Grace Cossington Smith - National Gallery of Australia

INTERIORS
Grace Cossington Smith
Interior with wardrobe mirror 1955
oil on canvas on paperboard
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney © AGNSW
Photographed by Ray Woodbury for AGNSW
During the 1950s Grace Cossington Smith was spending most of her time at home in Turramurra
nursing her sister Diddy, who had suffered a stroke. Advised by a friend to increase the size of her
paintings, Cossington Smith’s fi rst large interior, Interior with verandah doors, was painted in 1954. All
of the following interiors have a similar personal, but unpopulated, appearance. The artist is invisibly
present; she captures her own memories and dreams in these images of rooms in the family home.
Her presence is felt in the open cupboards, the rug, books and paintings that make her room
personal. Pictures within pictures, views through windows and refl ected in mirrors typify Cossington
Smith’s works from this point.
Interior with wardrobe mirror was painted in 1955 when the artist was 63. The dramatic use of
diagonal planes creates a composition that is both visually complex and intellectually intriguing.
Although by this stage Cossington Smith was no longer relying on sketches to prepare her
compositions, the careful placement of angled forms that touch and refl ect each other indicates
that the composition was carefully worked out prior to painting.
Visual analysis
The open cupboard door and the bed on the right are both cropped, bringing the viewer right
into the space of the painting. The artist’s characteristic use of diagonals in her composition lead
the eye to the bottom point of the mirrored door. The mirror refl ects the bed, verandah and sunny
garden beyond the room, and hidden behind the mirror is the suggestion of another door leading
to another part of the house.
Cossington Smith’s use of small, square brushstrokes capture a shimmering light with their
fragmented colours, however, in this work they do follow the direction of the form evident on the
fl oor and rug. The artist stated in an interview with Hazel de Berg in 1965: ‘I use squares in the way
I paint … because I feel in that way … light can be put into the colour, whereas just to put colour
onto the surface in a fl at way, I feel that it gives it a dead look.’
Discussion points
•Discuss the way Grace Cossington Smith reveals not only her environment but her personality
in this painting.
•Cossington Smith was a painter of light. Discuss.