Charles Conder

Acquired by Dr John William Springthorpe, Melbourne in August 1889
The Springthorpe collection of Australian pictures, Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 24 May 1934, lot 1 (as 'Sorrento')
Dame Jacobena Angliss, Melbourne; thence by descent
Private collection, Melbourne

The 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition, Buxton's Art Gallery, Melbourne, 17 August 1889, cat. 151
Loan exhibition of Australian Paintings, National Gallery of Victoria, 9 July 1925, cat. 299 (as 'Picknickers')

Table talk, Melbourne, 23 August 1899, p. 4
Frank Gibson, Charles Conder: his life and work, London: John Lane, 1914, pl. 94 (as 'Centennial chair at Sorrento')
Ursula Hoff, Charles Conder: his Australian years, National Gallery Society of Victoria, Melbourne, 1960, p. 22, no. 34 (as 'Centennial Choice, Sorrento')
Ursula Hoff, Charles Conder, Melbourne: Landsdowne Press, 1972, p. 101, no. C53 (as 'Centennial choir, Sorrento')
Daniel Thomas, 'The Sunny South: Bayside Melbourne life and landscape 1886-90', Terry Lane (ed.), Australian Impressionism, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2007, p. 92

This work is framed behind glass. The work has been viewed out of its frame. The work is framed in a later gold mounted surround with decorated edging. There is no visible cracking or scratches to the work. Under UV inspection the work shows no sign of retouching.
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Not seen in public for three quarters of a century and never before reproduced, Charles Conder's '9 by 5' Centennial Choir at Sorrento is a brisk, bright and charming beachscape dating from the artist's brief but productive sojourn in Melbourne in 1888-1890.

The coast was perhaps Conder's favourite plein-air environment; he is certainly one of Australia's finest painters of beach subjects. To begin with, there was the celebrated side-by-side episode with Tom Roberts on Easter Sunday and Monday 1888 on the hill overlooking Coogee Beach, a 'duel' which produced Roberts' Holiday sketch at Coogee (1888, Art Gallery of New South Wales) and Conder's Coogee Bay (1888, National Gallery of Victoria). On another holiday occasion the following month, this time possibly in company with Girolamo Nerli, Conder was at Bronte, painting Bronte, Queen's Birthday (1888, D.R. Sheumack Collection of Australian Paintings, Sydney) and Bronte Beach (1888, National Gallery of Australia). His Sydney coastal landscapes also included views of Balmoral and Botany.

Following Conder's arrival in Melbourne in the spring of that same year his first picture was that great 'celebration of Australian light, leisure and the beach,'¹ A holiday at Mentone (1888, Art Gallery of South Australia), and until his departure for Europe a little more than 18 months later, Conder's output is dotted with littoral escapades – ranging widely in space from Mentone to Queenscliff, and in ambition from small 'on-the-spot' sketches such as Sandridge Pier (1889, private collection) to the substantial and finished canvas Rickett's Point (1890, Art Gallery of New South Wales). The beach was also to recur as a major theme in the works of his later, European years, both in England (Brighton, Littlehampton, Newquay, Swanage) and in France (Ambleteuse, Dieppe, Dornoch, Yport).

However, it was on Port Phillip Bay that Conder completely developed his characteristic approach to the subject. The present work is typical of his combination of vivacious, high-toned paintwork and intimate, anecdotal subjects, with their vignettes of small children playing in the sand and of over-dressed women with fashionable hats and brightly-coloured parasols.

While the outdoor leisure and 'physical culture' of 'The Sunny South'² were very attractive to the young, strong, fit Conder and his plein-air companions, the Australian Impressionists also enjoyed more refined and ethereal pleasures. Poetry and music are recurrent points of reference in their letters to one another, and there is conscious emulation of J.A.M. Whistler's 'Aesthetic' musical metaphors in the artists' 'notes, harmonies and nocturnes.'³  A piano was set up in Buxton's Rooms for recitals during the '9 by 5' exhibition, and the show featured three musical subjects by Roberts: The violin lesson (1889, private collection), The troubadour of Scott's (1889, Westpac Corporate Art Collection, Sydney) and Andante (1889, Art Gallery of South Australia, on loan from the M.J.M. Carter AO collection).

Conder was equally alert to musical inspiration, and to the musical qualities discernible in landscape. Writing to Roberts in 1890, he described a Sunday afternoon in Naples when he gave 'two olive Italians, two francs for half-an-hour's music on their mandoline and guitar; it was a veritable dreamland to look on that blue sea and rose green hill land by Vesuvius, and have Faitst [sic]⁴ divinely expressed to give the touch of sentiment to the whole.'  One of his other '9 by 5' contributions was just such a sentimental fantasia: A dream of Handel's Largo (1989, Art Gallery of South Australia, on loan from the M.J.M. Carter AO Collection) was painted in response to Roberts' efforts on the harmonium.

Harmonic inspiration was also to be found in the musical programme provided by Sir Frederic Cowen for Melbourne's great Centennial International Exhibition, which opened in August 1888. A total of 263 concerts were presented during the exhibition's six-month run, including fifty-two featuring the huge Centennial Choir. Under the direction of Alberto Zelman and George Peake, this volunteer army of over 700 singers filled the vast spaces of Josph Reed's Exhibition Building with Cowen's own opening cantata A song of thanksgiving, and later with such popular oratorios as Handel's Messiah and Haydn's Creation. Members of the choir were rewarded with free concert tickets, illuminated certificates of appreciation and, half way through the Exhibition, an excursion on Port Phillip Bay. The Argus reported this occasion in some detail:

Delightful weather and admirable arrangements made the picnic which was given by the commissioners to the orchestra and choir of the Centennial International Exhibition at Sorrento yesterday a great success. The party, which numbered about 700, left Port Melbourne in the steamer Ozone at half-past 9 o'clock in the morning and after an exceedingly pleasant trip down the bay, which was enlivened by music and dancing, reached Sorrento at noon. Two large marquees had been pitched there, and luncheon was at once served. The visitors afterwards proceeded to the back beach, where they spent the afternoon. Tea was served at half-past 4 o'clock, and at half-past 5 the return journey was commenced. The steamer arrived back at Port Melbourne soon after 8 o'clock, and special trains were waiting to convey the party to Melbourne. The entire arrangements were under the superintendence of Mr. E. Miller, the music business manager, and the caterer was Mr. H. Skinner, who accompanied the party.⁶

Centennial Choir at Sorrento is an appropriately festive treat, a painting which combines Conder's acute social observation and illustrative skill with a delicate balance of tonal values and a creamy, frothing surface.

In the left foreground a large round boulder provides rest and shelter for a couple of choristers overcome by heat, fatigue or indulgence. In front, a bowler-hatted man sits with his legs splayed and outstretched on the sand, attended by two little girls; behind, we can make out his female reflection, indicated by upturned button-up boots and a red wedge of parasol. From this foreground incident to the central middle distance a parade of summer-white dresses (hitched up above their reflections in the damp sand) moves along the beach in a diagonal arpeggio before merging into a deftly-abbreviated crowd along the anchoring line of the horizon. Here, grace notes of pigment indicate individual heads and hats and describe the attitudes of bolder members of the party silhouetted atop the rocks. On the left the coastal cliff rises in a blocky masonry of square-ended brushstrokes, perhaps indicating the persistent influence of Conder's mentor Julian Ashton, while on the right the foaming waters have something of the curving, dancing brio of Nerli.

Centennial Choir at Sorrento is a charming summer song of the beach. It is at once a sharply-observed piece of plein-air naturalism, a clever Aesthetic confection, a lively piece of pictorial journalism and a souvenir of an important episode in Australia's musical history. The work's inherent quality is further enhanced not only by its having been included in the landmark '9 by 5' exhibition, but also by a most distinguished provenance. Initially purchased from the '9 by 5' show by Dr John Springthorpe, eminent physician, nursing advocate, lecturer, WW I Lieutenant-Colonel, amateur cyclist and noted collector of paintings and sculpture, it was subsequently acquired by another substantial Melbourne patron of the arts, philanthropist Dame Jacobena Angliss.

We are most grateful to Ann Galbally for her assistance in cataloguing this work.

1.  Ron Radford, 'Celebration', in Daniel Thomas (ed.), Creating Australia: 200 years of art 1788-1988, Adelaide: International Cultural Corporation of Australia and Art Gallery Board of South Australia, 1988, p. 116
2.  The Sunny South is the title of Roberts' 1887 Beaumaris nude male bathing subject (1887, National Gallery of Victoria)
3.  Notes. Harmonies. Nocturnes was the title Whistler gave to his London exhibitions at Dowdeswells' Gallery, in 1884 and 1886
4.  Immanuel Faisst (1823-1894), German organist and composer
5.  Conder, letter to Tom Roberts, Paris, August 1890, quoted in Frank Gibson, Charles Conder: his life and work, London: Bodley Head, 1914, p. 30
6.  Argus, 22 November 1888, p. 8