Clarice Beckett facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Clarice Beckett
Born	Clarice Marjoribanks Beckett (1887-03-21)21 March 1887 Casterton, Victoria, Australia
Died	7 July 1935(1935-07-07) (aged 48) Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Nationality	Australian
Education	National Gallery School Max Meldrum School
Known for	Painting
Movement	Australian tonalism

Silent Approach, c. 1924, National Gallery of Australia

Clarice Marjoribanks Beckett (born March 21, 1887 – died July 7, 1935) was an important Australian artist. She was a key part of the Australian tonalist art movement.

Beckett was famous for her soft, misty paintings of Melbourne and its suburbs. She created her own special style. This style is now seen as an early step towards modern art in Australia. During her life, many people in the art world didn't appreciate her work. She was mostly forgotten for many years after she died. But today, she is known as one of Australia's greatest artists.

Clarice was born and grew up in Casterton, a country town. People thought she was very shy, but also smart and good at art. In 1914, her family moved to Melbourne. She then studied art for three years at the National Gallery School. Her teacher was Frederick McCubbin, a famous Australian impressionist painter. After that, she spent nine months at another art school. This school was run by Max Meldrum, who had his own ideas about painting. He taught a "tonalist" system based on scientific rules.

Beckett and other artists who followed Meldrum's ideas started showing their art together in 1919. Critics sometimes called them "Meldrumites." Clarice also showed her work with the Twenty Melbourne Painters Society. She had her first solo art show in 1923. She would go on to have ten solo shows in total.

Clarice Beckett never left Victoria and rarely traveled far from Melbourne. She spent much of her adult life looking after her sick parents at their home in Beaumaris. Even with her family duties, she painted a lot. She often painted en plein air (outdoors) around Beaumaris. She usually painted at dawn or dusk. These were the times when she was free from housework.

Beckett used Meldrum's methods and painted everyday scenes. But her art also had a special emotional and spiritual feeling. This showed her interest in Buddhism, Theosophy, and the ideas of Freud. By 1926, her landscapes were very simple and new for Australian art. From 1930, she tried new things with brighter colors and interesting designs. In 1935, she was painting the sea during a winter storm. She caught pneumonia and died four days later. She was 48 years old.

Sadly, many of Beckett's paintings were lost after she died. Her father destroyed some he thought were "unfinished." Others were lost in a bushfire. In 1970, about two thousand of her works were found in an old shed. Most of them were ruined by the weather. The paintings that survived were shown in Melbourne the next year. This led to a new interest in Clarice Beckett's art. Now, her paintings are in Australia's national and state art galleries. She is seen as a very important artist.

Life Story

Growing Up and Learning Art

Clarice Beckett at 18 years old

Clarice Beckett painting in the garden at St Enoch's, Beaumaris, in the 1930s

Clarice Beckett was born in 1887 in Casterton, Victoria. She was the oldest daughter of Elizabeth Kate and Joseph Clifden Beckett. Her father was a bank manager and an organist.

Clarice went to primary school in Casterton. For high school, she went to Queen's College in Ballarat until 1903. There, she showed a strong talent for drawing. She even wrote a play that the students performed. She also took private drawing lessons.

Later, her family moved to South Yarra in Melbourne. She finished her last year of school at Melbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar School. In 1914, she started studying art at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. She studied for three years with Frederick McCubbin. Then, she continued her studies with Max Meldrum. His unique ideas about art greatly influenced her own painting style.

In 1919, her parents moved to Beaumaris, a bayside suburb of Melbourne. They bought a house called St. Enoch's.

As her parents got older and sicker, Clarice took on more household duties. This limited her time for art. However, she still joined other tonalist artists on painting trips. They went to places like Eltham, Olinda, and coastal towns like Anglesea and Lorne. Her paintings show these beautiful locations. At home in Beaumaris, Clarice could only paint outdoors at dawn or dusk. The rest of her day was spent caring for her parents. Her mother became very ill in 1932 and died in 1934. After her mother's death, Clarice's father destroyed some of her paintings. He thought they were "unfinished." He died in 1936.

Australian Tonalism Explained

A group of tonalist painters and their families camping in San Remo, 1920s–1930s

View Across the Yarra, c. 1931

After joining Meldrum's school, Clarice Beckett started using his special painting system. This led to a style called Australian tonalism. This style is known for its "misty" or hazy look. Artists created this by building up layers of "tone" (lightness and darkness). Meldrum believed art should be like science. He thought artists should only paint the first impressions their eyes received. They should not add extra details or stories.

The Australian tonalists did not like impressionism or modern art styles. Their ideas caused a lot of debate. Other artists sometimes made fun of them, calling them "Meldrumites." One famous artist, George Bell, said Australian Tonalism made everything look "muffled" and "dense."

Clarice Beckett painted very often and with great care. She used Meldrum's ideas to paint scenes outdoors. She was very productive, holding a solo show every year from 1923 to 1933. She painted beaches, country areas, and city scenes. She often captured the special light of early mornings or evenings.

At first, art critics had mixed feelings about her paintings. Some found them "opaque" (not clear). One critic wrote that her paintings made Australia look like it was "in a continual state of fog." But over time, some critics began to praise her work. Her friend and fellow artist, Percy Leason, said her paintings showed a "convincing illusion of actual space and air and light."

Meldrum himself once said there would never be a great woman artist. But he saw Clarice as his most talented student. He said she "worked like a man" and that her work was "of which any nation would be proud." He even called her a "great artist."

Her Modern Style

Tranquility, 1933, Art Gallery of South Australia

Clarice Beckett's paintings started to move beyond Meldrum's strict rules. She began to use color more boldly. While Meldrum thought modern artists cared too much about color, Clarice found her own way. Her art was a mix of Meldrum's ideas and her own unique way of seeing light, shape, and color.

Rosalind Hollinrake, who helped bring Beckett's art back into public view in the 1970s, noticed her later works used color to make shapes stronger. They also had more daring designs. In 1971, critic Patrick McCaughey called Beckett a "remarkable modernist." He put her on the same level as other important modern Australian artists like Grace Cossington Smith and Margaret Preston. He said she was both a "Meldrumite and a pioneering modernist."

Artist and critic Nancy Borlase wrote that Beckett's simple style seemed to predict the work of artists like Barnett Newman many years later. She also noted that "solitude and stillness" were key themes in Beckett's art.

Her Death

In 1935, Clarice Beckett was painting the sea near Beaumaris during a storm. She caught pneumonia and died four days later. She was 48 years old. She was buried in Cheltenham Memorial Park.

Her Art and How She Painted

Morning Shadows (c. 1932) was bought by the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1979. It was the first of Beckett's works to join their collection. The famous writer Germaine Greer gave a two-hour talk about this painting. She said Beckett was "the first to paint the suburbs of Australia ... Australia as it really is, as we know it."

Clarice Beckett wrote down her goals for her art in 1924. This is the only known statement she made about her work. She said she wanted:

• To show the true beauty of nature.
• To capture the charm of light and shadow.
• To use correct tones to make her paintings look as real as possible.

Clarice was good at painting portraits and still life (like flowers), which her teacher Meldrum liked. But she preferred to paint landscapes outdoors by herself. She often painted scenes from the Beaumaris area where she lived. She was one of the first artists in Meldrum's group to use a special painting trolley. This made it easier for her to paint in different outdoor spots.

Her Lasting Impact

Wet Evening, 1927, Collection: Castlemaine Art Museum

During her lifetime, Clarice Beckett's paintings were not in any public art collections in Australia. But after her death, her sister and a friend donated some of her works to art museums. Now, almost every major Australian art gallery has her paintings. The National Gallery of Australia bought eight of her works in 1971. The artist Fred Williams suggested they buy them. He said she was "ahead of her time." By 2001, her paintings were selling for very high prices at auctions.

In 1936, a special memorial exhibition was held for Beckett in Melbourne. Her sister and father organized it. In 1971, Clarice's sister told Rosalind Hollinrake a sad story. More than 2,000 of Clarice's paintings had been left in an open shed near Benalla. Most of them were ruined by the weather and animals. However, about thirty well-preserved works were found at an artist colony called Montsalvat. These had been sent there when her Beaumaris home was cleared out.

After this discovery, five art shows of Beckett's work were held between 1971 and 1980. The first museum show of her art was in 1995. A big exhibition called "Politically incorrect: Clarice Beckett" toured eight national galleries from 1999 to 2000.

In 2021, the Art Gallery of South Australia held a large exhibition called "Clarice Beckett: The Present Moment." It showed 160 of her works, including a portrait that had been lost for a long time. This show was very popular and had the most visitors of any solo exhibition in the museum's history.

Clarice Beckett is remembered in several ways. There is a lane named 'Clarice Beckett's Lane' in Black Rock. A part of the City of Bayside is called Beckett Ward. Ballarat Grammar School, where she studied, gives an annual Clarice Beckett Prize for art students. A crater on the planet Mercury was also named Beckett in her honor in 2008.

Selected Paintings

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  Spring Morning, 1925, Benalla Art Gallery

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  Summer Fields, 1926, Art Gallery of South Australia

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  October Morning, 1927, Art Gallery of South Australia

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  Boatshed Beaumaris, 1928, Castlemaine Art Museum

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  Motor Lights, 1929, Art Gallery of South Australia

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  Sea Drift, 1930, Art Gallery of South Australia

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  Wet Night, Brighton, 1930, private collection

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  Evening, St Kilda Road, 1930, Art Gallery of New South Wales

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  Moonlight and Calm Sea, 1931, private collection

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  Passing Trams, 1931, Art Gallery of South Australia

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  Solitude, 1932, Art Gallery of South Australia

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  Hawthorn Tea Gardens, 1933, Art Gallery of South Australia

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  Sandringham Beach, 1933, National Gallery of Australia

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  Clarice Beckett (n.d.) Lights Across the Bay

Exhibitions