National Gallery of Victoria.,

Well, we were off on a trip to Melbourne ....and any trip to Melbourne usually encompasses a visit to the National Gallery of Victoria. Though I discovered that they'd moved the "Victorian" art to the Ian Potter Centre in Federation Square...though it's not easy to find this out when you check on "location" on the internet. Anyway, bottom line is that, on this trip, I never did get to see the McCubbin works. Still, I've seen them many times before and must say that I like his work. Sometimes I find myself wondering if his reputation rests very firmly on those "pioneering" works that he did around the turn of the century. Certainly they seem to be his most cited works and they are very much in a realist-emotive tradition.
The current book purports to give a fairly complete overview of Frederick McCubbin and his work and it was clearly produced to accompany an exhibition held in 1991. At first glance it's a great production.....an interesting text about the man and his life and work. And a great set of reproductions of his work...some 54 paintings. However, I was mildly intrigued as I read the description of "the old Stables" on p 24. This was originally painted in 1884 and the text describes the "carefully modulated grey tones". But when I looked at the reproduction it was very much in brown tones. So I did a bit more sleuthing and checking other images on the internet....and sure enough, the majority of pictures on the internet show the "modulated grey tones". Admittedly, online colours are unreliable but, it seems, the colours in the book are also unreliable. And whilst I was doing the checking, I compared a few other works such as "Bush Sawyers" and "Violet and gold" and found similar strong discrepancies in colouration.
Ah well, it's not easy to match printed colours with the actual object so one should be a bit tolerant......especially when one compares with the situation McCubbin himself had to face where he was only able to obtain a photo or a copy of the work of European artists to keep up with trends. And it was interesting reading about his reactions when he was eventually actually able to visit London and see first hand the work of some of these artists....especially Turner. He liked Turner's work and one can see that reflected in works such as "Collins Street" and "The Stone Crusher".
I enjoyed reading the book and studying his paintings though I wondered about all his portraits. (Apparently he basically earned his daily bread as a portrait painter (and art teacher) but there was very little of his portrait work in the exhibition. I guess there must be a lot of it scattered around Melbourne).
Happy to give it 4 stars.… (meer)