22 23 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 UNDER A MODERN SUN 1950s The 1950s saw significant shifts in artistic practice and appreciation in Queensland. An influential factor was the 1951 appointment of Robert Haines as director of the Queensland National Art Gallery. Haines was responsible for the Gallery’s major purchases of early modern European art, such as Pablo Picasso’s La Belle Hollandaise 1905. Moreover, the arrival in Brisbane of painters such as Blackman and Jon Molvig, the return of Margaret Cilento and Margaret Olley from overseas, and the emergence of new artistic voices, including that of watercolourist Joe Alimindjin Rootsey, enlivened visual culture in the state. A member of the Ama Wuriingu clan, Traditional Owners of the lands around Barrow Point in north Queensland’s Cape Melville National Park, Rootsey had worked for decades as a stockman and knew the route linking Laura, Lakeland and Cooktown intimately. While he was hospitalised in Cairns in 1954 with the tuberculosis that would eventually end his life, Rootsey’s skill as an artist came to the attention of medical social worker Joan Innes Reid, who became an advocate for his art. The following year, Rootsey’s work featured in the Royal Queensland Show, and in the Cairns Show in 1957. Two years on, his paintings of Country — informed by a deep, personal knowledge — were shown alongside works by other significant Queensland artists, including Kenneth Macqueen and Margaret Olley, at the Caltex Centenary Art Competition held in Brisbane’s City Hall. At the conclusion of Vida’s Lahey’s survey Art in Queensland 1859–1959, she remarked on the ‘static ideas of the past and the kaleidoscopic changes at present’. Her comment was perceptive, given the developments that occurred in the last three decades of this period. Advances were stimulated by public works that generated a sense of civic pride, and by the work of artists committed to contemporary practice. Through their efforts, art in Queensland advanced steadily through the 1930s and 1940s, with new ideas from Europe gradually finding acceptance; and then more rapidly in the 1950s. Significantly, the late 1950s saw broader recognition of Indigenous Australian artists through the work of painters like Joe Rootsey, whose artworks stand as testament to the resilience of his people. Through this multiplicity of voices, art in Queensland was enriched and expanded and continued to diversify over the coming decades. Samantha Littley is Curator, Australian Art. This is an edited adaptation of Samantha’s curatorial essay ‘Modernism comes to Queensland’, featured in the exhibition’s accompanying publication, which is proudly supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation. Endnotes 1 Gwendolyn Grant, from an unattributed press clipping dated 1929, quoted in Keith Bradbury and Glenn R Cooke, Thorns and Petals: 100 Years of the Royal Queensland Art Society, Royal Queensland Art Society, Brisbane, 1988, p.76. 2 Keith Bradbury and Glenn R Cooke, p.81. 3 ‘Tropic North Presented in Art’, Cairns Post, Cairns, 10 December 1940, p.9. 4 See Kylie Hadfield, ‘A road trip through wartime Queensland’, RSL Queensland, Brisbane, 3 August 2002, <https://rslqld.org/news/latest-news/aroadtrip-through-wartime-queensland>, viewed January 2025; and Robert Emerson Curtis, quoted in Michele Helmrich and Ross Searle, ‘The canvas of war’, Defending the North: Queensland in the Pacific War [exhibition catalogue], University Art Museum, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 2005, unpaginated. 5 Laurence Collinson, quoted in Bradbury and Cooke, p.88. 6 Stephen Rainbird, Breaking New Ground: Brisbane Women Artists of the Mid Twentieth Century [exhibition catalogue], Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Art Museum, Brisbane, 2007, p.57. From top WG Grant / Venetian blinds c.1946–51 / Purchased 1954; and Jon Molvig / The cattle grid 1958 / Bequest of Errol Blair de Normanville Joyce OBE 1983 From top Joe Rootsey / Barrow Point people, Ama Wuriingu clan / (Eastward from Bathurst Head) 1958 / Purchased 1993. Queensland Art Gallery Society; and Margaret Cilento / The immigrants 1951, reworked 1952 / Gift of the Margaret Olley Art Trust 1993 The richly illustrated 280-page publication Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s is now available from the QAGOMA Store and online at qagoma.qld.gov.au/store RRP $49.95 | Members $39.95
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