Arthur STREETON

Australian 1867–1943
worked in England 1897–1919

For a while around 1890 painted tambourines were fashionable novelties in the Victorian drawing room. The art form was mostly the preserve of artistic young ladies, but a few professionals, including Charles Conder and Arthur Streeton, also tried their hand at it. Streeton’s tambourine is dashed off with a view of Tom Roberts’s studio in Grosvenor Chambers, at the top of Collins Street, Melbourne. During the first half of 1891, while Roberts was away painting in rural New South Wales, he gave Streeton the run of the studio. ‘It is so pleasant painting in your studio’, Streeton wrote to ‘Bulldog’ (Roberts) on 13 May, adding a little pen sketch of the interior (in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria) showing him pointing out the virtues of his Chrysanthemums, 1891 (Private collection), to two lady visitors.

Roberts’s studio was one of the best in Melbourne. A journalist left the following description of it about this time:

The walls are draped from frieze to floor with china blue muslin, through whose folds threads a convention- al pattern in white. This delicate tint of blue is apparent throughout the whole colouring of the apart- ment. It shows in the carpet, divan, and Oriental rugs, scattered here and there. Leopard skins, large Japanese vases filled with feathery grasses, an open harpsichord in a dimly lit recess, and an antique-looking music book resting on its stand, give a quaint, remote look to this quiet retreat.1

In the tambourine sketch, Streeton’s Chrysanthemums is just visible in the recess. In the foreground are two of his Heidelberg masterpieces: Spring, 1890 (in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria), on the easel and Near Heidelberg, 1890 (National Gallery of Victoria), propped up on the floor. The picture on the far left is The blue Pacific,1890 (Private collection).

1 Illustrated Sydney News, 1 August 1891, p. 6.

Terence Lane

Arthur Streeton worked in Sydney during extended visits in 1890, 1891 and 1892 before moving there in December 1892. He joined Tom Roberts at Curlew Camp on Sirius Cove, which had been established in 1890 or 1891 and was one of many bachelor camps with tent accommodation around Sydney Harbour, offering a mixture of holiday and permanent residence. Administered like boarding houses, with a manager, cook, and rules regarding appropriate behaviour, the camps were popular among young men who commuted by ferry from the North Shore to work in the city.

Streeton lived a frugal yet otherwise idyllic existence and spent his days exploring the beautiful surrounds of Sydney Harbour:

I live on here in Camp with 9 or 10 other boys sailing, getting sunburnt, painting a bit — & sometimes enjoy things a good deal, not in the wretched town, but here where I sit and write to you, from my tent door. The 12 o’clock (last ferry) is hammering her way over the dark flood & is just moving around Cremorne — the air is close, moths and spiders dart about the tent, my clock ticks away & I hear the post office (Sydney) booming out 12 (midnight) … & now I’ll get my towel & have a dive off our pier into the sea all brilliant with phosphorescence then smoke a pipe, think of you & all that was interesting in old Melbourne, then water my garden & turn in & lie all night in secure & sweet slumber, with the whole of the front of my tent open to the stars.1

Streeton completed a remarkable group of paintings on long drapers’ boards—thin panels with bevelled edges, placed inside bolts of cloth—which were cheaper than canvas. The dramatically elongated format allowed the artist to present aspects of the harbour that suggest a landscape viewed through the opening of a tent. In works such as Sydney Harbour, 1895, Streeton used the natural hues of the board to act as the background of the composition, at times leaving the wood exposed to suggest a negative definition of form, such as earth, rocks or shadows, that contrast with the vivid blue, green, yellow and white pigment. Due to its unusually intense palette, it is possible that Sydney Harbour was included in the first exhibition of the Society of Artists, in September 1895, as Colour study, where it was described as ‘in its way a triumph of art over natural difficulties’.2

1 Arthur Streeton to Theodore Fink, 31 December 1894, quoted in G. Smith, Arthur Streeton 1867–1943, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1995, p. 98.

2 Sydney Morning Herald, 27 September 1895, p. 2.

Geoffrey Smith

Painted in the same year, Scheherazade, 1895, is one of Streeton’s rare, historical, figurative subjects and depicts the narrator of the Arabian Nights. When his wife and sister-in-law proved unfaithful, the Sultan Schahriah, imagining that no woman was virtuous, resolved to marry a new wife every night and have her strangled at dawn. Scheherazade married him in spite of his treacherous vow and commenced, an hour before daybreak, to tell an intriguing story to her sister, Dinarzade, in the sultan’s hearing, breaking off before the tale was finished. The sultan grew interested in these tales and, after 1001 nights, revoked his decree, bestowed his affection on Scheherazade, and called her the liberator of her sex.

Streeton’s scintillating portrayal of a scantily clad, full-length figure in a transparent, flowing silk gown, with head averted from the viewer, invokes an exotic image of female beauty. The artist’s inclusion of a golden halo, normally reserved for religious iconography to denote a divine or sanctified person, resonates with a more Eastern philosophy, whereby it symbolised power rather than sanctity. Shown in Streeton’s Sydney Sunshine exhibition in Melbourne in December 1896, his risqué image personified the emerging ‘new’ woman of the 1890s, and captured the attention of contemporary reviewers:

No. 6, ‘Scheherazade,’ painted on panel, is Mr. Streeton’s only other figure picture, and she, in pose and expression, fully conveys the impression of the beautiful, clever and rather cunning woman who successfully held the attention of the brutal Caliph and saved her own and other lives.1

1 Sun, Melbourne, 11 December 1896, p. 14.

Geoffrey Smith