them talked about heritage protection, de-manning, funding.

Rural photography; seductive advertising

I don't approve of the advertising industry at all. It knowingly encourages conspicuous consumption, poor dietary habits in primary school children, sexual stereotyping, waste of the world's limited resources (plastic, packaging) and pollution. I rarely watch television that has paid ads, and I never listen to radio that accepts paid advertisements - only the ABC, BBC etc.

Now I have to admit that somewhere, sometime, somehow the advertising industry will hit pay dirt i.e they will find an image/sound/smell/taste that appeals to even the least receptive person. For me, it is this magazine advertisement for Montana wine from New Zealand.

Montana wine advertisement in an Australian women's magazine, 2009 (cropped)

The image presents a simple table in the open country side, with the sun slipping behind the distant hills at dusk. No humans, no animals, no cars, no buildings and no food. But the promise is of glorious scenery, fresh air, twenty of your closest friends, great food and wine, pure colours and no worries about your boss, your mortgage or apologising to the children's high school teachers.

Of course I understand that food doesn't simply appear on a table in a country field - a team of people would have to buy it, cook it in a tent, serve it to the guests and then clean up after. Nonetheless as a piece of visual art, the photographic image is well crafted. As a piece of clever advertising, it is very seductive.

Garden Design: Cloudehill

Cloudehill is a 2 hectare garden in the Dandenong Ranges, just on the edge of suburban Melbourne. Waverley Arts Society blog wrote Cloudehill Garden was a work of art. In the 1890s the Woolrich family cleared bush in Olinda to create a working fruit garden. Then in the early 1920s, they established Rangeview Nursery and developed a cut flower and foliage farm. The family prospered for many years, however in 1962 bushfires devastated the farm and the business languished.

Jeremy Francis had long sought land in the Dandenongs to create a garden. He was introduced to the owner Jim Woolrich, the last of the second generation of the family, and learned much of the history of the nursery trade. After Jim's death, the family offered the property to Jeremy and in 1992 Cloudehill was established. The new owner decided to create a Garden of Eden, based on the established design principles that arose out of Arts and Crafts gardens. Everything was planned: the paths, the trees, the flowers, the sculpture etc.

I'm not familiar with garden design principles, so Katya at Bosco Parrasio blog was super.  “Cloudehill is inspired by the famous arts and crafts gardens of England: Sissinghurst, Hidcote, Tintinhull and others. These, in turn, are derived from the renais­sance gardens of Italy such as Villa D'este and Villa Lante. Our green theatre is a tribute to those magnificent Italian hill gardens. Of course Cloudehill's location, with its gentle slopes, the dramatic forest to one side and exhilarating views to the mountains, provide plenty of inspiration and the placing of art works into the gardens give a contemporary twist to a classic design”. With the daffodils, she said, we see the change from the structured to the naturalistic.

See photos of Sissinghurst gardens, created in the 1930s by Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson, in Gardens of a Golden Afternoon. Examine Bishop's Gate which connects the Tower Lawn to the White Garden - the plants are not Australian, but the vistas and garden architecture are familiar.

Intelligblog noted that Cloudehill was laid out in about 20 rooms or garden compartments, all on different levels and linked by paths. Each compartment has its own theme, but there are also integrating elements, like brick and stonework, lined by herbaceous borders and clipped hedges that make each compartment feel an essential component of an integrated whole. Water features and art pieces were the modernising highlight for Nicholas.

VARPORIUM CENTRAL blog suggested “to see the perennial borders at their best on a clear morning after rain with the mist rising and melting is nothing short of miraculous. Flora Aik blog was just mesmerised with the estate.

If there is any disagreement, it is over the sculpture. In a new experimental part of the garden where it is too steep to walk, the new owner has used C17th Italian commedia dell'arte figures by Lazlo Biro to create what he hoped would be a really bold element and a wonderful focal point. Perhaps C17th gardens in northern Italy really did have lawned spaces where commedia dell'arte troupes played. But for me they didn’t fit into C21st Melbourne. The hugs garden pots, on the other hand, were wonderful.

p.s People interested in the art of landscaping might like to look at a blog called Corporate Stay Solutions.

Modern women in Belle Epoque Paris

Modern Woman: Daughters and Lovers, an exhibition of drawings from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, is on view at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane from March- 24th June 2012. The famous French artists of the late C19th and early C20th who celebrated the changing roles of women during the Belle Époque included Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Vuillard, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Bonnard, Auguste Rodin and the occasional woman artist like Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot. For a complete list of artists whose works were included in this exhibition, see QAG.

It is not coincidental that so few women artists are represented in the Modern Woman exhibition. Since the Ecole des Beaux-Arts did not admit women until 1897, all the female art students in Paris had to find an alternative, less prestigious school that would accept them. Or, if their families had plenty of money, some women students were able to study privately with an established male artist. Fortunately Académie Julian, founded by Rodolphe Julian in 1868, accepted women; but even there the male students and female students were trained separately.

Worse still was the constant chaperoning that women artists had to endure. Berthe Morisot mother’s totally banned her from going to unsuitable places (eg dances, winebars, cabarets, the beach) and chaperoned her when she went to suitable places. Artist Marie Bashkirtseff was forbidden from participating in Paris’ cultural night life, never being exposed to the wonderful events that male artists used as themes for their own art works.

Folies Bergère poster by Leonetto Cappiello, 1900. Musee d’Orsay

What holds the various artists and styles together? Firstly, as the gallery points out, modern artists increasingly moved away from idealised representations of the female figure. In particular the artists abandoned the idea of the female as a goddess, virgin or idealised allegorical figure.

Secondly the artists stopped focusing largely on aristocratic or wealthy women, and started looking at ordinary women from every part of society. The artists seemed interested in women’s family lives, in working roles and enjoying leisure time activities. Ordinary women in city streets, coffee shops and cabarets!

For art to be truly modern, it had to reflect its own era. So the gallery’s third aim was to show French society going through a radical change in political, social and artistic life. For those who had a reliable income, life was musical, optimistic and colourful. Women didn't have the vote yet, but their lives were becoming more valued and meaningful. Science and medicine were improving rapidly.

Of course in 1900 they didn't know that industrial-strength massacres were just around the corner (in 1914).

Toulouse-Lautrec, Woman at her Toilette, 1896. Musee d’Orsay

It is no surprise that the drawings for the Brisbane exhibition came from Musée d'Orsay, housed in the former Orsay Railway Station in Paris. The works were selected from the 10,000 drawings of d'Orsay's graphic arts collection, a collection visited by millions of people each year. If any one city was going to sum up all that was special about late C19th culture… it was Paris.

I agree with Angela Goddard, curator of Australian Art in Brisbane. The image of woman, in all its ambiguity and diversity, became the face of modernity. And in the unrehearsed immediacy of these drawings, we can glimpse a sense of the fleeting sensations that characterised La Belle Époque.

A number of reviews have noted that this exhibition concentrates on drawings rather than the larger works in oils by Renoir and his colleagues. Thus, they suggest, we are provided with a more intimate portrait of the people and times, and especially the changing roles of women. Is this true? Are drawings more intimate by definition?

What I did not like was the apparently intimate title Modern Woman: Daughters and Lovers. These women were definitely not the daughters of the artists, a fact that becomes clear from some rather sexy images of women getting undressed, lying in bed and washing in the bath. The models in the art works may have been someone's daughters and lovers, but to the viewer they were ordinary, modern women, going about their daily life in bustling Paris. And surely that was the entire aim of the exhibition.

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Tissot, Sunday at the Luxembourg Gardens. Private collection

In one of those super feats of timing, Fashion Is My Muse is currently displaying the art works of James Tissot. Tissot left London for Paris in 1882 and reintroduced himself to his countrymen with an ambitious and provocative series of 15 pictures entitled La Femme à Paris. La Femme á Paris showcased the modern Parisian woman during the very period of rapid change that the Brisbane exhibition was interested in, the late C19th. Tissot’s series illustrated women from a range of income levels and occupations, rendered in precise detail using high key colours. Hopefully these Tissots are in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

Every adult citizen's vote must be counted

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance - Compulsory voting information wrote that democratic governments consider voting in elections a right of citizenship. Many nations consider that participation at elections is more than a mere right; it is also a citizen's civic responsibility. In some countries, where voting is considered a duty, voting at elections has been made compulsory and has been regulated in the national constitutions and electoral laws. Many of these countries impose sanctions on voters who do not fulfil their civic duty. But the idea of "forcing" people is almost irrelevant. They vote because that is what a good citizen does - he looks after the children, runs a home, keeps a job, pays taxes, protests against bad laws, supports charities, uses public transport wherever possible, and votes!

I would add another very important consideration. A government who is elected with­out hearing from 100% of the adult population has no legitimacy. Of course 100% may not be literally possible since some people are inevitably in gaol, in hospital or are so infirmed that they cannot write. But 100% of the adult population should be the goal of any democratic nation’s electoral strategy.

If mobile voting booths have to go out to old peoples’ homes and move from bed to bed, those mobile booths must be funded from the tax base and equipped before the next election. Postal voting will be necessary for all absentee voters. Voting has to be on weekends so no worker suffers a loss of wages during his absence from work. If citizens are working in Antarctica or New Guinea, election officers need to process those remotely located citizens in a timely fashion.

Rural voting, New Zealand, 1897

There seem to be 35 nations that have some sort of universal voting laws:
Argentina
Australia
Belgium
Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Congo
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Fiji
France (Senate elections only)
Gabon
Greece
Guatemala
Honduras
India
Indonesia
Italy
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Mexico
Nauru
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Singapore
Switzerland (some cantons)
Turkey
Uruguay
Thailand
Venezuela

Austria, Netherlands, Soviet Union and Spain did have universal voting at some stage, but have since changed their legislation.

FairVote blog gives the arguments cogently and at length in Maximizing Participation: what the US can learn from compulsory voting. Empress Nasi Goreng blog discussed how serious Australians were their rights and responsibilities in On the Australian system of compulsory voting.

Gold fever and stage coaches, California and Victoria

Freeman Cobb (1830-1878) joined Adams & Co., the American express agents, in 1849. He worked with the coaching line which had established itself during the Californian gold rush, starting only one year earlier. Adams and Co’s rival, Wells Fargo & Company's Atlantic and Pacific Express, also moved gold, transported passengers and carried freight between the cities of New York and San Francisco, and around California. Guards rode shotgun on the stage coaches, to protect the gold and the passengers.

Wells Fargo, driver, armed guards and passengers, California

Just as gold fever was starting to die down in California, it was about to start in central Victoria. Coach services in Australia had been irregular and unreliab­le. So it was not surprising that Freeman Cobb wanted to establish a branch of Adams & Co. in Melbourne. In fact several American coach drivers had arrived in Australia, rep­resenting the interests of either Adams & Co. or Wells Fargo. Neither of these two American companies did carry traffic to the Victorian gold diggings, in the end. So the very entrepreneurial Freemen Cobb joined three of the new arrivals to create a new partnership, Cobb & Co. They were John Peck, James Swanton and John Lamber.

By the end of 1854 Victoria had a somewhat better system of roads, with toll gates on all high­ways leading to the goldfields, and booking offices in all the bigger towns. Cobb and Co still struggled a bit during the first five years of service, but the company boomed when it was bought in 1858 by another recently arrived Amer­ican, James Ruth­erford. Rutherford had been the manager of one particular Cobb and Co line before he and the new partners re-organised and extended the Victorian services, and secured a monopoly on the mail contracts.

The coach drivers pro­vided mail and passen­ger serv­ic­es to the out­back, facing a tough life of rough roads, difficult weather condit­ions and even bushrangers. Soon specially sprung coaches that could handle Australia's very rough conditions were imported from America.

Every 25 ks the horses were replaced at a changing station, to get passengers to their destinat­ions faster and safer. Chan­ging stat­ions were important for the horses, but for the passengers as well since they provided an opport­un­ity for food and rest. A few examples will do. The American Hotel in rural Creswick was described as a 2-storey timber structure. During the gold rush period, the hotel operated as a Cobb and Co station, gaining prominence as one of the leading est­ablishments in the colony. And providing drinks to thirsty travel­lers! Some changing stations were not in pubs. Just west of rural Beaufort, for example, there was a free standing Cobb & Co changing station, built in 1869. In Barraba near Tamworth NSW, Cobb & Co stage coaches had a clearly marked changing station in the town’s post office.

Barraba postoffice and Cobb and Co station, NSW

I have no idea why Cobb and Co headquarters were moved from Victoria to Bathurst in New South Wales in 1862. Workshops were built at Hay and Bourke in NSW, and Castlemaine in Victoria, and the service was expanded to include Queensland. The first Cobb & Co coach in Qld ran from Brisbane to Ipswich in Jan 1866. Holties House blog gave photographic proof that in the dry sandy regions of Queensland, the innovative Cobb & Co. company sometimes used camels instead of horses to move the mail and passengers.

A clue comes in Sam Everingham's book Wild Ride: The Rise and Fall of Cobb & Co, published by Penguin in 2007. It says while Freeman Cobb established the company in 1853 to cater for travellers between Melbourne and the Victorian goldfields, it was Frank Whitney and James Rutherford who turned it into the most extensive coach network in the world, covering the all of Victoria, NSW and Queensland.

Just as the name Wells Fargo went into the American psyche, so the name Cobb and Co became known by every school child across Australia. New Blog described a Queensland museum dedicated to this company in Team visits Cobb and Co museum in Toowoomba.

Cobb and Co Museum, Toowoomba Qld

The expansion into New Zealand was sensible. In 1861, the discovery of gold in Gabriel's Gully in Otago prompted yet another gold rush, includ­ing Australian gold-diggers who sailed for Dunedin. Among these was the Cobb & Co. coach proprietor Charles Cole, who had been running the Ballarat service. Cole landed in Dunedin in 1861 with a coach, 5 wagons, a buggy and dozens of horses. Almost immediately Cobb and Co's first coach left the Provincial Hotel Dunedin for the Police Com­mis­sion­er's Camp at Gabriel's Gully, as described by Otago Gold­fields Heritage Trust blog in Dunstan Trail. The initial journey took three days, but the time was soon reduced to a one day trip by the introd­uction of stables and relays of horses. There was usually an over­night stop at Styx where the lock-up was built to protect the gold bullion.

We can find unexpected snippets of Cobb and Co history all over the blogosphere. The Humble Blog who wrote about The Coffee Palace in Barwon Heads. After describing boating, fishing, picnic parties and other touristy pleasures, visitors in the 1890s were invited to visit the lake. People wanting to participate had to apply to the manager of Cobb and Co. who had well-appointed stables and horses. Coaches left Geelong twice daily, at 9AM and 2PM, during the summer season. Poetry Galore blog included The Lights Of Cobb and Co., written by one of Australia’s most loved poets, Henry Lawson. It was stirring stuff. And art historians have argued that with his revolutionary approach to depicting the Australian bush and our light, Tom Roberts’ Bailed Up was a painting that helped define Australia’s national identity.

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Tom Roberts, Bailed Up, c1894

Traditional Vs Modern Art: 1930s Australia

In "Addled Art" by Lionel Lindsay and "Addled Art": dishonest art dealers, I noted that James S Macdonald and Lionel Lindsay were not the only fiercely anti-modernists in the Australian art world of the 1930s and early 40s. However they were definitely the most powerfully placed, thus influencing important public decisions. Jane Hunt’s 'Victors' and 'Victims'?: Men, Women, Modernism and Art in Australia in Journal of Australian Studies, 80, 2004 was very useful in explaining their fear of modernity, so I will quote her extensively.

In the years between the two world wars the Australian art estab­lish­ment was run by a band of traditionalists who were at first irritated and later ser­ious­ly threatened by a bunch of critical young innovators. The story of the emergence of modern art in Australia seems to be about the vict­ory of the innovators. It is the victors who write history. Four key art histories present this story of victory: Australian Painting by Ber­nard Smith; Rebels and Precursors by Richard Haese; The Innovat­ors by Geoffrey Dutton; and Black Swan of Trespass by Humphrey McQueen. Smith argued that after WW1 'the old men of the tribe, their years of exile over, began to lay down the law for the guidance of the young'. Their chief objective entailed the prot­ection of the health, sanity and vitality of Australian art from the madness of Europe. In their day the Heidel­berg painters were regarded as innovative and modern. But many of them were in fact realists who mellowed with time and event­ually became art critics, publishers and trustees.

Their law-making coincided with the emergence in Sydney of small group of artists who, following European trends, exper­im­ented with a range of stylistic and technical innovations collect­ively thought of by many as modern art. By the 1920s a few artists had begun to ex­periment with modern aesthetic ideas. In 1926 two artists formed the Sydney Contemporary Group with a large proportion of modernist women artists. Two artists opened the Modern Art Centre in 1932. In 1932, two Melbourne art teachers formed the Melbourne Contemporary Group.

In the political and economic uncertainty of the early 1930s, the modernist move­ment gained sufficient scale to pro­voke the established experts to bellig­erence. By the late 1930s these tensions erupted in a series of cris­es in the Melbourne and Sydney art worlds. They re­volved around a dichotomous relationship between ideologically and artistically con­servative forces and aesthetically modern, politic­ally radical ones. The moments of greatest interest to art historians include the formation of the Academy of Australian Art in 1937 and the subsequent founding of the Contemporary Art Society in 1938; a series of challenges to the authority of the conservative art estab­lishment in Sydney; and the 1943 Archibald Prize to William Dobell.

Modigliani, Portrait of Morgan Russell, 1919. Displayed at the 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art

When Robert Menzies (later Prime Minister) proposed the form­at­ion of an Australian Academy of Art, Melbourne modernists were con­cerned that their departure from conventional artistic practice would be marginalised. Their fears seemed confirmed when Menzies opened the Victorian Artists' Society show in April 1937 and singled out for attack a wall of modernist paintings. A deb­ate ensued in the press: Adrian Lawlor compiled the resulting copy in a booklet entitled Arquebus. Leaders of the modernist group, inc­lud­ing Lawlor and George Bell, formed the Contemporary Art Society 1938.

Herbert Vere Evatt M.P (later Leader of the Labour Party) be­came involved as an approving observer and occasional public advocate. At an exhibition opening in June 1937 Evatt urged Australian galleries to show more modern paintings. He drew a strong rejoinder from James MacDonald, a cultural conservative who had served as art director in New South Wales before moving to the National Gallery of Victoria; “Australian art galleries simply did not like modern art, and it should not be hung in public at all”, said MacDonald (11).

The Looking Glass blog recorded something very similar in The art of Mary Alice Evatt. The NSW Chief Librarian W.H. Ifould was also a trustee of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales. Ifould told people in the mid 1930s “there are no books on modern art in the Country Reference Section … because to the best of my knowledge no one in the country is interested in modern art”.

In March 1937 George Bell led an anti-Academy vote in the Vic­tor­ian Artists' Society on the grounds that the Academy would recognise only a lim­ited range of art­istic practices. Was it coincidence that mod­ernist exhibition entries were on prominent display when Menzies con­demned modernism at the opening of the Victorian Artists' Society exhibition? Evatt’s speech at the first Contemporary Art Society exhibit­ion, in June 1939, echoed the polemic of the debates.

Art historical accounts of the Sydney story draw on rich anti-labour, anti-Semitic, anti-modernist polemic, with the result of sketching neat divides that were more complex in real­ity. In particular, the art histories draw on the writings of Lionel Lindsay, member of the board of trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The main confrontations centred on the public display of the Herald Exhibition of French and British Art from late 1939, the award of the 1943 Arch­ibald Prize to William Dobell, and the nomination of modernist sym­pathisers to positions on the board of trustees. Lindsay and other trustees complained to James S Macdonald in Melbourne, and to a politically embat­tled Robert Menzies, over the travesties being wrought in the name of art.

Embedded in modernism is a sense of ambivalence concerning the reality of late C19th and C20th society and politics. While some creative intellectuals may have revelled in The Modern, others were deeply troubled by it. In writing on the metaphysics of modernism, Michael Bell captures the anxiety that the spectre of modernity evoked in some, in his discussion of the Coll­apse of Idealism. It appears that anxiety, anti-modern loathing, racial suprematism and fascist inclinations on the one hand and the open embrace of urb­an­isation, mass production and new aesthetic possibilities, on the other, may both be regarded as characteristic of modernism.

Stanley Spencer, Parents Resurrecting 1933. Displayed at the 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art.

While signs of modernity were apparent in Australia by 1913, modernism was something that, due to cultural lag, the highly liter­ate public only knew about European developments via newspapers. Modernism, in both its negative and positive strains, came late to Australia. It was only during WW1 that artistic modernism emerged in Australia, and in the wake of the war that the Lindsay brothers, state libraries and galleries and most newspaper critics and politicians, acting on a nostalgic isolationism, began to attack modernism in art and literary forms.

There was contradictory responsiveness to the modern. Lionel Lind­say's taste combined a conservative cultural nationalism with an isolationist horror at all the 'revolutionary manias of a rotted world', as he described modern Europe in 1923. Lionel Lindsay's views epitomised the fascist-leaning, anti-modern loathing described by Blair as one side of the possible intellectual response to modernity. However, as the William Dobell Archibald Prize nomination by Lindsay demonst­rat­ed, his rejection of modernist innovation was not absolute.

Artistic conservatives reasoned that art should serve as an educator in higher ideals, but did so in a way that justified their rejection of modernism in art in favour of idealised nature. The Lindsays genuinely believed that modernism threatened the Canons of Beauty. To James Macdonald, the New School set out 'to prove the innate ugliness of all that seems beautiful'. Modernists not only perverted beauty, but were 'unconcerned with and only affected infinitesimally man's search for truth'.(59) Only nationalist land­scape paintings were concerned with permanent things like Love, Truth and Beauty. It appears that artistic allusions to a set of eternal values, or lessons drawn from great traditions of the past were comforting in the uncertainty of the present, whatever the type of art that was seen to convey them. Idealism and nostalgia were both characteristic intellectual and artistic responses to modernity.

Edward Wadsworth, The English Channel 1934. Displayed at the 1939 Herald Exhibition of British and French Contemporary Art.

Conclusion

In all of Hunt’s excellent analysis, two thoughts stand out. In the political and economic crises of the early 1930s, the modernist move­ment gained sufficient scale to pro­voke the establishment to fear-based respon­ses. James MacDonald, for example, assured the public that modernism was 'gangrened stuff which attracts the human blowflies of the world who thrive on putrid fare'. Hunt doesn’t explain why the traditionalists used the neo-Nazi language of Josef Goebbels, but she does explain why these tensions erupted in a series of cris­es in the art worlds in the late 1930s and early 40s.

And the flow of progressive ideas was eventually unstoppable. Lionel Lindsay was still writing with great venom in 1942, but he could no longer do any harm.

(11) Sydney Morning Herald, 7 June 1939; 3 July 1939.
(59) James S Macdonald Papers, NLA MS 430, box 1, pp 15, 27.

Excellent references:
1. Chanin, Eileen and Steven Miller The 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art, Melb, 2005
2. Haese, Richard Rebels And Precursors: The Revolutionary Years of Australian Art, Allen Lane, Melbourne, 1981 and

3.Dear Kitty. Some blog's post called Australia: modern art conflict in 1930s

WW1: from national heroines to national embarrassments

By 1914 a quarter of all British women were already in paid jobs. Yet it was only during WW1 British women were called on, by necessity, to do more work and to take on newer roles that were beyond traditional community expectations. Once the men left home and the family received only the breadwinner’s poor army pay, most women had to seek paid employment for the sake of their families’ survival. Or because they wanted to Do Their Bit in a desperate time for the nation. Or because they wanted to leave their parents’ home and get involved in exciting employment possibilities.

Poster, VADs were urgently needed

Government encouragement made the workplace accessible, gave the industrial environment respectability and encouraged a choice of industrial employment. In Britain nursing services like the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps had started before WWI. But from 1914 on, recruitment for the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VADs), in particular, intensified. Posters across Britain stated that ward assistants, ambulance drivers and kitchen staff were urgently needed. These brave women were allowed in the front line within one year of the war starting (1915) and increased their skills so quickly that professional staff started to admire the VADs' contribution.

Poster, WRAF needed women's particiation

While older or less confident women were often involved in voluntary work eg serving at the Red Cross, the majority of young women took over real jobs that men had done. They worked in munitions factories, offices and large hangars used to build aircraft. Did the unions, who had fought for male workers’ rights against brutal capitalist opposition for decades, support women workers as vigorously? It would seem not, especially in the important highly skilled industries like engineering and ship building. Perhaps the unions already predicted the end of WW1 and wanted to ensure that every soldier would have a job to go back to. In any case, where unions did allow women to take over skilled jobs, the employers had to agree to sack the women as soon as the war ended.

Poster, WAAC, every fit woman can release a fit man

The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), which started in July 1917 with Dr Mona Chalmers-Watson as the Chief Controller, was the star attraction for women. Recruitment posters for the WAAC proclaimed that “Every fit woman can release a fit man”, and not surprisingly, endless numbers of women responded. But even life in the WAAC was not a doddle. In the lower ranks, unskilled work was paid at the rate of 24 shillings a week while shorthand typists could earn twice as much. Although uniforms and accommodation were free, money was deducted each week for food.

There was no work that women in the WAAC and other sites could not do. The Imperial War Museum has photos that show women doing heavy, dirty or even heart breaking work eg members of the WAAC's tending the graves of Allied soldiers. When compulsory male conscription was introduced in 1916, a competent female workforce became even more important. Restrictions that had denied access to particular trades were forgotten for the rest of the war, and women did work they were previously thought incapable of eg coal hauling and ship building.

 WAAC's tending the graves of Allied soldiers in Abbeville in France, 1918. Imperial War Museum photo

In Canada, recruiting of women intensified. Women trained to be munitions workers so that they were ready to move into factories; Canada could answer the call to nationalism with her Dependables.  Thousands of other women were helping with agricultural work via Canada’s Women’s Land Army. “The world with difficulty accustomed itself to the thought of women facing real danger and doing arduous work”. No occupation, including quarrying and mining, should be considered closed to women as “every one knows that the Canadian woman is a real Dependable!” She served her nation and the British Empire.

In Australia WW1 was a genuinely liberating experience for many women;  it made them feel useful as citizens and it also gave them the freedom and the wages only men had enjoyed so far.  Women joined the workforce between 1914-18 in Government departments, public transport, the post office, as clerks in business, as land workers and in factories, especially in the dangerous munitions factories. Women did very well, surprising men with their efficiency and their ability to undertake heavy work. By the mid war they were already regarded as a force to be proud of, part of the glory of the British Empire. Undoubtedly, however, the Australian unions were as worried about male workers coming home after the war as were the British unions.

Poster, women were needed to work with planes

If ever there had been confusion about the value of women’s work in Britain and the Empire, these heroines showed that women were highly capable of learning, training and working in very different fields. Although women were still paid less than men had been pre-war, women's equality was at least on the agenda by war’s end. The women workers had helped to save their nation in time of need, had improved their own individual lives and were changing the notion about women’s role in society.

Find a fine paper called WOMEN AND WORK IN WARTIME BRITAIN by Deborah Thom

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The really radical question was not “were women allowed to work in real jobs during the war?” but “what happened to those women once the war ended?”

Lucy Noakes suggested that the proposed emigration of large numbers of single women to the Empire in the aftermath of WW1 was one of the main ways Britain got rid of its "excess" single women. Although they had worked during the war and contributed enormously, they were a national embarrassment by 1919. They were forced to leave their exciting, meaningful jobs and were asked to go into domestic service. Worse still, so many men had died in the trenches in France and the Lowlands that these excess women would never find husbands or have babies in Britain.

Noakes said that women who refused to go into domestic work were vilified by the press as “ruthless self seekers, depriving men and their dependants of their livelihood”, or “leeches and parasites determined to have the time of their lives at the expense of the returning men and of wider society”. Women who had served in uniform were often depicted with particular venom. “Those women were bold and masculine, cigarette smoking.., with a loss of grace and charm”.

Thousands of women were asked to emigrate from Britain for new lives in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. And although British women were willing to do exactly that (see the lines at Australia House in London), the irony was that these New World nations actually wanted women to be domestic servants and simple labourers for farms. Again! Once the soldiers returned home from Europe, these New World countries did NOT want female engineers, aeroplane makers and repairers, ambulance drivers or ammunition manufacturers taking the men’s jobs.

Single working women queued up at Australia House, 1919, to emigrate

Did the British manage to offload their unwanted women workers? Did Australia, Canada and New Zealand give them new homes, husbands and meaningful jobs? It would seem not. The British government launched the Free Passage Scheme in 1919 for ex-servicemen and their dependants. But by 1922, when the scheme closed down, only 5% of the migrants had been single women with years of working experience during WW1.

While Noakes judged the Free Passage Scheme a failure, based on the small number of working women who participated, others have pointed out that working  women's participation was never the primary aim of the scheme.