SELF PORTRAIT, 1950
MAX MELDRUM
oil on composition board
61.0 x 51.0 cm
signed and dated lower right: Meldrum / 1950
bears inscription verso: Tartan / MELDRUM
Estate of Max Meldrum, Melbourne
Thence by descent
Private collection, Melbourne
Archibald Prize 1950, National Art Gallery of N.S.W., Sydney, 20 January – 4 March 1951
Twenty Melbourne Painters: 35th Annual Exhibition, Athenaeum Art Gallery, Melbourne, 15 – 26 September 1953, cat. 49
A Retrospective Exhibition of the Paintings of Max Meldrum, National Art Gallery of N.S.W., Sydney, July – August 1954; and touring to Queensland National Art Gallery, Brisbane, August – September 1954, and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, September – October 1954, cat. 45
Max Meldrum & Associates Their Art, Lives and Influences, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria, 1 February – 15 March 1998; and touring regionally, cat. 13
Max Meldrum and Family, Victorian Artists Society Gallery, Melbourne, 23 October – 4 November 1998, cat. 58 (as 'Check Dressing Gown - Self Portrait')
Archibald Prize Illustrated 1950, National Art Gallery of N.S.W., McLaren & Co., Melbourne, January 1951, pl. 22 (illus., n. p.)
'Exhibition opens', Brisbane Telegraph, Brisbane, 25 August 1954, p. 24 (illus.)
We are grateful to Peter Perry for his assistance with this catalogue entry.
Max Meldrum had submitted twenty-two portraits for the Archibald Prize from the first exhibition held in 1921 to his last in 1953, with six being self-portraits. Held by the Meldrum family, this work was exhibited in the 1950 Archibald Prize and illustrated in the accompanying publication. In 1939, Meldrum had won the Archibald Prize with a portrait of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable G.J. Bell, CMG, DSO, VD, commissioned by the Commonwealth Government in 1938. At the time, Will Ashton, Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and winner of the Wynne Prize, observed of his fellow artist friend: ‘I have known him for forty years and I have a great admiration for him and his work. He is a tremendously sincere painter with very definite views on art.’1 The following year, Meldrum again won the coveted Prize with a portrait of Dr. J. Forbes McKenzie, Vice-Chancellor, Melbourne University (now in the collection of St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne). In 1949, the year prior to the present entry, Meldrum had notably submitted another self-portrait depicting himself only in a pair of bathers. Later purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1977, the work was described by curator Natalie Wilson accordingly: ‘This semi-naked portrait of his seventy-five-year-old self-attracted frenzied attention, much to Meldrum’s vainglorious delight.’2
1. ‘Art Awards – Keen Competition’, The Age, 20 January 1940, p. 29
2. Wilson, N., ‘Archie 100: A Century of the Archibald Prize’, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2021, p. 170