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arta b i a n n u a l m a g a z i n e f o r c o l l e c t o r s o f m a t e r i a l c u l t u r e

Antiques &world

SEPTEMBER 2013 – FEBRUARY 2014ISSUE 85AUSTRALIA $16.95 NZ $20.95SINGAPORE $20.00 UK £7.00

US $13.00 €10.50

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Innovative British artist Bruce Munro inspired by youthful sojourns Down Under

Terry Ingram assesses the impact on Australian art by recently closed London dealer Agnew’s

Collecting sartorial elegance of the Hollywood variety

112 AROUND THE AUCTIONS

ART60 The Young Dürer

Elspeth Moncrieff

70 Home grown – Miles Evergood:

the rediscovery of an Australian artist

Gael Hammer

80 James McNeill Whistler:

An American’s love of the Thames

Margaret F MacDonald

96 John Glover’s trip to the coast

John McPhee

ARTNEWS28 Agnew’s and the Australian connection

Terry Ingram

66 The Venice Biennale 2013

Vivienne Sharpe and Tim McCormick

119 CONTRIBUTORS

DECORATIVE ARTS AND DESIGN18 A sartorial tale: Evening wear for men –

the style and the times

John Hawkins

34 Joseph Hamblin: an excellent 19th century craftsman

Dr Dorothy Erickson

42 A silk pilgrimage to Lyon

Eleanor Keene

100 Combs: from pre-dynastic Egypt

to modern-day Black Power movement

Sally-Ann Ashton

106 Master of Light

Abigail Bryant

4 EDITORIAL

HERITAGE48 Goodwood: the French Connection

James Peill

54 Great architectural draughtsmen of the past

Dr Jerzy J Kierkuć-Bieliński

88 East End Stories: The Parrish Art Museum

Dr Alicia Longwell

8 Scots in Australia: from First Fleet to Federation

Gordon Morrison

120 INDEX OF ADVERTISERS

COVERGeorgiana Huntly McCrae

(England/Australia 1804-1890),

Self-portrait aged 20, 1824,

watercolour on ivory, 8.5 x 6.7 cm.

State Library of Victoria,

La Trobe Manuscript Collection.

Cowper Bequest

2 World of Antiques & Art

CONTENTS


Terry Ingram

The curtain has fallen on the art dealership

which put one of Millais’ most saccharine

works Puss in Boots on show in

Melbourne 123 years ago. The work may

eventually have ended up in Dundee, but through

Agnew’s Gallery many more serious art works

now reside permanently in Australian collections.

The closure of Agnew’s in London’s Mayfair

has severed yet another valuable direct link

between Australian collectors and the

international art market. Since 1888 when Puss

in Boots showing a young girl with kittens

playing in boots, was exhibited at the Melbourne

Centennial Exhibition along with works by other

fashionable painters of the day, Agnew’s has

pursued among its peers a rare devotion to the

Australian art market.

Not many of the works they handled were as

kitsch as Puss in Boots nor did others rise quite to

the stature of Titian’s truly iconic Rokeby Venus

which the gallery steered into London’s National

Gallery. But Australia’s national patrimony has been

much enhanced by access to an ever changing stock

of art that has turned up in the course of Agnew’s

work over more than a century.

The gallery will be remembered by older

visitors when it was in Old Bond Street with its

plush velvet curtains and wall coverings. The

curtains came down there in the 1990s. In its last

days the gallery was a stone’s throw away from

the original in much smaller premises on

Albermale Street. There it was managed in its

final days principally as a contemporary gallery

Sir Joshua Reynolds (English 1723-1792), Miss Sara Campbell, 1778, oil on canvas,

124.3 x 99 cm. Illustrated on catalogue cover of Paintings and Drawings from Agnew’s, London,

28 March-19 April 1973

The famous London dealer Agnew’s has closed its doors for the last time. Uniquely among European dealers it concentrated on the Australian market and throughits exhibitions in Sydney many major works entered Australian collections

AGNEW’SAND THE AUSTRALIANCONNECTION


Jerzy Kierkuc -Bielinski

In 1809, Sir John Soane opened his collections

of architectural models, antiquities, casts after

the antique and architectural drawings to his

students at the Royal Academy for their study.

As Professor of Architecture at the Royal

Academy, and as one of the foremost architects

working in Britain, he was very conscious of the

central importance of architectural drawing to

both students and practising architects. The

architectural drawing was a tool for exploring

architectural ideas, it was a way of explaining

structure, mass, volume and ornament and it was

a tool for recording buildings.

By his death in 1837, Soane had amassed a

collection of 30,000 architectural drawings,

including works by some of the most significant

architects that Britain has produced such as Sir

The recently opened Museum für Architecturzeichnung in Berlin houses the collectionof architectural drawings formed by the architect Sergei Tchoban. He shares much incommon with the nineteenth-century architect and collector Sir John Soane

GREAT ARCHITECTURALDRAUGHTSMEN

OF THE PAST

Johann Philipp Eduard Gaertner (1801-1877), View of St Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow,1838 © Tchoban Foundation

World of Antiques & Art 55

Christopher Wren, Sir John Vanburgh, Nicholas

Hawksmoor and Robert Adam. These drawings,

along with his entire collections and the house-

museum he designed to house them, were left to

the British nation by Private Act of Parliament in

1833. Through his desire to educate students,

professionals and the public about architecture

Sir John Soane created the world’s first and

oldest architectural museum.

The St Petersburg-born and Berlin-based

architect Sergei Tchoban also champions the

centrality of architectural drawing, both in his

working practice and also in his role as a

collector and as the founder of Europe’s newest

museum of architecture. In 2009, Sergei created

a foundation that would promote architectural

drawing. As he explained:

‘Today a hand-drawing is never required for

the realisation of an airport, an item of

designer furniture, a football stadium or a

façade. We cannot afford to lose such a

powerful medium if today’s architecture is to

endure like its forebears in antiquity. The

drama and emotion of the drawing can

convey a feeling and a vision for a building

that will persuade and inspire clients and lovers

of art and architecture for centuries to come.’

In June 2013, his collection of historical and

modern architectural drawings, which to date

encompass some 600, were transferred to the

newest museum of architecture in Europe — the

Museum für Architecturzeichnung, Berlin. Like

the Soane, the museum has also been designed

by the architect whose collection it houses. It is

the first privately founded museum in Germany

and is also the first museum there to be solely

dedicated to architectural drawing. Like the

Soane, it is a unique institution and over the

coming decades the collection of drawings will

grow and expand.

The present exhibition draws upon some of the

great treasures from the Tchoban Foundation, in

particular, Russian and German architects, from

the seventeenth through to the twentieth

centuries. Germany and Russia have long been

linked dynastically, culturally and economically

by trade through their northern ports on the

Baltic Sea and architects have played their role

Museum fürArchitecturzeichnung,Berlin

Detail: Museum fürArchitecturzeichnung,Berlin

SALLY-ANN ASHTON

The origins of the ‘Afro’ pick are thousands

of years old and in fact it was community

responses to a 3,500 year old comb that

prompted the research for the present

exhibition. Found in a burial at the site of Abydos

in Egypt (Fig. 1) this comb was carved from

animal bone by an unknown artist and features a

cultural symbol on the handle in the form of a set

of bull’s horns. Although at first glance these two

COMBSFROM PRE-DYNASTIC EGYPT

TO MODERN-DAY BLACK POWER MOVEMENT


The afro comb originated 6,000 years ago and has made a great impact on world-wideculture. From archaelogicol finds to modern work these combs of remarkable beauty forma crucial insight into our understanding of culture across Africa and the Diaspora

Above: (Fig.1) Egypt: Earlydynastic period (1st-2nd Dynasty

3400–2980 BCE), comb madeof animal bone. recovered from

burial site at Abydos, decoratedwith cultural symbol in the form

of a set of bull's horns.Fitzwilliam Museum

Right: Wooden (ebony) haircomb. Combs featuring similardecoration have been found in

Zanzibar, South Africa, Nigeria, East Africa and Egypt.

Fitzwilliam Museum

Far right: Iconic black fist comb designed by

Anthony R. Romani in 1972

combs probably appear to have little in common,

other than their form, the people who created

them both chose to imbue the comb with a

cultural symbol. In doing so, the combs take on a

new meaning beyond simply being a useful tool

for maintaining and combing hair.

The earliest hair combs were found in Sudan

over 6,000 years ago and it appears from the

excavations of burials that they were associated

with status.1 Hair combs were buried with men,

women and children and by the fourth

millennium BCE had seemingly become an

important accessory for the After Life, along

with other cosmetic items.

It is during the earliest periods of African

history that we find the most frequent

occurrences of hair combs in graves, and the

most variations in form and decorative motifs. In

addition to the previously mentioned bull’s

horns, birds, quadrupeds and human figures

were also used to decorate the handles. Many of

the combs from this period are smaller than

modern combs and it was initially suggested that

they functioned as decorative hair pieces rather

than tools for combing or styling the hair. In

addition to combs, hairpins were also commonly

found in graves in Ancient Egypt and Sudan.

There is a gap of around 600 years in the

sequence of hair combs from this region, probably

as a result of changing burial practices rather than

of people not using hair combs. When the combs

re-emerge in the second millennium BCE they are

generally of a different form. The more traditional

vertical combs also continued to be produced into

the Late Period in Egypt and until the present day

in Nubia and Sudan. With mass settlement from

outside cultures came changes in the design of

hair combs in Egypt. The most obvious difference

was that the gaps between the teeth, which are

often narrower than on the earlier combs and the

teeth are also shorter, signifying a change in hair

type and/or length.

Another significant difference during the later

periods of Egyptian history is that the decoration

on the handles no longer shows the deities of

earlier civilisations, on account of the change in

religion. Some human and animal figures

continue to be featured on combs following

the adoption of Christianity, but during the

Islamic period most hair combs are decorated

with geometric or floral designs; some

occasionally have writing on them.

A number of traditional cultural groups from

the area of modern day Nigeria offer important

evidence for the styling of African hair and hair

combs. The earliest among these is the Nok

culture, dating from around 500 BCE to 200

CE.2 The elaborate hairstyles on sculptures

representing Nok people show that hair was an

important aspect of appearance. This tradition

continued throughout time but it is not until the

Kingdom of Benin that we find evidence of hair


Above left: Ashanti, Ghana,comb showing female figurewearing necklace with cross,a reference to change fromtraditional animistic religionto Christianity

Above right: Kingdom ofBenin, ivory comb, h: 31.5 cm. The image ofhorseman represents statusand wealth, the comb hasbeen linked to royalty

Gael Hammer

Born Myer Blashki in Melbourne, 1871,

the eleventh of fourteen children, his

family moved four times in his first

eight years setting a pattern for his life.

He was never able to settle anywhere or find a

place he belonged.1

Myer’s father, Phillip, was born Favel

Wagczewski in Russian-controlled Poland in

1837. Immigrating to England before his

eighteenth birthday, he was probably avoiding the

twenty-five year military conscription imposed

by Czar Nicholas I on all first-born male Jews.

Favel found employment in Manchester with a

tassel maker who encouraged him to change his

name to the more pronounceable Phillip Blashki.

The Australian artist Miles Evergood (1871–1939) spent the formative years ofhis career in America and Europe, only returning to Australia in 1931. His workas a vibrant colourist was well received by his fellow countrymen

HOME GROWNMILES EVERGOOD

THE REDISCOVERY OF AN AUSTRALIAN ARTIST

Miles Evergood(1871–1939), SelfPortrait, c.1938,etching, 13 x 6.2 cm.Private collection

Miles Evergood (1871–1939), Queensland landscape, c. 1932, oil on board, 30.5 x40.7 cm


In 1857 Phillip married Warsaw-born Hannah

Immergut Potash, a widow with an infant, and

together they planned a new life in America.

The ship they had booked passage on left

without them but with all their worldly goods;

in exchange, they were offered passage to

Australia, arriving in 1858.

From that unplanned journey onwards came a

series of devastating misfortunes, eventually

followed by success for his masonic regalia firm

P. Blashki & Sons, which is possibly best known

for being engraved on the Sheffield Shield, often

considered the most significant piece of

Australian-made silver. It was designed and

made in 1894 in Phillip’s Melbourne workshop

and is still the prize for the annual interstate

cricket competition. An earlier example of

important Blashki silver is the Hordern Shield

awarded for cricket competitions in Sydney.

Myer’s first art show was said to have been

when he was fifteen. However, it was his ability

with horses that suggested to his father that an

army career could be appropriate as a career in

art was not even to be contemplated. Myer

enlisted as a lieutenant in the 2nd Regiment,

Victorian Mounted Rifles under Colonel

Templeton, training with Captain John Monash of

the Artillery. But his consuming passion was art.

Myer’s brother Aaron, eleven years his senior,

was instrumental in introducing Myer to his

theatre friends who probably issued the invitation

for Myer to join painting excursions at the

Heidelberg cottage of theatrical entrepreneur

Charles Tait. When Myer was showing

characteristic stubbornness about following a

career as an artist, it would likely have been

Aaron who would have suggested photography.

Aaron, now living in Sydney, had a financial

interest in the popular portrait photographers,

Falk Studios. So, Myer, aged twenty, became a

photographer’s apprentice.

Where he learned much about portraiture,

eventually becoming a skilled photographer. His

Sydney earnings, despite all parental and sibling

censure, enabled his enrolment in the drawing

class of Frederick McCubbin at the School of Art,

National Gallery of Victoria, in 1892. That year’s

class included Max Meldrum, George Coates,

Leon ‘Sonny’ Pole, James Quinn, George Bell,

Right: Miles Evergood (1871–1939), Flame tree,Brisbane, c.1931, watercolour, 24.5 x 34.7 cm

Bottom right: Miles Evergood (1871–1939),Wattle and gum, c. 1932, oil on board, 30.5 x 40.7 cm

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