IN THE STUDIO, c.1924
LINDSAY BERNARD HALL
oil on canvas
105.5 x 81.0 cm
signed lower right: B. Hall
signed and inscribed with title on label verso: In the Studio/ L. Bernard Hall. / Melbourne
bears inscription on plaque: ‘IN THE STUDIO’
framer's label attached verso: John Thallon, Melbourne
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1924, exchanged for The Studio Party in 1926
The artist, Melbourne
Thence by descent
The artist’s daughter
Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above c.1975
Deutscher~Menzies, Melbourne, 21 August 2000, lot 81
The Cbus Collection of Australian Art, Melbourne, acquired from the above
Exhibition of Paintings by L. Bernard Hall, Athenaeum Hall, Melbourne, 25 October – 15 November 1927, cat. 43
Exhibition of Paintings by L. Bernard Hall, Athenaeum Hall, Melbourne, 6 – 16 August 1930, cat. 43
Exhibition of Paintings by the late Lindsay Bernard Hall, Block Gallery, Melbourne, 24 August 1971, cat. 22
Figurative Works from the Cbus Collection, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Victoria, 4 August – 2 December 2012
on long term loan to Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria
‘Art Exhibitions: Mr Hall’s Paintings’, The Argus, Melbourne, 18 October 1927, p. 20
Sun News Pictorial, Melbourne, 18 October 1927, p. 22
‘Art Notes: A Varied Exhibition’, The Age, Melbourne, 18 October 1927, p. 7
Taylor, A., Perils of the studio: inside the artistic affairs of bohemian Melbourne, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2007, pp. 145 (incorrectly cited as ‘fig. 136’), 147 (illus.)
Nainby, B., Stanhope, Z., and Furlonger, K., The Cbus Collection of Australian Art, in association with Latrobe Regional Gallery, Melbourne, 2009, pp. 18, 51 (illus.), 220
Rankin, G., L. Bernard Hall: the man the art world forgot, Newsouth Publishing, Newsouth, Sydney, 2013, pl. 4 (illus.)
Lindsay Bernard Hall was the Director and Painting Instructor at the National Gallery School in Melbourne for an incredible forty-three years from 1892. He also occupied the position of Director of Paintings at the National Gallery of Victoria. His teaching partnership with Drawing Master Frederick McCubbin (until the latter’s death in 1917) provided a stimulating and enriching environment that produced many of Australia’s most notable artists from the next generations. Hall’s own style was unavowedly academic, based on his training in Antwerp, London and, particularly, the Munich academy. Before arriving in Australia, he exhibited at the Royal Academy and New English Art Club, and with the Royal British Artists.
During his tenure at the Gallery School, Hall maintained a studio on the southern side of the State Library of Victoria building (which also housed the School and Art Gallery). Dominated by a large arched window, seen to great effect in In the studio, c.1924, the room dazzled visitors with its ‘bronzes, the antique chairs, the cosy settees in a half-light, (and) the hanging draperies, (which gave) it a delicious sense of Eastern languor.’1 Hall used his colleague Septimus Power, who had a studio in nearby Grosvenor Chambers, as the central model, with Hall’s wife Grace acting as the artist’s subject, and two of their children occupying the large settee at the rear.
1. ‘Art notes: round the studios’, The Age, 26 June 1925, p.12
ANDREW GAYNOR