Charles Conder

Cover - Young woman with a parasol, ¾ length, watercolour
‘SKETCHES’
‘“When we go out without our gun”’

Inside front cover - ‘For Xmas 88’
‘WISHING YOU THE SEASON’S COMPLIMENTS’

f.1.a - Figure of a man with bagpipes, pencil
‘A gentleman of  / doubtful nationality / who makes more / noise on his pipes / than an army of Highland pipers – / of Melbourne celebrity’

f.1.b - Studies of chickens, pencil

f.2.a - Landscape at sunset, watercolour and gouache
‘THE WEARY SUN HAS GONE TO BED’

f.3.a - Woman and children on a city roadway, monochrome watercolour
‘“THIS VALE OF TEARS”’

f.4.a - Landscape with trees and kangaroos, monochrome watercolour
‘– AUSTRALIAN BUSH –‘

f.5.a - Studies of chickens, pencil, with colour notes ‘yellow’, ‘dark green’

f.6.a - A small boy, naked, striding, pencil and watercolour
‘FRIZZLE’

f.7.a - Elegant woman with binoculars, watercolour and gouache
‘THERE GO MY / GLOVES / MELB. CUP’

f.8.a - Standing man, caricature, watercolour and gouache
‘SO ENGLISH YOU KNOW -’

f.9.a - Standing man, a larrikin, watercolour
‘A CARLTON / LARRIKIN / NB LARRIKIN IS / COLONIAL / EQUIVALENT TO /  CAD /THIS IS COLONIAL YOU KNOW’

f.10.a - A scene in Swanston Street, pencil
‘Late in the afternoon / Swanston Street / Melbourne / nov 1888’

f.11.a - Two women at the Melbourne Cup, pencil, watercolour and gouache
‘DIGNITY AND IMPUDENCE / MELB. CUP. NOV 88’

f.12.a - North Head with ship at sea, watercolour
‘NORTH HEAD. SYDNEY.’

f.12.b - Women and child in a landscape, ink and pencil

f.13.a - Character studies at the Melbourne Cup; horse race at lower right, ink and watercolour

f.13.b - Galatea: probably a portrait of the actress Miss Gracie Warner in Pygmalion and Galatea‚ conte pencil
‘GALATEA. Nov. 88’

f.14.a - Young woman with a fan, pencil, watercolour and gouache
‘[Afternoon?] / Collins St  / Melbourne’

f.14.b - Caricatures including a singer, ink

f.15.a - Women and a dog at the beach, ink
‘AT MENTONE. VICTORIA’

f.15.b - Vignettes of dancers, card-playing‚ a candle, ink and watercolour
‘SO PLEASED’

f.16.a - A man holding a shaving razor and photograph, ink
‘WOMAN WAS / INCONSTANT / EVER.---- / SHALL I. NO NOT / HERE. IN CHURCH / NEXT SUNDAY / WITH / ROUGH ON RATS ---- / N.B. THIS IS AT PRESENT THE / FASHIONABLE EXTINGUISHER’

f.16.b - Page of characters studies and a moon with a face, ink
‘BEFORE A CLOUD / OBSCURES The Moon’

f.17.a - Studies of women, some in evening dress, ink
‘LITERARY women’
‘WHERE / THE / Shoe / Pinches’
‘BEST GIRL /  in THE WORLD’
‘BACK VIEW’

f.17.b - Figure and head studies, football, betting, ink
‘Getting empty’
‘I’ll give 20 to 1’

f.18.a - Man in evening dress holding a candle, crayon, watercolour and gouache
‘SO SORRY / FORGOT / LATCH KEY / Not A PERSONAL experience

f.18.b - Figure studies after a dance, ink
‘SKETCHED AFTER / A DANCE’
SHE – I CAN’T TALK AND / WALTZ TOO YOU KNOW’
‘DID YOU SAY YOUR BOOT Pinched’
‘JAPanese Fan’

f.19.a - Elegant figures in silhouette, ink wash

f.19.b - Four figures, ink
‘A ReCePTION’

f.20.a - Faust, Margaret and an infant Mephistopheles, ink
‘FAUST
‘MARGARET’
‘MEPPY / UNDERSTOOD.’

f.20.b - Page of head studies, ink

f.21.a - Woman in a landscape, ink
‘AN ART STUDENT – MELB. School’

f.21.b - Self portrait and another portrait, ink and pencil
‘PORTRAIT OF / MYSELF’

f.22.a - Various head and figure studies, caricatures, ink and pencil
‘TYPES OF BEAUTY’
‘HEATHEN CHINEE’
‘FAT BISHOP OR / The HOUR AND THE MAN’
‘- APRONSTRINGS’

f.23.a - Woman and a child with a spade, ink
‘Oh come unto / these yellow / sands’ [from Shakespeare]

f.24.a - Studies of six men, ink
‘Types of speakers sketched after / a dinner’

f.24.b - Men, women, children and dogs at the beach, ink
‘BY THE SEA IMPRESSIONS’
‘a dog fight’

f.25.a - Various figures, ink
‘BIT OUT OF / FOCUS’
‘S.A.’

f.25.b - Woman in a moonlit landscape, pencil and watercolour

f.26.a - A woman and other figures, pencil
’Miss D’

f.26.b - Characters on the Sorrento ferry, pencil
‘On The Sorrento Boat’
‘WHAT YOU CALL UM’
‘WHO’s His Name’
‘You Know never mind’
‘The End’

Photograph of the artist, inscribed above ‘CHAS CONDER / HYS SKETCH BOOK’ and below ‘MUCH FLATTERED’

A fragment of a letter with two ink drawings, one of an artist inscribed ‘K’

This uniquely rare and exquisite sketchbook by Charles Conder encapsulates in watercolour, ink and pencil what must have been one of the most exciting years of his life. One writer sent an ‘open letter’ to the Art Society of New South Wales remembering the impact Conder’s work had in both Sydney and Melbourne in 1888: ‘Conder’s year – the year that saw the pictures of Conder… who first gave our artists the hint of the way to paint Australian atmosphere and natural colour, which I observe your best men have been vigorously imitating ever since’.¹ 

Over the Easter holiday in 1888 he painted at Coogee with Tom Roberts, whom he had only recently met and who encouraged him to move to Melbourne, ‘the metropolis of Australasia’ riding high on the post goldrush boom. Then in September, when Conder was only nineteen years old, the Art Gallery of New South Wales purchased his Departure of SS Orient, Circular Quay and with the £21 he received as payment he sailed for Melbourne on the Burrumbeet on 13 October.²  The watercolour of North Head in this sketchbook perhaps records that day. The ‘Portrait of Myself’, in pencil, and the photograph on the inside cover reveal a handsome, sophisticated and thoughtful young man.

Once in Melbourne, Conder quickly moved into the progressive impressionist circle of painters, sharing Tom Roberts’s studio in Grosvenor Chambers at the top end of fashionable Collins Street. He threw himself into the life of the city. Several watercolours and drawings document the 1888 Melbourne Cup with the wit, charm and acute observation that characterizes Conder at his best. As described in The Illustrated Australian News, ‘a more pleasant day in regard to weather could hardly have been wished for’. And the writer continued – as Conder clearly found: ‘The humours of a great race meeting furnish inexhaustible material for pen and pencil. The mere assembly of a vast crowd must give rise to many droll and some semi-tragic incidents, which artist and author delight to chronicle’. ³ The Cup was won by ‘Mentor’, before a crowd of more than 100,000.

Through page after page in this sketchbook we can follow Conder from Collins Street, along Swanston Street; sketching a well-known busker – possibly Scottish – ‘a gentleman of doubtful nationality who makes more noise on his pipes than an army of Highland pipers’, a Carlton larrikin, the poor and homeless (even in this richest of cities). The portrait titled ‘Galatea’ is doubtless Miss Gracie Warner, daughter of the famous English actor Charles Warner: Miss Warner was then appearing at the Princess Theatre with ‘The Bohemians’, a semi-amateur troupe, in W. S. Gilbert’s Pygmalion and Galatea – to the delight of the ‘highly fashionable audience’. ⁴ The page depicting Faust, his Margaret and the ‘fallen angel’ Mephistopheles – here a cherubic ‘Meppy’ – may refer to the artist’s beloved cousin Maggie Conder who was in Australia at that time.

There is an evening landscape with kangaroos – ‘Australian Bush’ – that could be Houston’s Farm at Box Hill where Conder painted with Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and Arthur Streeton in November. And there is a series of exquisite beach ‘impressions’ in pen and ink that relate closely to his great A Holiday at Mentone, 1888, now in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia but currently on show in the National Gallery of Victoria’s Australian Impressionists exhibition.

Some of the drawings verge on caricature: for example, the ‘Types of speakers – sketched after a dinner’, the lady art student from the Melbourne Gallery School, and the unfortunate fellow considering ending it all in church next Sunday with the ‘fashionable extinguisher’ – the rat poison ‘Rough on Rats’. Conder himself told Maggie that he was happier in Melbourne than he had been in Sydney. As he wrote in May 1889 to fellow artist G.V.F. Mann, ‘I don’t make much money but got many friends who put up with me for art’s sake… The artists here are jolly good fellows & we have plenty of fun together’.⁵  This sketchbook, which he probably took with him to Europe in 1890 and has remained with his family, unrecorded until now, brings his Australian experience to life.

1. The Echo, Sydney, September 1891.
2. Eagle, M., The Oil Paintings of Charles Conder in the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1997, p. 75.
3. 15 November 1888, p. 202 (with illustrations by George Rossi Ashton).
4. Table Talk, Melbourne, 23 November 1888, p. 14.
5. 25 May 1889, Mann Correspondence, Art Gallery of South Australia Archives; in Galbally, A., Charles Conder, the last bohemian, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne University Publishing, Melbourne, 2002, p. 42.