Alan Robert Sumner, MBE (10 February 1911,

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

– 20 October 1994, Melbourne) was an Australian artist; a painter, printmaker, teacher and stained glass designer.

Education

Alan Sumner studied at Melbourne's National Gallery Art School in 1933, at

Melbourne Technical College RMIT University, officially the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,, section 4(b) is a public research university in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1887 by Francis Ormond, RMIT began as a night school offering classes in art, scienc ...

, and from 1933 to 1939 at the George Bell School, then 1950–52 at the

Académie de la Grande Chaumière The Académie de la Grande Chaumière is an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France. History The school was founded in 1904 by the Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho on the rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, near the Acadé ...

, Paris and the

Courtauld Institute The Courtauld Institute of Art (), commonly referred to as The Courtauld, is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art and conservation. It is among the most prestigious specialist coll ...

, London.

Career

Sumner was apprenticed as a

stained-glass Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...

designer for the firm of Brooks Robinson, Melbourne then for fifteen years at E.L. Yencken and Co where he was mentored by fellow artist

William Frater William Frater (1890–1974) was a Scottish-born Australian stained-glass designer and modernist painter who challenged conservative tastes in Australian art. Early life and education Scotland William Frater was born on 31 January 1890 a ...

, becoming head designer. He painted in a

post-impressionist Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ag ...

style influenced by George Bell, which he applied in his work as a stained glass artist; he was commissioned for around 100 stained glass works, most important of which are the windows for the Services Memorial Chapel,

Scots Church, Melbourne The Scots' Church is a Presbyterian church in Melbourne, Victoria Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung–Taungurung language, Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and Li ...

, and the memorial window for

Charles Joseph La Trobe Charles la Trobe, CB (20 March 18014 December 1875), commonly Latrobe, was appointed in 1839 superintendent of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales and, after the establishment in 1851 of the colony of Victoria (now a state of Australi ...

in Chapelle de l'Ermitage, Neuchatel, Switzerland. Sumner was early in Australia in adapting, for fine art purposes,

screen printing Screen printing is a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink (or dye) onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A blade or squeegee is moved across the screen to fill the open mes ...

which had been employed for industrial and commercial printing since 1900. He exhibited examples in a solo show ''Silk screen prints by Alan Sumner'' which toured Georges Gallery, 162 Collins St., Melbourne, 7–16 May 1946; Finney's Art Gallery, Brisbane 7–23 August 1946; John Martin's Art Gallery, Rundle Mall, Adelaide, 21–31 August 1946; and Margaret Jaye Gallery, Rowe St., Sydney 10–21 September 1946.

Legacy

Very late in life Sumner was recognised in the exhibition ''Classical Modernism: The George Bell circle'' at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1992, and the simultaneous exhibition of his screenprints at Eastgate Gallery, Melbourne that demonstrated facility in the medium in which he would use up to 17 screens on the one print.

Teaching

Following service in World War Two, Sumner was appointed assistant instructor in painting at the National Gallery Art School, Melbourne, from 1947 to 1950, and was its first appointment of a

modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

artist. He was head of the School from 1953 to 1962. His instruction and personal style was influential on a number of signifiant Australian artists,

Barbara Brash Barbara Nancy Brash (3 November 1925 – 25 February 1998) was a twentieth-century post-war Australian artist known for her painting and innovative printmaking. In an extensive career she contributed to the Melbourne Modernist art scene, beside o ...

, Dorothy Mary Braund, Stan Ostoja-Kotkowski,

Janet Dawson Janet Dawson MBE (born 1935) is an Australian artist who was a pioneer of abstract painting in Australia in the 1960s, having been introduced to abstraction during studies in England while she lived in Europe 1957–1960 She was also an accomp ...

and Ian Lee Burn among them. Nevertheless, Art critic Robert Hughes in 1962 after Sumner's resignation wrote complaining that "since his appointment as the school's head in 1947, Mr Sumner seems to have produced no young painter whose work is of any significance whatever — except Janet Dawson, whose unquestionable talent comes, in part, from a revolt against the flaccid academism Mr Sumner has preached."

Awards

* 1948: Crouch Prize, Ballarat * 1979: MBE * 1980: Fellow, British Society Master Glass Painters * 1989: Fellow, VAS * 1990: Medal of Honour, VAS

Collections

* National Gallery of Australia * Art Gallery of New South Wales * Art Gallery of South Australia * National Gallery of Victoria * Queensland Art Gallery * Ballarat Fine Art Gallery

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sumner, Alan 20th-century Australian artists Australian printmakers 1911 births 1994 deaths Members of the Order of the British Empire Artists from Melbourne