Not titled (Seascape) c.1919-1935
The story of Clarice Beckett's death is truly tragic. In 1934 her mother had died after a long illness, but she was still caring for her elderly father at home. As we have seen already, painting was a spiritual discipline for Clarice, a way to give her life some structure and meaning. And so she would go out whenever possible with her little cart full of empty canvases and her easel.
The weather never put her off her task. In fact she relished painting after the rain or in stormy weather. Here we see a painting made under such conditions. It wasn't imagined, she was there. So in early July 1935 (winter in Melbourne), on a stormy afternoon, Clarice Becket set out to paint an image like the one we see here.
Unfortunately she caught a very bad cold and was soon hospitalised. As a child she had suffered rheumatic fever, and this had weakened her heart and lungs. The cold soon turned to double pneumonia, and given the medical treatment available at the time, nothing could be done to save her. She died on 7 July, 1935, symbolically a martyr to her art. Just 48.
After her funeral, which was attended by Max Meldrum and his circle of artists, the poet John Thompson wrote:
"They've laid a body in the ground,
Out of sight, out of sound:
How else should a body fare?
And Clarice Beckett moves no more
Along the cold Victorian shore,
Strong in her uncommon world
Of rippled dyes and patterns curled
In cumulative fugues of light.
The seeing hand and eye
Are gone, and yet their force is not annulled.
Her silvery canvases have not been dulled.
She is not lost, for when the moon or sun
Kindles the trembling gauzes of the air,
And when the blind machine of sea and sky
Grinds up soft light with mist and flying spray.
And weaves from rosy whorls and tufts of green
And spots of cloudy gold and stripes of grey,
Weaves a translucent ever-flowing screen
Which often slips unheeded by,
Then all that she has been and felt and done
Wakes in the living and assists their sight."
She was nearly lost to us
Immediately after Clarice's death, her sister Hilda arranged to move her father into her own care. But they had to clear the Beaumaris house quickly for a sale. Hilda kept several hundred in her home, and her father order her to burn a lot of paintings that he considered were unfinished or not worthy of keeping. The rest, around two thousand, were transferred for storage to a shed at Benalla, in country Victoria.
When these were found by Rosalind Hollinrake in 1970, they were in a deplorable state, damaged by weather and rodents. She managed to identify 370 that could be salvaged, but a huge number have been lost forever. A lot of restoration work has been done on the surviving paintings, and now we have about 600 works remaining.
Clarice Beckett may not have sold a lot of paintings in her life time (though they were found scattered about in private collections), but now at auction her best paintings easily demand six figures. She is represented in all the major public galleries of Australia, considered a pioneering modern artist and an inspiration to women who struggle still to balance creativity and domestic life.
Not titled (Seascape) c.1919-1935
The story of Clarice Beckett's death is truly tragic. In 1934 her mother had died after a long illness, but she was still caring for her elderly father at home. As we have seen already, painting was a spiritual discipline for Clarice, a way to give her life some structure and meaning. And so she would go out whenever possible with her little cart full of empty canvases and her easel.
The weather never put her off her task. In fact she relished painting after the rain or in stormy weather. Here we see a painting made under such conditions. It wasn't imagined, she was there. So in early July 1935 (winter in Melbourne), on a stormy afternoon, Clarice Becket set out to paint an image like the one we see here.
Unfortunately she caught a very bad cold and was soon hospitalised. As a child she had suffered rheumatic fever, and this had weakened her heart and lungs. The cold soon turned to double pneumonia, and given the medical treatment available at the time, nothing could be done to save her. She died on 7 July, 1935, symbolically a martyr to her art. Just 48.
After her funeral, which was attended by Max Meldrum and his circle of artists, the poet John Thompson wrote:
"They've laid a body in the ground,
Out of sight, out of sound:
How else should a body fare?
And Clarice Beckett moves no more
Along the cold Victorian shore,
Strong in her uncommon world
Of rippled dyes and patterns curled
In cumulative fugues of light.
The seeing hand and eye
Are gone, and yet their force is not annulled.
Her silvery canvases have not been dulled.
She is not lost, for when the moon or sun
Kindles the trembling gauzes of the air,
And when the blind machine of sea and sky
Grinds up soft light with mist and flying spray.
And weaves from rosy whorls and tufts of green
And spots of cloudy gold and stripes of grey,
Weaves a translucent ever-flowing screen
Which often slips unheeded by,
Then all that she has been and felt and done
Wakes in the living and assists their sight."
She was nearly lost to us
Immediately after Clarice's death, her sister Hilda arranged to move her father into her own care. But they had to clear the Beaumaris house quickly for a sale. Hilda kept several hundred in her home, and her father order her to burn a lot of paintings that he considered were unfinished or not worthy of keeping. The rest, around two thousand, were transferred for storage to a shed at Benalla, in country Victoria.
When these were found by Rosalind Hollinrake in 1970, they were in a deplorable state, damaged by weather and rodents. She managed to identify 370 that could be salvaged, but a huge number have been lost forever. A lot of restoration work has been done on the surviving paintings, and now we have about 600 works remaining.
Clarice Beckett may not have sold a lot of paintings in her life time (though they were found scattered about in private collections), but now at auction her best paintings easily demand six figures. She is represented in all the major public galleries of Australia, considered a pioneering modern artist and an inspiration to women who struggle still to balance creativity and domestic life.