Adrian FEINT

Australian 1894–1971

Illawarra flame trees, also known as Kurrajong maples from their fleshy, serrated leaves, are native to the east coast, New South Wales and Queensland. They are deciduous and flower in masses of bright red bells on bare branches. The dramatic contrast of bare branch and red flowers, the swollen bottle form of the trunk and the sculptural quality of the prolific flower clusters made them attractive specimen trees for gardens and streets. The huge tree in front of the Mediterranean-style house in the painting looks as if it was growing there before the house was built. Or the house is nineteenth century, remodelled in deco style, painted fashionable cream with added garage. Adrian Feint, best known as a flower painter, said in a 1950s interview that one of his models was the English surrealist artist and designer, Paul Nash. Even though we know the tree looks like this, the artist gives it a surrealist energy as it flares up in suburbia. Feint had a whimsical sense of humour. One drawing in his 1948 monograph has a large seashell draped in foliage confronting two smaller Daliesque shells with skeletal, undraped structures and is titled: The poor relations.1

Adrian Feint trained as a painter, designer and graphic artist. He was a fine printmaker and made a speciality of book- plates. In the 1920s and 1930s he worked for Sydney Ure Smith, doing cover and other designs for Art in Australia and The Home. Feint collected old porcelain and glass, antiques and rare books. He made exquisite flower arrange- ments that were photographed for The Home.

Like Ure Smith, who was also a printmaker, Feint lived in Kings Cross and Elizabeth Bay, and painted many floral still lifes against a harbour backdrop. In summer he would move to Palm Beach and paint summer still lifes with sweeping beach and sun in the background. The Orient Line commissioned floral still lifes from him for a dining room in their flagship, Orion.

1 S. Ure Smith, Adrian Feint Flower Paintings, Sydney, 1948, p. 22

Jennifer Phipps