Margaret PRESTON

Australian 1875–1963
worked in Germany 1904–07, throughout Europe 1912–19

During the interwar period Margaret Preston was the leading advocate of modernism in Sydney. Through her tireless participation in exhibitions and as possibly the most reproduced artist of her generation—with designs for magazines, articles for journals and a proliferation of prints—Preston’s art and ideas saturated popular culture. Her art, which consisted predominantly of still-life subjects, achieved the remarkable balance of both appealing to the wider public as well as to her fellow artists, who avidly collected her paintings and works on paper.

Preston argued that rather than seeking inspiration solely from European and Western sources, Australian artists should find knowledge closer to home from both Indigenous and Asian cultures. Preston travelled widely throughout Asia and Australia and published numerous articles on Aboriginal art from the 1920s to the 1940s, endeavouring to promote a truly distinctive national style:

Since I am Australian by birth and an artist by profession it is only reasonable that the subjects of [my] pictures … should be Australian, as one should understand one’s people and country best.1

In 1938 Preston completed ten paintings of Australian flora, each measuring 122 by 91.6 centimetres, which were the largest works she ever produced. Six were included in the Australian Pavilion at New York World Fair in April 1939 and another four were exhibited in the Australian Pavilion at the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco later in the year. Those shown in New York remained together until 1981, when they were presented to the Art Gallery of South Australia by the New York Botanical Garden. Flannel flowers, 1938, was one of the four works shown in San Francisco.2 As an exhibition piece, Flannel flowers may seem to possess a greater formality and monumentality than many of Preston’s flower subjects; however, its austerity and simplified palette reveal her prevailing concerns during the mid to late 1930s:

Australia is a country that gives the impression of size and neutral colour. To give this impression on canvas or woodblocks I find it necessary to eliminate ‘dancing’ colour and to heap my light and shadows. I have abandoned the regulation yellow-colour sunlight and made form explain light, because I feel that Australia is not a golden-glow country but a country of harsh, cool light. In my effort to give a feeling of sharp flatness I force my compositions with as much solid light as possible. I am trying to suggest size, and to do this I am eliminating distracting detail.3

Preston’s preference for ‘cool light’ and ‘sharp flatness’ is perfectly captured in Flannel flowers. The pale grey, green, cream and yellow tones are interrupted only by the occasional small splash of vivid red-orange that delineate the Christmas bells, and reflect Preston’s fascination for the reductive quality found in Japanese prints.

1 S. Ure Smith (ed.), Margaret Preston’s Monotypes, Sydney, 1949, p. 11.

2 The other three works shown were: Waratah, 1938 (Private collection), Gum blossoms, 1938 (Private collection), and Banksia, 1938
(Private collection). The author is grateful to Deborah Edwards for verifying this information.

3 G. Long, ‘Some recent paintings by Margaret Preston’, Art in Australia, Sydney, May 1935, p. 18.

Geoffrey Smith

During the 1940s Preston varied her techniques and concentrated on landscape subjects, often using a palette of earth colours and black, that corresponded to the natural ochres and cross-hatching found in Aboriginal bark painting. Preston’s understanding of Aboriginal culture had a profound effect on her own practice and she endeavoured to share its revelatory qualities with a wider audience:

The art of the Aborigine has for too long been neglected. The attention of Australian people must be drawn to the fact that it is great art and the foundation of a national culture for this country.1

In 1946, at the age of seventy-one and after reading a book on William Blake, Preston completed a series of 100 monotypes during six months of intensive work. Middle Harbour, 1946, belongs to this group and was felt to be slightly ‘more conventional in design, depending on a flat simplicity for its reason.’2 In these works Preston described her wish to achieve a ‘simmering’ effect that adequately conveyed the ‘rough and tumble’ nature of the native bush, ‘without design or any other purpose than that of covering space, as the natives do on their well-covered rock paintings.’3

1 M. Preston, ‘Aboriginal art’, Art in Australia, Sydney, June 1941, p. 46.

2 S. Ure Smith, Margaret Preston’s Monotypes, opp. plate 9.

3 ibid., opp. plate 18.

Geoffrey Smith