Phyl Waterhouse
Phyllis (aka Phyl, and sometimes Phil) Paulina Waterhouse was an Australian artist and gallerist.
Training and early career
[edit]Phyl Waterhouse born on 17 April 1917 in Moonee Ponds, Melbourne.
She studied under William B. McInnes and Charles Wheeler at the National Gallery Victoria art schools, where she and fellow student Charles Bush became friends. Before purchasing their own home and studio in Essendon, the couple lived in her parents house at Clarinda Road, Moonee Ponds, where Bush made a surviving drawing in 1947.[1] According to John Hetherington, their co-habiting had become necessary for Bush since he had fallen out with his father at age seventeen and had to leave home. Waterhouse and he made their first studio together in an ex-plumber's shop in Essendon which they rented for 5 shillings a week. Later their accommodation and studios were a former grocer shop in North Melbourne in which they established Leveson Street Gallery in 1962.[2]
Phyl started exhibiting in 1939 at Riddell's Gallery, as recorded in The Bulletin:
‘…the show of a triumvirate of youth - Phyl Waterhouse, Arthur Read and Charles Bush […] have hung their pictures upon the walls of Riddell’s galleries. Phyl, who is the feminine element among the three, wore a snood and all-black on the opening afternoon. She and her confreres were students together at the Gallery. This show is their first, and their canvases are moderately-sized and -priced. Friends rallied round them on the first day, so that the stairs were far too narrow.’[3]
Waterhouse's career was interrupted by World War II during which she took an army civilian job, but she was again showing work in 1945.[4] Her husband Bush served as a war artist in Papua and New Guinea.
After the War, a British Council grant enabled the couple to travel 1950-52 to London, and also to visit Italy, France and Spain to work. Henceforth, Waterhouse painted and exhibited mainly in Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane.
Style
[edit]McCulloch identifies Waterhouse work as ‘modulated’ post-impressionism, and her main subjects as ‘lyrical depictions of buildings, trees and people’, with partilcular talent in portraiture.[5] Attracted by its support of individuals without allegiance to a specific school, the couple were affiliated with the Independent Group, amongst Lina Bryans, Edith Alsop, Madge Freeman, Bernard Lawson, Norman Macgeorge, Margaret Pestell, James Quinn, Dora Serle, Eveline Syme, and R. Malcolm Warner, most of whom were post-impressionists and early modernists, and together showed their paintings annually.[6]
Reception
[edit]The Bulletin commented on Waterhouse’s first exhibition in April 1930;
‘Every artist worth his salt is an experimenter, and Phyl Waterhouse, Arthur Read and Charles Bush, showing their wares at Riddell’s Galleries, Melbourne, are three products of the National Gallery school who are obviously trying to do something. But they are confronted with the possibility, if they climb out of one pit, of falling into another. Mr. Read is flirting with varous forms of expressionism, and his friends are glancing in the same direction. Few of their attempts merit exhibition more than the average pupil’s.’[7]
The Sun critic George Bell, reviewing her small paintings in 1945 reported that “Among many outstanding pictures are…two architectural pieces In charming and reticent color by Phil [sic] Waterhouse…,’ when she showed alongside her partner Bush, Harold Herbert, George Colville, Isabel Tweddle, Charles Wheeler, James Quinn, Louise Thomas, Arnold Shore, Ian Bow and Norah Gurdon at the Blue Door gallery, 17 George Pde., off 113 Collins St., Melbourne.
Also that year, Daryl Lindsay, Director of the National Gallery whose collection policies were by then known as conservative,[8] judged the Geelong Art Gallery Association's competition, and finding no work worthy of it, did not award the £75 J. H. McPhillimy prize. Nevertheless, The Herald noted that Waterhouse’s Pine Trees, Somers ‘caught his eye'.[9]
Reviewing the Melbourne Contemporary Artists exhibition at the Athenaeum Gallery in October 1945, which was also opened by Mr. Daryl Lindsay, George Bell commented that ‘Phil Waterhouse shapes up seriously with two of her townscapes’. [10] Waterhouse appealed even to the conservative taste of Robert Menzies who opened her solo show at Georges Gallery, at 162 Collins St., Melbourne, not long before the last exhibition of Menzies’ Australian Academy of Art. His praise of her ‘lucidity’ he used as an opportunity to condemn ‘incoherence’ in modernist art.[11]
Leveson Street Gallery
[edit]In 1962, along with their friend June Davies, Phyl and Charles founded the Leveson Street Gallery, cnr. Leveson & Victoria Streets, North Melbourne,[12] which they later relocated to Carlton as Leveson Gallery (in the building later occupied by Bridget McDonnell Gallery) and it operated until 1985 its exhibitions being mainly those of emerging artists.
Personal life
[edit]The couple eventually married in 1979 when she was 62.
Waterhouse died on 9 April 1989, aged 81, and Bush, only months later.
Retrospectively, in 1993 Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne featured her work , with others’, in "The Changing Face of Melbourne”.
Exhibitions
[edit]- 1940, April: Group show with Arthur Read and Charles Bush, Riddell Gallery, 190 Little Collins Street, Melbourne
- 1945: Group show, Blue Door gallery, 17 George Pde., off 113 Collins St., Melbourne.
- 1945, 23 October—3 November: Melbourne Contemporary Artists’ Society, Athenaeum Gallery[13]
- 1948: Solo show at Georges Gallery, Melbourne [14]
- 1949, October/November: Melbourne Contemporary Artists group show, Melbourne Artists’ Society Gallery[15]
- 1952, 25 August—8 September: Charles Bush, Phyl Waterhouse joint show Johnstone Gallery (nine oil paintings and two watercolours by Phyl Waterhouse)[16]
- 1965: Winemakers Art Prize, multi-artist exhibition; Art prize sponsored by The Wine and Brandy Producers' Association of Victoria.[17]
Publications by
[edit]Alongside William Dobell, Ernst Buckmaster, Nornie Guide, Sir William Dargie, Esther Paterson and others, Waterhouse was a contributor of illustrations for a children’s book published in 1961 in aid of Yooralla.[18][19]
Awards
[edit]- 1950 and 1951: Crouch Prize
- 1956: Henry Caselli Richards Prize
- 1959: Australian Women's Weekly prize[20]
- 1966: Grafton prize
- 1980: Albury art prize
- 1981: St Catherine's Art Award,
- 1981: Woodend Art Award
- 1982 and 1983: Burke Hall Award
- 1985: St Kevin's Award
Represented in collections
[edit]- Art Gallery of South Australia[21]
- Art Gallery of Western Australia [22]
- National Gallery of Victoria [23]
- Queensland Art Gallery [24]
- Parliament House
- Bendigo Art Gallery [25]
- Art Gallery of Ballarat [26]
- Benalla art gallery [27]
- Castlemaine Art Museum [28]
- Geelong Art Gallery [29]
- Broken Hill Art Gallery [30]
- University of Melbourne[31]
References
[edit]- ^ "Charles BUSH (1947) At Phil Waterhouse parents' home, Clarinda Road, Moonee Ponds". National Gallery of Victoria.
- ^ John Hetherington; Kahan, Louis, 1905-2002, illustrator (1963), Australian painters forty profiles, Melbourne F.W. Cheshire, retrieved 7 November 2024
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ The bulletin.Vol. 61 No. 3140, 17 Apr 1940
- ^ "Cabinet Paintings". The Sun News-pictorial. No. 6986. Victoria, Australia. 13 February 1945. p. 12. Retrieved 7 November 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
- ^ McCulloch, Alan; McCulloch, Susan; McCulloch Childs, Emily (2006). The New McCulloch's Encyclopedia of Australian Art (4th ed.). Fitzroy: AUS Art Editions; Miegunyah Press. p. ix. ISBN 0-522-85317-X. OCLC 80568976.
- ^ Forwood, Gillian; Bryans, Lina, 1909-2000, (artist.) (2003), Lina Bryans : rare modern, 1909-2000, The Miegunyah Press, p. 128, ISBN 978-0-522-85037-6
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ Template:'''cite magazine'''
- ^ Minchin, Jan (26 June 2014). "The violent vision of the 1940s". Art Journal, National Gallery of Victoria. Retrieved 7 November 2024.
- ^ "£75 ART PRIZE NOT AWARDED". The Herald. No. 21, 334. Victoria, Australia. 3 October 1945. p. 5. Retrieved 7 November 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
- ^ "REVIEWS". The Sun News-pictorial. No. 7200. Victoria, Australia. 23 October 1945. p. 14. Retrieved 7 November 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
- ^ "Women's Letters". The Bulletin. Sydney, N.S.W: John Haynes and J.F. Archibald. 29 May 1946. p. 21.
{{cite magazine}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help);|archive-url=requires|archive-date=(help); Check date values in:|access-date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|1=(help) - ^ "Leveson Street Gallery". Prints and Printmaking. Retrieved 7 November 2024.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "REVIEWS". The Sun News-pictorial. No. 7200. Victoria, Australia. 23 October 1945. p. 14. Retrieved 7 November 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
- ^ George Bell, Sun-News Pictorial, 9 April 1948, p.8.
- ^ "SUNDRY SHOWS Contemporary Spots". The Bulletin. Vol. 70, no. 3638. Sydney, N.S.W: John Haynes and J.F. Archibald. 2 November 1949. p. 19.
{{cite magazine}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help);|archive-url=requires|archive-date=(help); Check date values in:|access-date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameters:|1=and|2=(help) - ^ https://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/exhibitions/9981/
- ^ https://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/exhibitions/9867/
- ^ Daly, Mary, Dame; Heysen, Hans, Sir, 1877-1968, (illustrator.); Baxter, Evelyn M., 1925-1979, (illustrator.); Bernaldo, Allan Thomas, 1900-, (illustrator.); Bourne, Shirley, 1924-2006; Buckmaster, Ernest, 1897-1968, (illustrator.); Colville, George, (illustrator.); Dargie, William, Sir, 1912-2003, (illustrator.); Dobell, William, Sir, 1899-1970; Gude, Nornie, 1915-2002, (illustrator.); Hellier, Dermont, 1916-, (illustrator.); Johnson, Robert, 1890-1964, (illustrator.); Kermond, Laurence, (illustrator.); Parker, Dudley, (illustrator.); Paterson, Betty, 1894-1970, (illustrator.); Paterson, Esther, 1893-1971, (illustrator.); Rowell, John (John Thomas Nightingale), 1894-1973, (illustrator.); Waterhouse, Phyl, 1917-1989, (illustrator.) (1961), Cinty and the laughing jackasses and other children's stories, [publisher not identified], retrieved 7 November 2024
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ Hooper, Toby; Hooper, Juliana (1991), The kookaburra : a pictorial celebration of Australia's-best-loved bird (Revised edition ed.), Viking O'Neil, ISBN 978-0-670-90215-6
{{citation}}:|edition=has extra text (help) - ^ Warren, K. (2018). "A brief history of the australian women's weekly art prize, 1955–1959". Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art. 18 (2): 242–258, 291. doi:10.1080/14434318.2018.1516497.
- ^ https://www.agsa.sa.gov.au/collection-publications/collection/creators/phyl-waterhouse/10415/
- ^ https://collection.artgallery.wa.gov.au/objects/1132/queens-park-late-summer
- ^ https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/artist/589/
- ^ https://collection.qagoma.qld.gov.au/creators/waterhouse-phyl
- ^ https://collection.bendigoartgallery.com.au/persons/689
- ^ https://www.artgalleryofballarat.com.au/explore/the-collection/search/1018
- ^ https://benallaartgallery.com.au/benallacollection/collection-view/1614886/
- ^ https://collection.castlemaineartmuseum.org.au/persons/612/phyl-waterhouse-b1917-d1989
- ^ http://collections.geelonggallery.org.au/collections/?page=search#view=details&search-limit=artist-details&keywords=Waterhouse&id=887a&offset
- ^ https://collection.brokenhill.nsw.gov.au/collection/creators/phyllis-waterhouse/
- ^ University of Melbourne; Burke, Joseph, Sir; University of Melbourne. Department of Classical Studies (1971), Catalogue of works of art 1971 : catalogue of works of art in the University and its affiliated colleges with a catalogue of the collection in the Dept. of Classical Studies, University of Melbourne, p. 36, ISBN 978-0-909454-00-5
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)