The Origins of the Abbey: 1947–1950

Abstract

One of the new models for thinking the production of art in a new decolonialised art history might be the artist colony. Certainly, in Australia, one of the revolutions Aboriginal art has brought about lies in the way it takes place in a series of artist colonies: self-identifying and -regulating cultural centres that have little or nothing to do with any imagined national art. Australian artists have been involved with any number of artist colonies throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, not just in Australia but around the world. This article will address just one: the Abbey Art Centre in New Barnet, just outside of London. Owned by gallerist and ethnographic art collector William Ohly, the complex of studios operated from the late 1940s until the late 1950s as the base for a generation of Australian artists and art historians, who enjoyed an entrée into the English art scene offered to no others either before or after. In particular, we examine the artists Robert Klippel, James Gleeson and Mary Webb, who stayed between 1947 and 1949, and the art historian Bernard Smith, who stayed between 1949 and 1950.