‘She was driven to escape’: family quest to celebrate Dangerously Modern painter
Stella Bowen is one of 50 artists celebrated in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s new exhibition Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890-1940. Rob Brookman never knew his great-aunt, but says the exhibition reveals the courage it took to pursue an international art career against a backdrop of social constraints, judgement and prejudice.
Rob Brookman has a very clear memory of visiting his grandmother’s house as a child and looking up at paintings on the wall.
Brookman, a respected Adelaide arts identity and former Adelaide Festival and Sydney Theatre Company head, had no idea that he was admiring the work of his great-aunt, the artist Stella Bowen.
“I lived with Stella’s work from early childhood,” Brookman says. “Some of her great paintings hung in my grandmother’s house in Church Road, Mitcham, notably Provencale Conversation and her wonderfully enigmatic self-portrait.
“So, breakfast at Granny Bowen’s (invariably indigestible kidneys, liver or brains) was accompanied by Stella’s strong but quizzical gaze; like many great paintings, your interpretation of what’s going on behind those brown eyes changes depending on mood.
“But I had no idea as a child that I was looking at the work of a significant artist. I’m not even sure that I knew that Stella was my grandfather’s sister – and my mother’s aunt. I began to understand her significance through the work of my mother Suzanne Brookman who was passionately committed to lifting Stella’s profile.”
Bowen’s life and work is celebrated in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s latest exhibition Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890-1940, which shines a light on the largely overlooked story of the first wave of Australia women artists pursuing international careers.
"I had no idea as a child that I was looking at the work of a significant artist."
The Dangerously Modern exhibition features the works of 50 trailblazing female artists including Hilda Rix Nicholas, Margaret Preston Dorrit Black, Barbara Tribe, Bessie Davidson and Agnes Goodsir.
Although he never met his great-aunt, Brookman says he has always been inspired by Stella Bowen’s story: a young woman who, aged just 21, set sail for England in 1914 to pursue her dreams of creating an international artistic career.
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“Stella’s story is one of a person who regarded herself as ordinary but discovered that she was not,” he says. “She was driven to escape the confines of white-bread Adelaide not by ambition or ego but by a true calling to become the artist that she felt she could be. Having been brought up by her starchy mother to be a wife, the courage to travel to the other side of the world in 1914 to study art in London as a single 21- year-old woman against all the conservative advice she received was extraordinary.
"She was driven to escape the confines of white-bread Adelaide not by ambition or ego but by a true calling to become the artist that she felt she could be."
“And her preparedness to embrace the artistic demi-monde of London and Paris while maintaining her own quiet self-possession equally extraordinary. She was a living example of the advice ‘to thine own self be true’.”
Dangerously Modern’s co-curator Elle Freak says while Bowen intended to stay overseas for one year, the artist never returned to Australia, and her life was defined by her search for “creative autonomy amid personal and political upheaval in Europe”.
“Over the next three decades she lived between Europe and America, in the orbit of avant-garde intellects, artists, writers and thinkers,” Freak says. “In Paris, her connections included Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. Yet emotional and financial stability proved elusive, especially during her turbulent nine-year relationship with writer Ford Madox Ford.”
Bowen left her husband in 1927, following his repeated infidelity, and then began to fully dedicate herself to painting again.
South Australia Foundation Collectors Club 2003, Art Gallery of South Australia
“Despite personal losses, financial instability and the demands of motherhood, Bowen remained deeply committed to her art,” Freak says. “She painted through heartbreak and war with resilience and a profound understanding of her purpose as an artist.”
Dangerously Modern features eight of Bowen works, six from the AGSA collection — four of which were the generous gift of Suzanne Brookman — and two on loan from the National Gallery of Australia. Freak says her favourite is Bowen’s Self-portrait — the same painting that a young Rob Brookman admired at his grandmother’s home.
“It draws you in slowly and then stays with you,” Freak says. “It was created at a time of both personal turmoil and professional breakthrough for Bowen. Painted soon after the end of her turbulent relationship with Ford Madox Ford, it reflects her resolve to reclaim her independence – as she said, ‘I wanted to belong to myself’.
“Bowen is positioned within a modest interior, composed and looking forward, yet signs of tension subtly register: the shadows under her eyes, the soft asymmetry of her collar and the loose tie of her paint smock – all gentle disruptions within an otherwise ordered frame.
“Influenced by the quiet precision of early Renaissance artists and the psychological insight of Hans Holbein, she finds a visual language that balances technical restraint with emotional depth.”
Freak, who co-curated the Dangerously Modern exhibition with her colleague Tracey Lock, AGSA’s Curator of Australian Art, says all 50 women artists who feature in Dangerously Modern were once dismissed as mere ‘messenger girls’ by influential historian Bernard Smith.
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“These artists are celebrated in this exhibition as active participants in the global development of international modernism,” she says. “We have chosen a compelling mix of painters, sculptors, printmakers and ceramicists. Some returned home determined to advance their careers and promote modern ideas, such as Hilda Rix Nicholas, Margaret Preston and Dorrit Black. Others, like Barbara Tribe, Bessie Davidson, Agnes Goodsir and Stella Bowen, never returned permanently to Australia.”
The exhibition features 220 works and seeks to tell a new Australian art history, says Freak.
“It is the first to focus on the vital role of Australian women artists in the development of international modernism,” she says. “The exhibition includes both celebrated and newly acquired paintings, prints, sculpture and ceramics, drawn from the permanent collections of both institutions and complemented by key national and international loans.”
Rob Brookman says his mother’s “tenacious pursuit” has helped preserve his great-aunt’s story, along with support from a number of people who recognised the artist’s significance, ensuring her work has been given the prominence it deserves. Bowen’s 1941 memoir Drawn From Life was republished by Virago in 1984, followed by appearances in a major exhibition of South Australian women artists at AGSA in 1994, and the Australian War Memorial’s 2002 touring exhibition of Bowen’s work, Love & War. Author Drusilla Modjeska’s acclaimed Stravinsky’s Lunch (1999) also helped re-popularise Bowen’s story alongside her contemporary Grace Cossington-Smith.
“I can claim one small reclamation of Stella’s work – Mum heard about a beautiful portrait of a young French girl by Stella which was available at a London art dealer’s and, as I was travelling there for work, she asked me if I could try and acquire it. Fortunately negotiation is a significant part of my bag-of-tricks, so the painting was duly bought and repatriated to Adelaide in filial triumph.”
Rob and his wife, playwright Verity Laughton, have one of Bowen’s paintings in their home: a still-life of an ornate blue kettle that Brookman says “shows off Stella’s technical brilliance”.
“I’m proud to say that Mum donated the majority of her collection to the Art Gallery of SA and my aunt Mary-Alice (Stella’s other niece) donated similarly to the National Gallery,” he says. “These works should be held publicly. We do, however, also have many prints of our favourite paintings.
“A special curiosity owned by our oldest son (theatre producer Torben Brookman) is a toy theatre that Stella built for her niece (my mother) and hand-painted complete with backdrops and stage sets. Perhaps something intimated to Stella that there would be a theatrical streak in the family further down the track!”
When it comes to Bowen’s style, Freak says it is “not easy to pin down”.
“She often moved beyond concerns of style to develop her own emotionally charged form of realism,” she says. “In her memoir, she recalled how her London teacher, Walter Sickert, taught her ‘the difference between something dead (on canvas) and something living’.
“However, it was a visit to Tuscany in 1923 that deeply shaped her approach to painting. There, she encountered the work of early Italian Renaissance artists known for their spiritual clarity and formal restraint. She also absorbed the precision and psychological depth of 16th century artist Hans Holbein.
“From these influences, Bowen developed a form of realism marked by clarity of line, subdued colour, fine surface texture and emotional depth. Working in thin veils of paint, she used light and shadow with great subtlety in portraits, still lifes and interiors.”
Freak says the publication of Bowen’s autobiography, Drawn From Life, and her appointment as an official war artist by the Australian War Memorial gave her a renewed sense of purpose later in life.
"Recognition was slowly building in Australia and a return home was finally imagined, but it came too late."
“Recognition was slowly building in Australia and a return home was finally imagined, but it came too late. Bowen died of cancer in London in 1947, aged 54.”
Brookman says his great-aunt’s legacy for him is “the model of someone driven by her own work as an artist and also fascinated by other artists of all descriptions”.
“I cannot, however, say that it was her model that enticed me towards a life in the arts, as I did not really comprehend the significance of her life and work until I was well on the way down the interesting road that I have followed — which has been principally been in the performing rather than the visual arts,” he says.
“But I am immensely proud of the connection and celebrate every moment at which her great work and spirit is recognised. My great regret is that her premature death meant that we never met.”
Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890 -1940 opens at the Art Gallery of South Australia from May 29.