Deutscher and Hackett

‘The religious experience should not be confused with the spiritual experience...’¹

When Justin O'Brien was awarded the inaugural Blake Prize for Religious Art in Sydney in 1951, he was formally recognised as one of Australia’s leading religious painters. Notably, the prizewinning painting, The Virgin Enthroned, 1951, was subsequently acquired through the Felton Bequest by the National Gallery of Victoria, being greatly admired for its Byzantine riches – ‘a superb, eye-enchanting fiesta of colour burning with oriental splendour…’² Indeed, it could be argued that were it not for the creation of the Blake Prize, the odds of modernism could have worked more pronouncedly against O’Brien – despite his exceptional knowledge of, and sympathies for, French Post-Impressionism. However, certain passionate supporters, realising that there was much more to the artist’s vision than mere biblical illustration, kept his motivation alive against a burgeoning secular mainstream and the rising tide of abstraction. Writing in 1947, Harry Tatlock Miller noted: ‘Palpitating with kaleidoscopic patterns of harmonies and dissonances of colour, the massed effect of Justin O’Brien’s painting is like an incessant madrigal which stimulates to the point of intoxication.’³ And in 1950, James Gleeson similarly enthused: ‘The canvas is saturated with colour, yet never spills over into chaos, for the control is assured and complete. O’Brien uses colour as a composer uses sound.’⁴

Painted in Sydney at a time when O’Brien and his peers were reaping the artistic rewards of affordable international travel and unfettered access to original masterpieces, thus The Resurrection, c.1956 reflects O’Brien’s predilection for classical subject matter and techniques, gleaned from his firsthand experience of Italian Renaissance art in Florence and Siena during his European sojourn of 1948 – 50. As O’Brien later reflected, ‘It was in Siena… where I first really had a proper aesthetic experience, the first time I really felt design and colours.’⁵ Inspired particularly by the sumptuous palette of the Byzantine-influenced Sienese artist, Duccio, and the serene humanism and aura of stillness espoused by Quattrocento master Piero della Francesca, such works encapsulate well the artist’s distinctive, highly stylised pictorial style which included the embrace of non-representational primary colour, refusal of linear perspective, and a geometric flattening of the pictorial plane. Whether interpreting a biblical scene within the landscape, as in the present case, or portraying a naturalistic still life, indeed his works suggest the deeply felt moment, irrespective of time; as Sasha Grishin observes, ‘O’Brien balances the extreme emotionalism of the subject matter with the utmost restraint and depersonalised treatment to create a profound sense of pathos.’⁶

1. O’Brien cited in Grishin, S., Justin O’Brien: A Survey Exhibition 1938 – 1999, Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane, 2006, p. 15
2. Michael Scott cited in Crumlin, R., The Blake Prize for Religious Art – The First 25 Years. A Survey, Monash University, Melbourne, 1984, p. 7
3. Tatlock Miller, H., ‘Recent Paintings by Justin O’Brien’, Art and Design, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1949, pp. 6 – 7 
4. Gleeson, cited in Pearce, B. and Wilson, N., Justin O’Brien: The Sacred Music of Colour, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2010, p. 61
5. O'Brien, cited in France, C., Justin O'Brien: Image and Icon, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1997, p. 17
6. Grishin, op. cit., p. 9

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