G. F. FOLINGSBY

Irish; American 1828–91
worked in Germany (1863)–79, worked in Australia 1879–91

George Frederick Folingsby was born in Wicklow, Ireland, on 23 August 1828. In 1846 he travelled to Canada and New York where he attended the National Academy of Design and was an illustrator for Harper’s Magazine and illustrator and pictorial editor for the Illustrated Magazine of Art. He travelled extensively in Asia Minor, Greece and much of Europe, and in 1852 he settled in Munich. In 1864 the National Gallery of Victoria purchased his painting Bunyan in prison, 1864, as one of the first thirteen acquisitions to start its collection. In the late 1860s he married German artist Clara Wagner and in 1869 their daughter Eleanor Clara was born, followed soon after by the death of his wife in about 1873. Folingsby gained awards in the international exhibitions held in Vienna, 1873, and Philadelphia, 1876, and in 1879 he was commissioned to produce the painting The first meeting between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn for the National Gallery of Victoria. Folingsby arrived in Melbourne with the painting and his ten-year-old daughter on 1 July 1879. His reputation as a figure painter enabled him to make a living from portrait commissions of eminent members of Melbourne society. Folingsby was appointed master in the School of Painting at the National Gallery School on 1 June 1882 and, in September of that year, was appointed as the first director. He initiated annual student exhibitions in 1883 and the Travelling Scholarship in 1887, giving students the oppor- tunity to work abroad. George Frederick Folingsby died at Hawthorn on 4 January 1891.

Folingsby’s subjects included English historical themes and figures in landscapes, specialising in painting drapery and costumes. Autumn, c. 1882, is a prime example by the artist of a lady picking autumn blackberries in fancy costume, exhibiting elaborately modelled drapery, rich fabric textures and command of the human figure. This work stands as a possible prototype for similar Melbourne paintings of costumed figures in landscapes of which Frederick McCubbin’s The letter, 1884 (Ballarat Fine Art Gallery), and Tom Roberts’s Reconciliation, 1887 (Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum), are examples.

David Belzycki