In 2023 Geelong Gallery presents its next major ticketed exhibition: Clarice Beckett—Atmosphere, to be shown exclusively in Geelong.
Arriving on April 1 2023, Clarice Beckett—Atmosphere is the much anticipated thematic survey of the work of beloved Australian artist Clarice Beckett (1887–1935) which has been curated by Geelong Gallery and presents over sixty exceptional paintings dating from 1919 to the early 1930s. Beckett is now considered one of Australia’s leading female artists of the early twentieth century.
The exhibition will provide a critically focussed representation of this enduringly enigmatic modernist artist’s atmospheric depictions of light, climate, and bayside Melbourne. Beckett’s mesmerising paintings are revered for the ways in which they captured the essence of her local Beaumaris foreshore and streetscapes, and Melbourne city, Yarra River, and Port Phillip Bay views in varying light and weather.
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Beckett also worked in the Geelong region—on the Surf Coast and in the Western District—and the resulting works provide an important local context for Geelong Gallery’s exhibition.
For a period of six months in 1926, Beckett left the familiar environment of her Beaumaris home to stay with the brother of her good friend Maud Rowe on his Western District sheep station, ‘Naringal’. It was in this new environment that she produced some of her most experimental landscapes, capturing the radiating heat of the afternoon sun, or the muted light of dusk, across wide panoramic farming country. In addition, Beckett also frequented the beaches of Anglesea and Lorne.
This Geelong Gallery exhibition will offer new perspectives on the imagery of this intriguing and increasingly popular artist through major works borrowed from Australian public galleries including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia, National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, State Library of Victoria, McClelland Gallery, and regional gallery collections including Ballarat, Benalla, Bendigo, and Castlemaine, alongside rarely seen private collection works.
“Clarice Beckett—Atmosphere will extend our presentation of Geelong curated scholarly and highly successful exhibitions that have striking local specificity: Land of the Golden Fleece— Arthur Streeton in the Western District (2016); Fred Williams in the You Yangs (2017); and Frederick McCubbin— Whisperings in Wattle Boughs (2021). It will also place into a wider context one of the Gallery’s most popular works: Beckett’s 1930 painting Rainy day,” says Geelong Gallery Director & CEO and co-Exhibition Curator Jason Smith.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue.
Clarice Beckett had a relatively short life but was a singularly minded and prolific artist. She studied at the National Gallery School under Frederick McCubbin before becoming a pupil at Max Meldrum’s art school where tonal principles were championed. Beckett preferred to work en plein air—wheeling a cart packed with paints and easel about the streets of her bayside home in Beaumaris—to capture the modern world. She developed a distinctly atmospheric style, rendering seemingly everyday scenes in a loose painterly style and reduced tonal palette.
Her commitment to her painting practice sadly had a significant impact on her health. While painting outdoors in Beaumaris in a storm in 1935, she developed pneumonia and passed away four days later, aged only 48.
Clarice Beckett—Atmosphere will run at Geelong Gallery from Saturday, April 1 2023 – Sunday, July 9 2023. Tickets on sale now here.
