Roland Wakelin (17 April 1887 – 28 May 1971) was a New Zealand-born Australian painter and teacher.
Early life
Roland Shakespeare Wakelin was born on 17 April 1887 in
Greytown,
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
. He studied at
Wellington Technical School
, seal_image =
, motto = Excellence in Learning
, type = State secondary
, established = 1886
, streetaddress = 249 Taranaki Street
, city = Wellington
, postcode = 6011
, country = New Zealand
, ...
from 1902 to 1903. Shortly after, while working in the Land and Income Tax Department, he took night classes in painting under
Henri Bastings. In 1908 and 1909, he visited his brother in Sydney then in 1912 joined him, then enrolled in the
Royal Art Society School to study drawing and painting under
Dattilo Rubbo
Antonio Salvatore Dattilo Rubbo (Napoli 21 June 1870 – Sydney 1 June 1955) was an Italy, Italian-born artist and art teacher active in Australia from 1897.
Rubbo, or Dattilo-Rubbo, was born in Naples in 1870, and spent his early childhood i ...
alongside fellow students Smith,
Norah Simpson
Norah Simpson (5 July 1895 – 19 February 1974) was an Australian modernist painter. She grew up in Sydney and is described as "giving impetus to modernism" in Australia: when returning from France in 1913, she brought back a series of rep ...
and
Roy de Maistre.
Career
In 1913, he started working at the New South Wales Land Tax Office. In 1914, he started working as a
ticket writer for
Mark Foy's
Mark Foy's Limited or Mark Foy's was a department store in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, founded by Francis Foy and his brother Mark Foy. The department store was named after their father, Mark Foy (senior) and traded between 1885 and 1 ...
and
David Jones department stores, then from 1916 worked for the commercial art firm of
Smith and Julius. In this position, Wakelin found himself working alongside “fellow artists such as Lloyd Rees and James Muir Auld.”
Early in 1919, he commenced study at the Royal Art Society’s classes “where he found a sympathetic teacher in A. Datillo Rubbo.”
Later in 1919, together with
Roy de Maistre
Roy De Maistre CBE (27 March 18941 March 1968) was an Australian artist of international fame. He is renowned in Australian art for his early experimentation with "colour-music", and is recognised as the first Australian artist to use pure abst ...
, he held a two-man exhibition ''Colour in Art'' influenced by
Cézanne,
Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetism, Synthetist style that were d ...
and
Van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inclu ...
at
Gayfield Shaw
Gayfield Park, commonly known as Gayfield, is a football stadium in Arbroath, Angus, Scotland. It is the home ground of Scottish Professional Football League team Arbroath F.C. The club have played at Gayfield since 1880, although the pitc ...
's art salon in Sydney. Before leaving for London, Wakelin exhibited at the art gallery of Anthony Horden and Sons. A review in the Sydney Morning Herald described his work as "daring," displaying "a splendid audacity" and a "spirit of modernism."
He worked in London as a freelance artist (spending some time in Paris) from 1922 to 1924. Wakelin needed to work in England to keep his family and obtained employment with “Hopwoods and Cinads advertising agencies. He worked as an illustrator and scenario writer.”
On his return to
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
in 1925 he held an exhibition of his work, largely influenced by
Cézanne, at
John Young John Young may refer to:
Academics
* John Young (professor of Greek) (died 1820), Scottish professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow
* John C. Young (college president) (1803–1857), American educator, pastor, and president of Centre Coll ...
's
Macquarie Galleries
Macquarie Galleries was a Sydney private art gallery established in 1925 by John Henry Young and Basil Burdett. It was located at "Strathkyle", 19 Bligh Street Sydney then moved to 40 King Street in 1945.
From 1991 to 1993 it was located at ...
. An insight into his professional life can be found in a comment in the Daily Telegraph in 1928. The writer describes Wakelin as "the most solitary artist in Sydney," who "for fifteen years has worked practically alone." In 1934 he was elected a member of the Society of Artists. “In 1935, the Art Gallery of New South Wales acquired its first Wakelin, Mount Wellington.”
He held frequent further exhibitions between 1928 and 1970, with a memorial exhibition held in 1972. An example of his work, exhibited in 1944 at the Macquarie Galleries, the reviewer describes Wakelin as having an exploring temperament and "one of our most forceful painters."
From 1924 to 1941, he worked for the commercial art firm of O'Brien Publishers. From Wakelin’s return to Australia in 1924 and through the 1930s, he experienced lean times. “His job as a commercial artist at O’Brien Publishers was halved during the Depression.”
From 1942 to 1949, he worked in the drawing department of Edward H O'Brien, who were joint venturers with the
Postmaster General's Department
The Postmaster-General's Department (PMG) was a department of the Australian federal government, established at Federation in 1901, whose responsibilities included the provision of postal and telegraphic services throughout Australia. It was ...
(now
Telstra
Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets voice, mobile, internet access, pay television and other products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 ...
) for the end-to-end production of the
Yellow Pages
The yellow pages are telephone directories of businesses, organized by category rather than alphabetically by business name, in which advertising is sold. The directories were originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for ...
, a local Australian business directory. He was in
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 ...
in 1950–51 teaching at the National Gallery School then in the
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...
from 1952 teaching part-time, mostly to architecture students. From 1956 to 1957, he toured Europe, visiting England, Holland, France and Italy.
He was an affable, sociable man of considerable attainments in fields other than painting - he read widely and had a fine
bass
Bass or Basses may refer to:
Fish
* Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species
Music
* Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range:
** Bass (instrument), including:
** Acoustic bass gui ...
voice, with a repertoire from popular songs and
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian era, Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ...
to
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...
and
Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard w ...
.
Wakelin, De Maistre and
Grace Cossington Smith
Grace Cossington Smith (20 April 189220 December 1984) was an Visual arts of Australia, Australian artist and pioneer of Modernist art, modernist painting in Australia and was instrumental in introducing Post-Impressionism to her home country. ...
are regarded as founding the modern movement in Sydney.
A retrospective of Wakelin’s work was held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1967. The exhibition highlighted how Wakelin’s subject matter revolved around his personal life and holidays. The landscapes included scenes from Hinton, Bathurst, Mount Saddleback, Terrigal, and Canberra. More personal subject matter included his daughter Judith, his wife Estelle, Roland Jr., and close friend and fellow artist, Douglas Dundas.
In 2003, Newcastle Region Art Gallery held an exhibition of Wakelin’s paintings, the first comprehensive exhibition since the 1967 retrospective. The gallery described the artists’ search for artistic expression as beginning “from near abstraction, through a post-impressionistic and C
ézannesque interpretation of the 1920s and 1930s, to a romantic vision in later life.”
Gallery holdings
* Art Gallery of New South Wales. 55 works including this 192
self-portrait.
* State Library of New South Wales. 4 works including
Picnic at the Rocks" 1952.
* National Portrait Gallery
Self-portrait 1962.
* National Gallery of Victoria. 8 works including
Girl in a purple dress" 1918.
* Newcastle Art Gallery. 9 works including
The train to the mountains" 1943.
Death
He died on 28 May 1971.
Sources
*
Encyclopedia of Australian Art', Alan McCulloch, Hutchison of London, 1968
*
*
* Wakelin, Roland
Roland Wakelin retrospective Sydney, N.S.W. : The Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1967.
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wakelin, Roland
1887 births
1971 deaths
New Zealand painters
Australian art teachers
People from Greytown, New Zealand
20th-century Australian painters
20th-century Australian male artists
Australian male painters
New Zealand emigrants to Australia