George W. LAMBERT

English; Australian 1873–1930
emigrated to Germany 1875; worked throughout Europe and the Middle East 1900–21

In 1900 George W. Lambert, one of the most gifted students of his generation, won the inaugural Society of Artists Travelling Art Scholarship. After studying in Paris (with fellow Australian Hugh Ramsay), Lambert settled in London and, for the next twenty years, achieved success for his often monumental, complex and theatrical figurative compositions that were shown at the Royal Academy, London, and the New Salon, Paris.

Like many artists of the period, Lambert was greatly indebted to the grand tradition of portrait painting and, in particular, the great Spanish master Diego Velázquez. Lambert’s Self-portrait, 1906, with its distinct use of light and shade and focus on only the head and shoulders, was closely modelled on Velázquez’s Philip IV of Spain, 1656, which Lambert could examine in detail in the National Gallery, London.

When Lambert initially exhibited Self-portrait at the Modern Society of Portrait Painters in London in 1907, contemporary critics admired the subject but took exception to the reference to smoking, firmly stating that the ‘picture would be excellent if he would only paint out the cigarette’.1 The work was shown in Melbourne and Sydney in 1910, where it received considerable praise; however, reviewers acknowledged that although Lambert possessed exceptional technical abilities, his work was far from avant-garde and remained firmly connected to the past:

The self-portrait of the artist is among the finest examples of modern portrait painting we have had the good fortune to see in New South Wales, even if some may feel that the work—were it not for the cigarette—might reasonably enough have been painted fifty years ago.2

Lambert produced numerous self-portraits throughout his career. They are often characterised by a self-deprecating interest in depicting himself as the self-assured aesthete and affected, self-admiring dandy he thought others considered him to be: ‘I am a luxury, a hot house rarity … Scoffed at for preciousness. Despised for resembling a Chippendale chair in a country where timber is cheap.’ 3 As such, Lambert’s self-portraits are amongst his most compelling images and Self-portrait, 1906, forms a significant and remarkable precursor to The official artist, 1921, purchased by the Felton Bequest for the National Gallery of Victoria in 1921.

1 Times, London, 15 January 1907, p. 7.

2 Art and Architecture, September–October 1910, p. 131.

3 George W. Lambert, letter to Amy Lambert, 25 November 1921, quoted in Anne Gray, Art and Artifice: George Lambert 1873–1930, Roseville East,
New South Wales, 1996, p. 109.

Geoffrey Smith