Alisa Bunbury

Pride of Place describes in detail a selection of the outstanding collection of Australian books, paintings, photographs, and prints that Russell and Mabel Grimwade donated to the University of Melbourne. The main focus is on Russell, but they were clearly a team with shared interests in Australian native trees and plants and the European history of Australia.

In 1959, as part of the Rex Nan Kivell collection, the National Library of Australia received a remarkable volume of First Fleet paintings. Inscribed Birds & Flowers of New South Wales, Drawn on the Spot in 1788, ’89 & ’90, it comprises 100 watercolours of birds, flowers, fish, animals, and a small number of Indigenous portraits, and was owned by Captain John Hunter, one of the key naval officers of the First Fleet, who painted most of the watercolours. A substantial publication about the sketchbook, edited by John Calaby, was produced by the National Library of Australia in 1989, but critical new information came to light in 2005 when the Library acquired the Ducie Collection, comprising fifty-six watercolours attributed to George Raper, midshipman on board HMS Sirius. Previously unknown to art historians, Raper’s paintings proved to be the source for many of the images in Hunter’s sketchbook. Linda Groom, then-curator of pictures at the Library, had the enviable task of researching and publishing on Raper’s work (First Fleet Artist: George Raper’s Birds & Plants of Australia, 2009). A Steady Hand may be regarded as the inevitable sequel.

Among those in the field, Bob Noye was known for his exhaustive collection of, and research into, the history of nineteenth-century South Australian photography. The website he established was the most detailed information available on the topic, yet he was extremely secretive about his holdings. When Noye died suddenly in 2002, several institutions vied for his collection, with the Art Gallery of South Australia the fortunate recipient of the Noye family’s goodwill. With generous funding assistance, AGSA acquired the collection, which comprised nearly five thousand photographs and negatives, plus his research archive. This publication, and the exhibition it accompanies ­– the first to focus on the first hundred years of South Australian photography – is dedicated to Noye and is founded upon his passion.

In the long tradition of printmaking, print workshops have played a critical and often unacknowledged role in encouraging, supporting and teaching artists to become printmakers, providing facilities and technical expertise, and, above all, producing prints. It is well known that Picasso’s unconventional experimentation with print techniques was often directly inspired by his printers’ abilities, while the rise of interest in lithography in America in the mid-twentieth century was due to lithographic workshops established by printers such as Tatyana Grosman and June Wayne. Nevertheless, the printer’s part in the creation of a print is still often overlooked.

One of Australia’s most significant Modernist artists, Margaret Preston (1875–1963) is often remembered for her relentless self-promotion and her forthright opinions: in particular, for her call to develop an art for Australia, untainted by past and irrelevant foreign art. Although frequently quoted (the wonderfully titled autobiographical article ‘From Eggs to Electrolux’ being one of her best-known pieces), her writings have not previously been gathered together. Selected and introduced by Elizabeth Butel, who has written before on Preston, this book presents twenty-nine articles and one extract. These appeared in a number of publications – art journals, women’s magazines, exhibition catalogues and the like – between 1923 and 1949.