Harold Missingham

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Harold Missingham, 1947.

Harold "Hal" Missingham OA (born December 8, 1906 in Claremont , Perth , Western Australia , † April 7, 1994 in Midland , Perth, Western Australia) was an Australian painter , photographer and director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales .

Life

Harold "Hal" Missingham was the seventh of eight children of New South Wales- born parents David Missingham, an engineer, and his wife Anne Florence, née Summers. In 1920 his father was killed in a mining accident, after which he left the Perth Boys' School . The talented draftsman and painter completed his training as an engraver at J. Gibbney & Son Pty Ltd in 1922 and studied part-time at Perth Technical College with James WR Linton and AB Webb from 1922 to 1926 .

After completing his studies, Missingham traveled to England in 1926 , following his friend Jamie Linton, the son of his teacher, who had left Perth there in 1925. During his trip he worked as a steward in the infirmary. A financial donation of his uncle as seed money enabled him in 1926 at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi in Paris and from 1926 to 1932 at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London to study, where he student of Bernard Meninsky and Archibald Standish Hart Rick was .

Hal Missingham and his wife Esther, 1953.

On July 24, 1930, in London, he married Esther Mary Long, a saleswoman in a cloth shop and the sister of a colleague at the art school. In the same year he received an art scholarship from the London County Council , which he gave up in 1932 and instead worked as a commercial artist and taught at the London Central School from 1933 to 1939 .

In 1940 Missingham returned to Western Australia and worked there as an artist and photographer for J. Gibbney & Son . The following year he moved to Sydney , where he volunteered in the Citizen Military Forces in the face of World War II . From November 27, 1942, he worked as a radio operator at the headquarters of the Volunteer Defense Corps in Sydney. On September 14, 1943 he moved to the Second Australian Imperial Force and served from 1943 to 1944 in the Signals Training Battalion in Bonegilla in the Australian state of Victoria , then until his release on July 3, 1945 in the Military History Section of New South Wales. In 1945 he founded the Studio of Realist Art (SORA) in Sydney together with Rod Shaw, Bernard Smith , James Cant, Roy Dalgarno and Dora Chapman .

Claude Bonin-Pissarro (left), organizer of the French Painting Today exhibition on the French side and Hal Missingham (right), together with the painter Moya Dyring in Sydney, 1953.

Art publisher Sydney Ure Smith , for whom Missingham had worked as an illustrator, encouraged him to apply for the position of director of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales . He was selected in July 1945 to succeed John Ashton for the office which he held from September of that year until his retirement in 1971. Against the initial resistance of the board of trustees, he showed a progressive attitude towards contemporary art and the purchase of modern Australian works. He organized large retrospectives of the works of Russell Drysdale (1960), William Dobell (1964) and Sidney Nolan (1967), as well as several international exhibitions, including the influential French Painting Today (1953) and Italian Art of the 20th Century (1956) shown in all of Australia's national galleries. During Missinham's tenure, the gallery became a popular institution, backed by a professional team. From 1968 he directed the construction of the Captain Cook wing , which served as an extension of the gallery and helped to transform the gallery into a museum of modern art . He frequently gave lectures, opened exhibitions, and supported and advised artists. Although Missingham could not sustain his own painting career, he drew whenever he could and followed his passion for photography. From 1952 to 1955 he was President of the Australian Watercolor Institute . He was also the author of eleven books.

In 1971 Peter Laverty replaced him as director of the gallery, whereupon Missingham retreated to Western Australia and resumed watercolor painting. He has shown his work at numerous exhibitions, particularly in Perth's Greenhill Galleries . In 1978 he received the Order of Australia , in 1953 the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal, and in the same year he was accepted as a knight in the French Legion of Honor . In 1957 he was made a Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and in 1971 a First Class Knight of the Norwegian Order of Saint Olav . From 1947 to 1971 he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London.

In 1986 a fire destroyed Missingham's studio in Darlington with many of his works, negatives, cameras and private papers. To him his retirement from 200 artists, writers and poets from home and abroad-given book (title Fully Bound ) with drawings, etchings and photographs as well as poems and tributes survived the fire, as he previously it the National Library of Australia had handed . After the accident, his health deteriorated; a series of strokes eventually took away his eyesight. When he died of a heart condition in 1994, he left his wife and two sons and was cremated. His works are represented in the National Gallery of Australia and all state galleries in Australia as well as in the British Museum and numerous private collections. William Dobell, Judy Cassab and Vladas Meškėnas had portrayed him.

Publications

  • Australian Alphabet (1942)
  • An Animal Anthology (1948)
  • A Student's Guide in Commercial Art (1948)
  • Good fishing. A Handy Guide for Australia (1953)
  • Hal Missingham Sketch Book (1954)
  • My Australia (1969)
  • Australia Close Focus. The Color and Texture of a Continent (1970)
  • They Kill You in the End (1973)
  • Like a Bower Bird (1977)
  • Design Focus (1978)
  • Grass Trees of Western Australia: Blackboys & Blackgins (1978)

Works (selection)

  • Low tide Broome
  • Balladonia rocks I , 1982
  • Balladonia rocks II,, 1982
  • Doing the washing
  • Summer creek
  • A wild party , 1949
  • The accident: Horse and fresh ice cart , 1947
  • Windswept landscape , 1946
  • The Crossing Woodenbong Creek , 1950
  • Blackboy grove
  • Summer creek
  • Hazey day Honiton
  • The sun bathers , 1936

literature

  • Lou Klepac: Hal Missingham, Artist, Author, Photographer. Beagle Press, Roseville, NSW 2017

Web links

Commons : Hal Missingham  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Lou Klepac, Karen Fox: Missingham, Harold (Hal) (1906-1994). In: Australian Dictionary of Biography , National Center of Biography, Australian National University , 2018.
  2. ↑ Missinham, Harold :: Service Number - NX202304. In: National Archives of Australia, September 14, 1943.
  3. ^ Sydney Art Gallery Director. In: The Sydney Morning Herald, July 13, 1945, p. 5.
  4. ↑ Two Naughty Awards. In: The Sydney Morning Herald, January 13, 1954, p. 5.
  5. ↑ Awarded Nordic cross. In: The Canberra Times , Nov. 3, 1971, p. 8.
  6. ↑ Hal Missingham Lou Klepac 2017. In: beaglepress.com.au, 2017th
personal data
SURNAME Missingham, Harold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Missingham, Hal (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian painter, photographer, writer and director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Claremont , Perth , Western Australia
DATE OF DEATH April 7, 1994
Place of death Midland , Perth , Western Australia