Deutscher and Hackett

Clarice Beckett painted several works featuring the Yarra River during the middle of the 1920s. By selecting a simple subject of the trees and river, she was able to transform the subject through tone into one of light and shade. Writing about Beckett in a feature article in The Age at this time, art critic Alexander Colquhoun states, ‘when Miss Clarice Beckett held her first show at the Athenaeum gallery in 1923, her work certainly found admirers, but the admiration was by no means general, and there was a good deal of confusion in the public mind as to whether she was a futurist, or only a new and dangerous variety of Meldrumite.’¹ Neither her work, nor her way of working are, however, in any respect uncertain; rather merely the results of a sincere and reverent observation of Nature.

As her teacher and mentor Max Meldrum observed following Beckett’s memorial exhibition in 1936 ‘the late Miss Beckett had done work of which any nation could be proud. No European critic would say that Miss Beckett belonged to any particular school, and that would be the highest compliment one could bestow. She ranked as a great artist.’²

1. Colquhoun, A., ‘Australian Artists of To-Day: Miss Clarice Beckett’, The Age, Melbourne, 18 July 1931, p. 7 
2. Meldrum, M., ‘Work of Clarice Beckett’, The Age, Melbourne, 5 May 1936, p. 9