British Art for Australia, 1860-1953: The Acquisition of Artworks from the United Kingdom by Australian National Galleries, by Matthew C. Potter

Abstract

Reviewed by: British Art for Australia, 1860–1953: The Acquisition of Artworks from the United Kingdom by Australian National Galleries by Matthew C. Potter Sarah Scott (bio) British Art for Australia, 1860–1953: The Acquisition of Artworks from the United Kingdom by Australian National Galleries, by Matthew C. Potter; pp. x + 254. London and New York: Routledge, 2019, £120.00, $160.00. British Art for Australia, 1860–1953: The Acquisition of Artworks from the United Kingdom by Australian National Galleries by Matthew C. Potter provides a detailed study into the acquisitions of the Australian national galleries in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Adelaide, an area of study that has not previously been covered in any detail. In so doing it gives insight into British-Australian relations more broadly and challenges the assumption that "British art was forced on Australia as cast offs" (227). Instead, Potter suggests that the acquisition of works required "complex transcultural negotiations" that led to "the Australian colonists freely taking inspiration from U. K. examples in order to establish their own identities" (42). British models were central not only to the shape of the collections but also to the establishment of governing structures and the architectural and curatorial approaches of the national galleries themselves. Potter identifies when and how the national galleries were established and gives a brief history of the relevant bequests to the galleries, looking into how these shaped the opportunities available to, and the collections formed by, these institutions. The book is divided into two sections. In the first part, Potter looks at "structural and contextual themes" and examines how British values were reflected in the acquisitions of works for the national galleries, in addition to the impact and constraints of the global market on the purchase of British artworks for Australia (10). The book is most engaging when it pursues the ideologies behind the purchases of pictures for the national galleries. [End Page 277] For this reason, I found the second thematic part of the book more interesting than the first. Here Potter examines the acquisitions of British Old Masters and landscape painting, Pre-Raphaelite art, and British modernism by the national galleries. The dominance of British art within the collections, Potter suggests, was not so much due to a desire by British advisors and buyers to "dump" second rate art on the dominions but because Australians saw themselves as British-Australians (5). As British immigrants or first generation Australians, the population still had a strong sentimental attachment to Britain, even if this diminished over the course of the time under investigation in this volume. Many of the works acquired, such as the first Pre-Raphaelite work to enter an Australian collection, Chaucer at the Court of Edward III (1847–51) by Ford Maddox Brown, were seen to be of educational value, illustrating in this case "the birth of the English language in the person of Chaucer" (176). Civic humanism was also an ideology that supported the acquisition of British art. Gallery acquisitions of British art reflected changing attitudes toward what it meant to be British and the nature of Britishness. The debates surrounding identity came to the fore around the attempted acquisition of works like Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50) by John Everett Millais. Frank Rinder, the selector for the Felton Bequest, was particularly influential given that the Bequest of £378,033 to the National Gallery of Victoria allowed the gallery to purchase works of art that were not within the budget of other, less wealthy Australian galleries. He argued that British paintings such as Christ in the House of his Parents would be capable of promoting a "spiritual entente" between the center and the Antipodes of the Empire (186). Rinder also argued that Australians' sacrifices during the First World War made Australia eligible for the picture. Ultimately, though, the National Art Collections Fund and the Tate Gallery opposed the NGV's attempts to acquire the picture. The war poet Siegfried Sassoon and other celebrities supported this stance, with Sassoon arguing, "It would indeed be a great pity if the picture were allowed to go out of England" (qtd. in Potter 187). The volume summarizes an enormous amount...