The names Ethel Carrick (1872-1952) and Anne Dangar (1885-1951) are known by a few, but not nearly as widely as they should be, given their contribution to the canon of Australian art history.
Paired solo exhibitions – which have been shaped by new research and five years of curatorial endeavour – have opened at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) this week.
Unusually for women of their generation, Carrick and Dangar both contributed greatly to the European avant-garde movement. Dangar was part of the artist community of Moly-Sabata in rural France (created by the cubist painter Albert Gleizes). She was a key figure in the Cubism movement there for more than two decades.
Carrick was an intrepid traveller and her light-filled colourful paintings captured the Belle Époque, capturing en plein air the city and garden scapes of Paris, Italy, Spain, India and Northern Africa.
She was among the first artists to introduce a Post-Impressionist approach to Australia, and this exhibition is the first major look at her work since 1979. Curator Dr Deborah Hart attempts to rebalance the narrative, giving her oeuvre due credit alongside household names such as Thea Proctor, Grace Cossington Smith and Margaret Preston. If we are to gauge that reputation by output alone, then this exhibition is convincing, with over 140 of Carrick’s paintings on display.
What is exciting about these two women is that they were fierce individual voices, and painted and exhibited alongside their male colleagues of the early 20th century. Indeed, Carrick chose to paint under her maiden name, not adopting the name of her husband, painter Emanuel Phillips Fox. We have to remember this was at a time when most art schools didn’t even accept women students. She studied at the esteemed Slade School in London, and her paintings were shown in the Paris Salons. It was actually Carrick – not Fox – who was the boldest in the ‘new’ style, and was heralded when she and Fox first visited Melbourne in 1908. And yet, that place in Australian history faded with time.
After Fox died, Carrick not only continued to travel on her own, but settled in Tunisia from 1919-1920. These paintings offer a particularly sensitive and confident chapter in this exhibition, and a point of difference to her much-loved beach scenes, such as Christmas Day on Manly Beach, (1913).
With a similar gutsy focus, the Sydney-born Dangar embedded herself in the French pottery scene. She was an avid chronicler, and it was the acquisition of her archival materials in 2012 that was the trigger that led curator Dr Rebecca Edwards to bring her work to light for Australian audiences. Much of that material is on display in her exhibition.
Edwards says: “By privileging Dangar’s voice and excavating her life, process and practice through primary material, this exhibition seeks to definitively claim her position at the centre of Australian Modernism, rather than at the periphery,” adding, “she stands as one of the most unwaveringly dedicated, impactful and truly modern Australian artists.”
Walking through this exhibition one would have to agree.
These adjacent exhibitions buzz with a prolific passion. From a design point, however, they are quite different experiences.
While the flow of the hang for Carrick’s paintings is largely chronological, it feels equally thematic. She liked to repeat a scene, and Hart has clustered these to help focus the viewer’s eye. Viewers move from her repeated studies of markets, to French beach scenes, to architecture and courtyards in Spain and North Africa, to her late still lifes.
Presented in traditional gold frames on deep blue walls, these paintings feel anything but traditional or stuffy. They are light-filled and the brushwork is quick, expressive and confident – one quickly appreciates Carrick’s brilliance as a colourist, and the nuance that she managed to capture in her Post-Impressionist style.
Despite being a heavily hung exhibition, it offers an easy through-line, as the paintings wrap around the spaces, their energy lifting them off the dark walls. I didn’t think I would enjoy this show as much as I did, and it is that sense of surprise and beauty that is its real joy. The accompanying publication is stunning.
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The tone changes as visitors enter the galleries exploring Dangar’s oeuvre.
These spaces have been beautifully designed, with a soft green picking up a favourite colour of glaze Dangar used, and objects are presented in custom display vitrines. Wallpaper created from black and white archival photographs add another dimension. It is an exquisite example of exhibition design.
While Dangar is celebrated for her cubist ceramics, this display connects that style to her paintings, sketchbooks, colour tests and the work of colleagues, plus there’s a video interview in a side gallery. It is a rich and nuanced viewing experience with over 180 pieces on display.
Australia has seen a celebratory rise around the ceramic medium over the past decade, and yet Dangar still remains relatively unknown, until now. This exhibition will be a lightbulb moment for many. The synergy of her forms and patterning is robust and determined, and has a simple clarity of their modern making. They feel as fresh now as the day they were made.
While both these exhibitions can – and do – stand alone, it is their pairing that deepens their narrative, and offers a richer gallery experience for viewers.
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The accomplishments of these women is a great reminder of – and testament to – the power of education, travel and an independent voice. This is must-see summer viewing.
Ethel Carrick and Anne Dangar
National Gallery of Australia
Kamberri/Canberra
7 December 2024 – 27 April 2025
Free
