56 Sir Ivor Hele enjoyed a long, distinguished career as a painter. In 1926 he became the youngest member of the SA Society of the <strong>Art</strong>s. The following year, at just fifteen and his growing desire to rub palettes with the best in the world, led him to Europe. From the Académie Colarossi to La Grande Chaumière and the Académie Julian – the three great independent French art schools of the time – Hele jumped from one atelier to another. He was finally introduced to Louis-François Biloul, a painter of the Ingresian nude, who provided him with the structure and tuition he desired. After six months, he progressed to Munich where he refined his figurative and genre studies under the painter Moritz Heymann. Although Biloul and Heymann reinforced the strong classical bias already evident in Hele’s early practice, the young student returned to Australia sympathetic of international Modernist trends. He valued ‘artists that painted their inward emotions as opposed to older masters who merely painted what they perceived on the surface’ and predicted that ‘Australia will come to appreciate modern art as soon as enough of it appears in the salerooms.’ His work, however, in both style and subject, remained truer to academic principles of an earlier generation than those radical, vanguard ideas. Portraiture, mythological scenes, figurative imagery, still-life and flower studies were his principal themes. At 19, some critics already anticipated that he was ‘going to be the finest figure draughtsman that Australia has produced. Commissioned as an official WWII artist, not even Hele could have ever imagined the extent to which this appointment would define his career and make him one of the most collected and longest serving war artists of Australia. Never had an <strong>Australian</strong> artist captured the multi-faceted aspects of the grit of man at war with such brutal sincerity. National recognition led to a huge demand and private commissions of portraits, and between 1951 and 1957, he was awarded the Archibald Prize five times. He then retreated to an eremitic life at Aldinga – his long-time home and studio. The Farrier, 1974, was probably painted in the idyllic surrounds of Aldinga and the Fleurieu Peninsula. It is a unique picture that summons, in a single composition, the artist’s most cherished subjects: an action figure in a moment of physical labour, a striking horse, the female body and the sun-blazed <strong>Australian</strong> landscape. It is a synthesis of the principal imagery that, already by 1970, had made Hele, in the words of Lou Klepac, ‘probably the greatest academic painter in Australia’. The notable anatomical realism is the product of close observation and a first-hand understanding of his subjects. His pictures, noted Clive Turnbull, are ‘as forthright as the men portrayed in them’. Shoeing is an artform that Hele would have witnessed on countless occasions. Few artists painted the animal with such curvaceous accuracy. The horse is flanked by a holder, whose principal task it is to keep the animal from become skittish. Her presence is one of equal and conversely exaggerated sensualised femininity. It is a deliberate contrast to the burly and knobbly farrier and represents a classic dichotomy of gender performativity common in traditional, academic pictures. Her womanly body: slender, scantily clad and sun-scorched, is emphasised with a slight cock of the hip in contrapposto. Her face is obscured, creating a mystery of her identity. An inquisitive cat and a few vigilant chickens further enliven the busy, sun-drenched landscape. Everything is in its place and in perfect resounding harmony: the farrier’s elbow is doubled in the horses raised hind leg; his arched torso is replicated in the horse’s curved back and rippled again in the rolling hills; and the bend in the girl’s waist is mirrored in the horse’s lean towards her. Painted using a balanced combination of smooth, vigorous and expressive brushwork, Hele has chosen a light, high-key palette of bright yellows, toasty browns, white-washed pinks and faded blues: a colour scheme that perfectly captures the bright glare of the South <strong>Australian</strong> light. If it were not for the military footlocker, there would be nothing to suggest that this was a scene from the 20th century. After decades of painting the modern fighting man in the age of the machine, The Farrier, 1974, sums up Hele’s alternative vision of a more bucolic version of humanity, living in perfect balance with its environment. A world which – in Aldinga at least – was still very much preserved and real. Petrit Abazi 1. Hele largely circumvented commercial galleries and relied almost entirely on winning judged prizes, private commissions to sell of his pictures. See Gavin Fry Ivor Hele: the soldiers’ artist, <strong>Australian</strong> War Memorial, Canberra, 1984, p. 11. 2. ‘Epstein or Rodin?’, in News, Adelaide, 6 May 1931, p. 9. 3. So this is Adelaide, Adelaide, December 1931, p.5 cited in Gavin Fry Ivor Hele: the soldiers’ artist, <strong>Australian</strong> War Memorial, Canberra, 1984, p. 11. 4. The <strong>Australian</strong> War Memorial in Canberra alone has 492 works by Hele in its collection. 5. Lou Klepac, cited in Gavin Fry Ivor Hele: the soldiers’ artist, <strong>Australian</strong> War Memorial, Canberra, 1984, p. 30.
57 146 146 SIR IVOR HELE (1912-1993) The Farrier 1974 oil on board signed and dated lower right: Ivor Hele / 74 44.5 x 59.5cm PROVENANCE Collection of the artist, South Australia Private collection, Adelaide (since 1975) OTHER NOTES Accompanied by sale receipt, signed by the artist, dated 3 February 1975 $20,000–30,000
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