Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
Private collection, Sydney

EXHIBITED
Jeffrey Smart, Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 18 - 30 October, 1961, cat. 3, 75Gns
Jeffrey Smart: A review exhibition, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 17 June - 8 August, 1982, cat. 17

LITERATURE
Wallace Thornton, 'Neo-realist Sets His Own Pace', Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 18 October 1961, p. 2
Peter Quartermaine, Jeffrey Smart, Gryphon Books, Melbourne, 1983, pp. 26 (illus.), 107, cat. 372
Barry Pearce, Jeffrey Smart, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 2005, pp. 65 (illus.), 266
Christopher Allen, Jeffrey Smart: Unpublished Paintings 1940 - 2007, Thames and Hudson, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 26-27 (illus.)

There are points in an artist's life that send their work on a trajectory. Throughout his lifetime Jeffery Smart had a number of fortuities of that ilk. Without doubt one of the most crucial events in his career was the inclusion of his work in the ground-breaking 1961 exhibition of Recent Australian Painting held at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Curated by Bryan Robertson an enthusiastic promoter of the Antipodean talent of the time, with the assistance of British Museum director Sir Kenneth Clark, Smart's inclusion gave him a sense of validation with his new direction, a stark contrast to the abstraction that was taking hold of the contemporary artworld. Smart 'had produced a plethora of small pictures for his first three exhibitions at Macquarie Galleries in 1955, 57 and 59. Collectors did not respond as positive to the 1957 show as he had hoped, and the sale of one of the few larger paintings – probably Approaching storm by railway –encouraged him to think about scaling up and using bigger brushes.

It is true that the contemporary trend towards broad gesture generally required ampler pictorial space – more so later as the American influence tended to overwhelm the European - and that in any survey or group show small realist paintings would have been upstaged. The mood of the moment was to stand back from the art rather than move towards it, as if it was an enhancement of architecture rather than a result of intimate meditation. Smart did not exaggerate his new approach too much but changed scale enough for his exhibition at Macquarie Galleries in October 1961 to awaken the contemporary audience to a more competitive, muscular realist vision, seeing this exhibition as a turning point. Wallace Thornton, reviewing it for the Sydney Morning Herald, found the standard so consistently high it was difficult for him to isolate any particular work..1

'this exhibition shows considerable advances on his last show. There are depths gained by the use of more muted harmonies against which are opposed the bite of acid colour and the unexpected forms. Drama is not forced as in the past, but now has a chance to gain in intensity through a sense of mystery. Space is strangely accentuated and time is momentarily transfixed in these paintings of figures halted in expansive surrounds... the standard of works showing is so even that it is difficult to point to any particular painting as being outstanding, but the colours and patterns of "The Road".. are most effective."2

Regarded as one of his earliest compositions to explore and utilize the patterns of road markings, a signature motif that would form the basis of many of his artworks over the next decade. The present work, The Road, 1961, captures all of Smart's cinematic qualities. The composition is a true testament to the artists quest for a balance between perspective and space. In Smart's own words, 'my only concern is putting the right shapes, in the right colours, in the right places. It is always geometry'.

Alex Clark

1. Barry Pearce, Jeffrey Smart, The Beagle Press, Roseville, 2005, p. 122
2. 'Neo-realist Sets His Own Pace', by Our Art Critic, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October 1961, p. 2

We gratefully acknowledge the kind assistance of Stephen Rogers, archivist for the Estate of Jeffrey Smart, in cataloguing this work.