2009 AAANZ Conference Abstracts - The Art Association of Australia ...

successful expatriates. Longstaff was commissioned by Earl
Beauchamp in 1902 to paint the portrait as a gift to Sydney Art
Gallery. In response, the women of Sydney raised the funds for
him to also paint Queen Alexandra. Lambert’s equestrian portrait
of King Edward VII was commissioned by the Imperial Colonial
Club in 1910.
As good portraitists, both were expected to not simply
reproduce a visual appearance, but to reveal something of the
sitter’s personality. As access to royalty was extremely limited
this was a problem which forced the artists to improvise. The
process of combing memory and photography is evident in
Longstaff’s case; he received only an hour sitting with the king
and none with the queen, compiling much of his details during
his attendance of the coronation. Similarly, Lambert’s work
required an inventive combination of studies of the horse in the
royal stables, supplemented by photographs.
When Longstaff’s works were unveiled in Sydney in 1905 it
was a grand affair, with flags draped across the works, and an
artillery band playing the national anthem as they were unveiled.
This event affirmed imperial loyalty and also revealed the
perceived importance of the British hierarchy. Importantly, these
commissions allowed both artists to establish a position in this
hierarchy, and so garner further patronage.
Kate Robertson is currently doing a PhD in the department of
Art History and Film Studies at the University of Sydney. She
is researching expatriate Australian artists between 1890 and
1914, focussing in particular on the processes of travel and the
negotiation of national, gendered and artistic identities. She was the
National Library of Australia’s Seymour Summer Scholar for 2009.
It seems that many of the debates which still haunt the Archibald
emerged from the less fashionable corners of the Archibald
exhibition, rather than (but not necessarily to the exclusion of)
the winners’ circle. Big versus small. The role of women as
subject and / or portraitists. Celebrity subjects and / or family
members. Society matrons or working class heroes. Australia
versus New Zealand or the Old World.
Otherwise, the entries’ subjects capture the spirit of the times.
The age of Antarctic explorers, aviation pioneers, Bulletin poets,
flappers and silent film stars made its mark on the walls of the
gallery. During the 1940s a new generation of men and women
achieved this distinguished status, often in horrifying situations
Eric Riddler is a writer and researcher who has worked on the
art prizes database of the Art Gallery of New South Wales since
2002, as well as other projects, including research work for the
National Portrait Gallery’s Presence and Absence exhibition,
curated by Deborah Edwards, and the Dictionary of Australian
Artists Online.
6. Preferentially Distinguished: Subject and Status in the
Early Days of the Archibald Prize (1921-1945)
Eric Riddler
For about a quarter of a century the exhibition which
accompanied the Archibald Prize announcement at the
then National Art Gallery of New South Wales was, with few
exceptions, open to all eligible entries. Although the actual
prizewinning was dominated by an almost exclusively male
(and almost exclusively Melburnian) group of artists, the range
of artists who entered the prize and the subjects they chose
for their portraits reveal a broad interpretation of what it was to
be ‘preferentially distinguished’ in the society of early twentieth
century Australasia.
Looking at all the entries, not just the winners, the Archibald
exhibition emerges as an interesting development of J. F.
Archibald’s idiosyncratic yet influential ideas of an Australasian
character.
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