Hugh Ramsay

A big thank you to Margie Richardson for her thoughts on the Hugh Ramsay exhibition at the National Gallery in Canberra. Margie writes: “One of my favourite Australian artists is Hugh Ramsay. When, in another life back in late February, Deborah Hart spoke brilliantly in Melbourne about the special exhibition of his works she had curated at the NGA, I was sorely tempted to head up to Canberra for a day to see it. However, we were due to fly to Spain and Portugal on 13 March, so such an indulgence seemed unlikely. Yet as the rate of COVID-19 infection in Spain kept climbing day by day, joining crowds at destinations like Santiago de Compostela and the Alhambra seemed increasingly unwise. When we reluctantly pulled the plug on travel to Europe, a weekend in Canberra beckoned like a consolation prize.

It was that weekend in mid-March when everything changed: on the Friday evening the Prime Minister talked of attending the National Rugby League game – but by Sunday, life was shutting down. We were cautious travellers: coming from the Stonnington Council area which seemed like the epicentre of infection in Melbourne at that time, we wiped with disinfectant around us in the aeroplane and on cafe tables, and kept away from ACT friends who might be contaminated by us southerners.

But it was a magical weekend, and the Ramsay exhibition the highlight, familiar in many ways, but providing some new insights as well. This website shows the works displayed: https://nga.gov.au/ramsay/works.cfm

Born in Scotland in 1877, and moving to Australia as an infant, Ramsay was part of a close-knit family, even though it was clear at various points of the exhibition that his father had disapproved of his choice of career. In the first room, Deborah Hart placed some early portraits of his sisters on one wall to ‘set the scene’ for the exhibition. Two of these are owned by the NGV, the first of Madge in black for mourning after their mother’s death, the second of young Jessie in white which was to become a trademark ‘colour’ for Ramsay.

‘Young Hughie’, as he was dubbed when he attended the National Gallery School in Melbourne from the age of 16, was prodigiously talented. Bernard Hall required students to start by drawing from plaster casts and then life models, before being permitted to use paint. Ramsay made unusually fast progress, shown in the exhibition by a wall of his drawings…

…followed by a selection of early painted portraits, male and female, young and old, his dark tonal values showing the influence of Velázquez. One of the most appealing was the NGV’s Study of a girl, half nude, leaning on a box (c 1897).

When he moved to Paris in 1900, George and Amy Lambert, fellow travellers on the ship, became his closest friends.  He shared a studio, freezing cold above a soda factory in Montparnasse, with James McDonald.  When he was not exploring the Louvre and the Musée du Luxembourg, he spent long hours painting himself and these friends, including Ambrose Patterson, who lived in the same block, depicted as the student below. A series of self-portraits along one wall included our beloved Self-portrait in white jacket and the studio itself provided interest, with its piano and canvases balancing forms and shapes.

Some directions Ramsay explored had been unknown to me. In The four seasons, inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites and the posters of artist Alphonse Mucha in Paris at that time, he depicted each season as a woman wearing an outfit appropriate to the time of year. Similar influences were at work in Consolation from our own gallery.

Another surprise was an earlier work, with its muted landscape prefiguring Clarice Beckett, and perhaps showing the influence of JMW Turner’s skyscapes.

In 1902 Ramsay encountered phenomenal success. As he wrote to his father, “I’ve got some great news for you this time. I’ve had 4 pictures accepted by the Salon. Just fancy 4 when one would have made me feel lucky and quite content. It’s rather an extraordinary thing, so I’m told, as they seldom accept more than 2 even from experienced and recognized men, let alone a young fellow like myself, practically exhibiting for the first time.” I allowed myself to wonder, if he had been listed as Australian by birth rather than Scottish, would he have had the same degree of success?

Three of those four paintings were in the NGA exhibition, while the fourth apparently has never been found. The first two, both from the Art Gallery of South Australia, could not have been more of a contrast. One was a still life, the other a large portrait of a beautifully dressed, confident young woman, an American perhaps living in Paris to study art. It was hung ‘on the line.’

The third, from the NGV, captured Ramsay’s concierge’s daughter Jeanne, legs dangling, looking somewhat uncertain, and apparently bribed to stay sitting with Ramsay’s foreign stamps. It shows the influence of Whistler, with its angular forms, thin veils of paint, and muted colours highlighted by the red bow in her hair.

This success led to a visit from Ambrose Patterson’s relative by marriage, Nellie Melba, then at the height of her fame. Ramsay sketched her frenetically for 35 minutes during that visit and accepted an invitation to visit her in London to paint a full-length portrait. But it was during the London visit that he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, brought on in part by the poverty and cold he experienced in Paris.

Melba assisted him to return home to Australia where she put on a solo exhibition of his works in her home in Toorak. She also commissioned him to paint the portrait of her niece, Nellie Patterson, wearing the party dress Melba had brought as a gift from Paris. Ramsay’s depiction of the texture of the material, with its translucent frills, shows the influence of John Singer Sargent whose work he absorbed in London. (Young Nellie was bribed to sit on that slippery cushion with bull’s eyes, so she later said.)

Back in Australia, still driven, he wanted to show what he had learnt. Going against his doctor’s order to rest, the largest work in the exhibition was ironically that of the doctor’s own son with a horse. Over two metres long and wide, we rarely see it at the NGV.

Positioned on a wall of its own, the climax of the exhibition was provided by Ramsay’s masterpiece Two girls in white (or The sisters as it has been known at the AGNSW, its home). It was a study of three of his sisters. When Jessie was unable to keep sitting through her own ill-health (tuberculosis took her life four years after Ramsay died in 1906), her place was taken by Madge: the protective figure, leaning forward, cheeks flushed (a symptom of TB), her coat forming the shape of angel wings behind her. Beside her Nell slouches more nonchalantly. Here we can admire Ramsay’s depiction of strong, raw character and piercing gaze, and the ‘virtuoso of white on white’ of his textures, as Joanna Mendelssohn described it, that we recall from the NGV’s own Self-portrait in white jacket.

A 45-minute guided tour provided an excellent introduction to the exhibition. The guide from time to time passed around her phone to present further images. Some of us hesitated to hold it, peering over shoulders or taking the phone and then furtively wiping our hands with our disinfectant cloths. When I had a brief conversation afterwards to congratulate her on the tour, I tentatively suggested that passing a phone around might not be wise in the coming days. “Ah,” she said, light dawning on her face. “I’ll use an I-pad to display images in future.”

But what future would there be? The COVID-19 world was closing in on us. We flew home on the Sunday evening to find a message that the NGV Guides’ Tuesday morning meeting had been cancelled, and on the Monday the NGV itself shut down. Our children chastised us for our intemperance, and from then on we obediently stayed at home. But the memory of that exhibition lingers with us still”.

Post Script: In preparing this, I found a link to an interview Deborah Hart did at the time the exhibition was due to close in late March. It gives a wonderful overview of the exhibition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuhR2tiItYM

Joanna Mendelssohn Hugh Ramsay review: a virtuoso of white on white who left the art world too soon. The Conversation, 2.12.19. https://theconversation.com/hugh-ramsay-review-a-virtuoso-of-white-on-white-who-left-the-art-world-too-soon-126587