HANS HEYSEN

Before I enjoyed my Bruny Island cheese supper I’d gone to see the Hans Heysen show just opened a week ago at the TMAG. Heysen was born in Germany in 1877, but came to Australia as a child. He went to Europe for 4 years as a young man, studying at various studios in Paris and finally being accepted at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He also travelled and painted in Venice and Scotland before coming back to Australia. He lived in South Australia, eventually on a country property, and was perhaps the first painter to take the eucalyptus as his subject. Clearly he loved the trees and the landscape around him.

The area was agricultural and many of his paintings have cattle and/or farm labourers in them. I saw echoes of Millais in some. He was also enthralled by light, and it’s fascinating to see its variety in his canvases, sometimes soft and full of mist, sometimes inflected by bushfires in the distance, sometimes pouring out of the picture into the gallery. The focus on agricultural subjects made me wonder if we have an equivalent painter at home. Kurelek comes to mind for content in a way (more social?), but not style. Do I remember that Carl Dair painted Ontario farm scenes? Need to check this out when I’m back in Toronto.

Later in life Heysen went inland to the Flinders Range and was at first unable to paint what he saw there. The expanse of land without markers, the dryness, the intense range of colours, the flat light, were all challenges. It’s interestingly similar to early painterly reactions to the Canadian prairies, another dry area where reading the distance in conventional ways was difficult or impossible. Heysen changed his palate, developing new colours, and ended by painting stunning images that capture the sharpness and starkness of the region beautifully. Or so I think, never having seen it. The paintings are definitely beautiful.

I liked the show very much, and may go back to see it again. My favourite painting isn’t among either the farming or the Flinders ones, though. It’s a painting of his wife, sitting at a sewing machine, her back to the artist (and the viewer). It’s a summer’s day, or perhaps spring, there are white curtains on the window, and radiant pale brilliant sunlight pours in. The light is so strong that when I came around the corner and saw the painting I stepped back from it to keep from squinting.