Our conservators care for the artworks in the Gallery's Collection, and include specialists in the conservation of paintings, works on paper, sculpture, time-based art, textiles and frames.
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Once a prominent colonial Queensland artist, Anthony Alder (27 December 1838–1915) and his works had all but vanished from public memory until, in 2011, his descendants’ estate was offered to the State Library of Queensland. Here, we reintroduce you to one of his works Heron’s home 1895 (illustrated).
Heron’s home | Before Conservation
Art history is a process of continually rediscovering the past and reinterpreting it for contemporary audiences. Alder is a significant Queensland colonial artist, apart from being the most prominent taxidermist in colonial Queensland, and widely admired for his dioramas when he entered employment with the Queensland Museum, he was also a painter of substance. Unfortunately, over the years, the appeal of his dioramas was forgotten and, apart from a major painting, Eagle and Fox (Not Game) 1895 (illustrated), which was occasionally on view at the Museum, knowledge of his work also slipped into oblivion.
Anthony Alder Eagle and Fox (Not Game) 1895
Staff of the Queensland Museum, 1912
Alder was born at Stroud, Gloucestershire and trained in the family’s taxidermy and casting business, Alder and Company, in Islington, London. He spent time working in Queensland from 1862 but returned to England on the death of his father in 1864, after the death of his mother in 1874, he returned and settled permanently in Queensland. Although he did not exhibit with the Queensland Art Society (est. 1887), Alder established a significant exhibition profile, he produced grisaille watercolour sketches that were published from 1894 in the Queenslander, the state’s most important weekly newspaper (illustrated).
He sought to emulate the work of ornithologist Silvester Diggles (1817–80) (Leadbeater’s cockatoo (Cacatua leadbeateri) c.1875 illustrated) who was Queensland’s most famous bird painter, and published Ornithology of Australia and Synopsis of the Birds of Australia. Diggles and his family arrived in Brisbane in 1854 and he soon became a key figure in the early cultural life of the city. He taught art and music, became our first photographer, helped found musical societies and the Queensland Philosophical Society (which subsequently developed into the Queensland Museum). Beginning in October 1863, Diggles single-handedly drew, coloured and described over 600 birds in eight years. He eventually published prints of 225 birds with descriptions of their habitat and life cycle in 21 sections from 1865 to 1870. When bound together, these became his major publication Ornithology of Australia.
Silvester Diggles Leadbeater’s cockatoo c.1875
Painted for the Queenslander by Anthony Alder
Alder also produced oil paintings and submitted several of these in what were essentially the first of the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association (QNA) annual exhibitions. He received an award for Eagle and Fox (Not Game) in the QNA of 1895, from where it was purchased by the state government for the Queensland Art Gallery but is now in the Queensland Museum’s Collection, and was also awarded the prize at the same exhibition for Lincoln sheep, homeward Laddie (illustrated), also 1895, which depicts the renowned stud flock at ‘Glengallan’, just outside Warwick.
Anthony Alder Lincoln sheep, Homeward Laddie 1895
A reassessment of Alder’s work was inspired when the work Lincoln sheep, homeward Laddie emerged from the collection of Alder’s descendants and was offered to the State Library of Queensland in 2011. The State Library has a special interest in ‘Glengallan’, as it holds the archive of the property which was donated by the widow of William Ball Slade’s eldest son, Oswald, in 1958.
At Slade’s time, the property was one of the showplaces of the Darling Downs; the homestead itself, a sandstone mansion built in 1867, was rescued from dereliction and restored as the Glengallan Homestead and Heritage Centre.
Slade called on Alder’s skills as a taxidermist, and this may have been the occasion for Alder to produce the work which, in a sense, is a record of the passing of the colonial squattocracy, as the property began to be broken up in 1895. Large-scale landscapes such as this are extremely rare in colonial Queensland.
Glengallan homestead
In mid 2011, the State Library’s Curator of Heritage Collections, advised the Gallery that Heron’s home was also available to a public collection. It was one of the two works Alder included in the 1897 Queensland International Exhibition (cat.95), and shared the exhibition with Josephine Muntz-Adam’s Care c.1893 (illustrated), the first Australian work purchased by the Queensland National Art Gallery.
Josephine Müntz-Adams Care 1893
Now restored, Heron’s home provides a marked counterpoint in detail and decorative appeal, and represents his skills in depicting natural history subjects — the area in which Alder forged his reputation.
The subject of this important painting is a pair of Nankeen night herons (Nycticorax caledonicus), which are named after the buff-coloured Nankeen cloth formerly produced in the Chinese city of Nanjing (Nanking). These herons are native to large parts of Australia and frequent well-vegetated wetlands, river margins and mangroves around Brisbane. Here, they are depicted in a beautifully rendered naturalistic riverine setting within a larger Queensland landscape.
Heron’s home | After conservation
Delve deeper into the Collection
Curatorial extracts, research and supplementary material compiled by Elliott Murray, Senior Digital Marketing Officer, QAGOMA
The collaborative research of curator and conservator can deeply enhance our understanding and evaluation of works of art. The curator seeks to define a works’ art historical and other contexts, provide a reading of its iconography and a description of its stylistic character, while the conservator focuses on the material analysis of the work, interpreting both the seen and unseen evidence of its physical development.
Cristo risorgente (The risen Christ) (illustrated) by Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-94) depicts Christ rising from his tomb, triumphant over death and illuminated by a rising sun. The staff in Christ’s left hand holds up a banner celebrating the resurrection, while his right hand delivers a gesture of blessing or benediction to the awakening soldier.
In its original church setting — likely as an altarpiece placed above the faithful — the foreshortened figure of Christ would have delivered an even more dramatic sense of the miracle of life defeating death.
Tintoretto is one of the masters of the Venetian Renaissance, although he painted portraits of eminent Venetians, he was best known for his religious works, many of which were commissioned by churches.
Tintoretto ‘Cristo risorgente’ c.1555
Tintoretto is a prominent figure within the history of sixteenth-century art. Principally self-taught, he is said to have spent a short time under Titian (1488–1576) and, later, Schiavone (1510/15–1563). One of the earliest critical commentaries on Tintoretto occurs in a letter from Pietro Aretino (1492-1556). Aretino admonished Tintoretto for his fa presto (his speed of execution) and his lack of ‘finish’. The biographer, Ridolfi (1594–1658), who published a life of Tintoretto in 1642, described the artist’s working method in considerable detail, noting that he kept a motto fixed to his easel: II disegno di Michaelangelo ed il colorito di Tiziano (The design of Michaelangelo and the colour of Titian), one to which he evidently held fast as he worked on Cristo risorgente (The risen Christ).
We know from Ridolfi that Tintoretto:
‘trained himself also by concocting in wax and clay small figures which he dressed in scraps of cloth, attentively studying the folds of the cloth on the outlines of the limbs. He also placed some of the figures in little houses, and in perspective scenes made of wood and cardboard, and, by means of little lamps, he contrived for the windows he introduced therein lights and shadows.’
Tintoretto chose to work in a studio that admitted little natural light studying, drawing and painting from these small and dramatically illuminated modellos. Ridolfi continues:
‘He also hung some models by threads to the roof beams to study the appearance they made when seen from below, and, to get the foreshortening of figures for ceilings, creating by such methods bizarre effects, or capricci (capricious effects).
Through such means Tintoretto was able to build the dramatic narrative and theatrical force of his paintings.
The original size of the composition can be reconstructed by closely examining an X-radiograph of the painting (illustrated). The structure of the current wooden stretcher can be seen in the X-radiograph, which probably dates from when the painting was last lined during the nineteenth century. Two sets of handmade tacks suggests that the painting has been lined twice on this stretcher. A row of 1cm diameter holes, spaced about every 10-12cm down the left edge of the painting, relate to the original method of stretching, probably by means of lacing.
X-radiograph of ‘Cristo risorgente’
An impression of the original stretcher can also be seen from the X- radiograph, showing a structure with corner braces. Extrapolating from these impressions assists conjecture on the original size of the painting. It seems apparent that the work has been trimmed, losing approximately 2cm from the left and bottom edges (about the amount one might expect to lose in the course of a glue lining), approximately 4 to 5cm from the top edge and as much as 8 to 9cm from the right. The painting’s original dimensions would, therefore, have been approximately 206cm high x 148cm wide.
Ridolfi also delineates the role of drawing in Tintoretto’s work:
‘He set himself to draw the living model in all sorts of attitudes which he endowed with the grace of movement, drawing from them an endless variety of foreshortenings. Sometimes he dissected corpses in order to study the arrangement of the muscles, so as to combine his observation of sculpture with his study of nature. Taking from the first its formal beauty and from the second unity and delicacy.’
X-radiography, infrared examination and cross-sectional analysis have revealed that Cristo risorgente underwent numerous changes in its compositional structure. Drawing played an important role throughout, from charcoal drawing on white gesso, lead white on brown imprimatura, to lines drawn in the final surface.
Pigments bound in (presumably) linseed oil were also used inventively. For example, very large clusters of lead white were bound in the azurite and ultramarine blues of the sky. These would catch the flickering candlelight in the painting’s chapel setting, to create a shimmering, silvery dawn sky. Pigments used in The Resurrection were consistent with the sixteenth-century palette and included lead white, azurite, ultramarine, (probably) ultramarine ash, copper resinate-type green glazes, green earth, various red lake pigments such as cochineal, red lead, red and yellow ochres, charcoal black and bone black. From the six cross- sections analysed, no lead-tin yellow was found.
Evidence of the initial idea for the composition can be seen in infrared where the charcoal drawing on gesso suggests an initial tomb position in the mid-ground, perhaps similar to a version of this theme by Domenico Tintoretto (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice). This original tomb position was actually painted in brown before having the background landscape painted over it, and this shows through in many areas. The brown used in this area is comprised of palette scrapings. It is suggested that this general brown underpaint is the imprimatura on some of Tintoretto’s later works, produced by scraping off the...
