HUGH RAMSAY: THE 'PROBLEM PICTURE' OF A PROBLEM PAINTER

• Published in: Art monthly Australia no. 322; pp. 60 - 4
• Main Author: Trumble, Angus
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Acton Art Monthly Australia 01.03.2020
• Subjects: 20th century; Art exhibits; Oil painting; Painters; Patronage; Portraits; Ramsay, Hugh (1877-1906)
• ISSN: 1033-4025

Founded on the academic genres he absorbed with such precociousness at the National Gallery School in Melbourne, above all portraiture, the brief career of Hugh Ramsay has at its climax an ambitious double portrait that is at the same time so puzzling and so intriguing that in many respects it satisfies the criteria of 'problem picture': Two girls in white (1904) from the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW). Into the relatively compressed, actually chubby horizontal format of 50 by 57 inches (125.7 by 144.8 centimetres), Ramsay accommodates his sisters Madge and Nell (on the right), both seated and wearing evening dress. The sisters' pictorial proximity, their colour harmonies and contrasting poses together reinforce a series of strong left-to-right downward-swooping diagonals that provide the composition as a whole with its structure and dynamism. At the same time, however, sharing it seems only the soft rug beneath their feet, and with the bold centrally placed barrier of the arm of the leather settee on which Nell reclines, the sisters are emphatically separated. This exhibition also opens up one of the most intriguing questions about the future that was denied Ramsay, namely the turbo charge and forward propulsion that might have resulted from the lasting patronage of Dame Nellie Melba. Curated by Deborah Hart, ‘Hugh Ramsay’ is on display at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, until 29 March 2020