Susan with flowers: A contemplative work by Margaret Olley
Margaret Olley, Australia 1923-2011 / Susan with flowers 1962 / Oil on canvas / 127.4 x 102.3cm / Gift of Finney Isles and Co. Ltd. 1964 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © QAGOMA / View full image
In her studio underneath ‘Farndon’, her family home in Brisbane’s Hill End (now West End), Margaret Olley completed a series of paintings of Indigenous women and men. Susan with flowers 1962 (illustrated) is a major work from this group, and was awarded the 1963 Finney’s Centenary Art Prize, judged by the Queensland Art Gallery’s then director Laurie Thomas.
In these works, Olley’s subjects are a vehicle for the study of light and the form of the figure, often set against groupings of flowers and fruits, and these contemplative works certainly show a sensitivity and feeling for the individuals depicted.
The years 1962-65 are central to an understanding of Olley’s career as she established a national profile and was awarded nine prizes for her paintings during this period, three were for flower and figure studies.
Susan with flowers 1962
Margaret Olley, Australia 1923-2011 / Susan with flowers 1962 / Oil on canvas / 127.4 x 102.3cm / Gift of Finney Isles and Co. Ltd. 1964 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © QAGOMA / View full image
Margaret Olley with Susan with flowers
Critic and artist Sir Herbert Read and Margaret Olley looking at Susan with flowers 1962, winner of the Finney’s Centenary Art Prize / Courtesy: QAGOMA Research Library / View full image
Susan with flowers is the largest work and the only painting in the series in which the model is depicted standing. The considerable publicity given to Olley’s award for this painting reflected the stature of the distinguished presenter, Sir Herbert Read (1893-1968), English art historian and literary critic.
Olley’s painting is, in the words of the then Brisbane art critic, Dr Gertrude Langer, …a decoratively controlled realism and post impressionist colour handled with a flair for bright harmonies.[1] It is an astonishing combination of red poinsettias, hippeastrums and hibiscus, and pink watsonias, gerberas and oleanders against a bright blue ground. These colours, together with royal blue and aqua-green, also appear in the model’s dress. The dark pitcher which contains these flowers is set on a red cloth patterned with yellow.
The flowers in the still life of Susan with Flowers could be gathered in virtually any of Brisbane’s sub-tropical gardens. The assemblage of hippeastrums, oleander, poinsettia, watsonias and plumbago is symptomatic of the disorder and lushness of the well-established garden that surrounded Olley’s home, Farndon. In fact such casual assemblages of flowers and foliage were often gathered by Olley in her walks through the suburb for use in her paintings.
Margaret Olley painting at ‘Farndon’, 1966
Margaret Olley painting at Farndon, 1966 / Photograph: Bob Millar / Courtesy: State
Library of Queensland / Reproduced with the permission of Bauer Media Pty Limited / View full image
Endnotes
- ^ Langer, Gertrude. ‘Queensland lacks in top painters’. The Courier-Mail [Brisbane], 22 May 1963.