Catalogue 63 New Century Antiquarian Books Late Spring 2012

around Sydney Ure Smith and David Lloyd Jones to guard this
Sydney brand of ‘modern’ included, among others more or less
notable, Thea Proctor, Hera Roberts, Margaret Preston, Adrian
Feint, Rayner Hoff, their ‘official’ photographer Harold Cazneaux,
and the architects John D. Moore, Hardy Wilson, and Leslie
Wilkinson. Although far from a ‘modern’, Norman Lindsay, that
other panjandrum of Sydney cultural dialectic, was welcomed at
the periphery. Rejecting convention but not commerce, these
Sydney ‘moderns’ were not revolutionary followers of the
European avant-garde, but had an uncomplicated admiration for
talent, taste, intelligence, and style, looking outward to America,
to Asia, and to the Mediterranean rather than to England. These
young ‘moderns’ carried out the pursuit and promotion of their
collective ideals through the pages of Ure Smith’s magazines, Art
in Australia and The Home, and did so with marked success. So
much so that it is to The Home that one instinctively looks when
seeking something representative of the ‘twenties and ‘thirties in
Australia.
After fourteen years, in 1934, Sydney Ure Smith sold his Art in
Australia and The Home publications to John Fairfax & Sons Ltd,
publishers of the Sydney Morning Herald. With the change of
ownership came some changes of style and direction. Surrealist
(November 1939, for instance) and almost dadaist cover images
(July 1936, for instance) made occasional appearances. In 1938
Ure Smith finally severed all connection with the magazine, which
continued into the 1940s but, facing both wartime austerity and
strong competition from international magazines, it finally ceased
publication in 1942.
See further Robert Holden, Cover Up: the art of magazine covers
in Australia (Sydney, 1995) for an excellent analysis of the context
and sub-text of cover art in The Home and its contemporaries.
* Advertisement for The Home, quoted without citation by Jill Julius
Matthews, “Review of Howard Tanner’s Thoroughly Modern Sydney:
1920s And 30s Glamour & Style”, History Australia, Volume 4, Number
1, 2007 (Monash University Epress).