Helen Stewart's portrait of artist and gallerist Treania Smith (1901–1990) is an encapsulation of the modern art scene in Sydney in the 1930s. As co-director of Macquarie Galleries from 1938 until 1979, Smith represented artists who are now counted among the foremost Australian exponents of modernism. Stewart, who studied in Europe under the highly influential teachers Iain McNab and Andre Lhote, exemplifies the artists whose work Smith is renowned for having championed. Stewart's first show at Macquarie Galleries in 1934 consisted of a group of portraits that were described by a Sydney Morning Herald critic as expressing 'a splendidly decisive, individual, and penetrating vision. The colour in them is a delight. In design, they reflect the finest achievement of contemporary activity abroad.' Artist and sitter were friends, both members of the Contemporary Group, and together made regular painting trips with Grace Cossington Smith AO OBE and Thea Proctor. Included in the Contemporary Group's 1937 exhibition at the David Jones Art Gallery, this portrait of Smith is unmistakeably modern in execution, demonstrating a flattened picture plane and the distillation of the figure and setting into a series of geometric shapes, lines and curvilinear forms.
Gift in memory of Tesse Lang by her husband Moshe Lang and family 2024. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
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