It is difficult to condense the long and complicated history of the South Australian School of Art. It began in 1861 as the School of Design, and is thought to be the oldest, continuing technical art school in Australia. At this time, it was located in the South Australian Institute building which was, and still is, situated on the corner of Kintore Avenue and North Terrace, an important city location which forms part of the ‘cultural boulevard’ of Adelaide. The first art master was Charles Hill, a line
engraver trained in England, who came to Adelaide in 1854 on board the Historia. He continued in this position until 1881.175
The first twenty years of the school’s operation were administered by the Society of the Arts. In 1881, the Public Library and Museum and Art Gallery board took over the management of the school. This board also determined that the school be divided into a School of Painting and a School of Design. As a result, Charles Hill’s position was abruptly terminated in 1881, largely due to criticism of his "perceived inability to sufficiently develop the practical branches of mechanical, geometrical and
architectural drawing".176
German-born and -trained artist Louis Tannert was appointed master of the School of Painting and, in 1882, Harry Pelling Gill177 became master of the School of Design.178
Gill was a tour-de-force in the Adelaide art community and taught numerous classes at the School of Design, including Design, Freehand from the Cast, Model Drawing and Geometry, Perspective, Building and Machine Construction. He also served as president of the South Australian Art Teachers' Association from 1889 to 1891 and oversaw the design of the original Elder Wing of the Art Gallery of South Australia.179
Importantly, he was Honorary Curator of the AGSA from 1892 to 1909, Inspector and Examiner of Art from 1909 to 1915, and in 1909 became President of the Royal Society of Artists until 1911.
175 Staff Writer, "Charles Hill, Biography," Design & Art Australia Online, accessed July 4, 2012.
http://www.daao.org.au/bio/charles-hill/#artist_biography.
176 M Young, "A History of Art and Design Education in South Australia, 1836-1887" (M.Ed, Flinders
University of South Australia, 1986)., 364
177 See Appendix 4.
178 "South Australian School of Art, Prospectus 1961," (Adelaide: Education Department, 1961)., 11 179 Then called the National Gallery of South Australia.
Illus 51. Entrance to the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts, Exhibition Building, North Terrace.
In 1891, the Adelaide School of Arts and Crafts moved from the Institute Building to the Exhibition Building premises further eastward on North Terrace because larger facilities were required for increasing numbers of students,180 and remained there
until 1963181. The “South Australian School of Art, Prospectus 1960” records that “In
1909, the Government adopted the recommendation of the Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery Board, that the School of Design, Painting and Technical Arts, being a
180 Jenny Aland, "Art and design education in South Australian schools, from the early 1880s to the 1920s
:the influence of South Kensington and Harry Pelling Gill" (MEd, University of Canberra, 1992)., 69
teaching Department, be transferred to the Education Department as from 30th June”.182 With this move to the Education Department, Gill’s title became that of
Principal. In 1915, he resigned due to ill health and a year later, aged sixty-one, died on voyage to England and was buried at sea. This was a sad and tragic end for such a dynamic and perspicacious man, who had invested thirty-three years of his life into the cultural life of Adelaide.
Gill had been an enthusiastic exponent of the South Kensington system of art
education. In a lecture to celebrate the 150th year of the South Australian School of Art, Professor Ian North, (Head of the SASA, 1984-93) pronounced the South
Kensington teaching system a “rigid copyist drawing training — elaborately tiered into twenty-three stages and about as exciting as a London drain.”183 According to his
biographer, Gerald Lyn Fischer, “Gill was a vain man who could be uncompliant and disagreeable but he was also hard working, and saved the AGSA board a lot of money with his accurate judgement of the value of paintings he purchased for them.”184
Angus Trumble writes on Gill’s abilities as Honorary Curator that he was the “most able and successful curator of a public art museum in the Australasian colonies during the decades on either side of Federation … Gill gathered in Adelaide the finest and most progressive group of purchases yet seen in Australia”.185
Although unpopular in many circles because of his imperious and sometimes contemptuous manner, Gill was described by his students as being an inspirational and striking personality with tireless energy and enthusiasm. Adelaide art historian Shirley Wilson argues that the success of the SASA can be attributed to the sound principles of his early pioneering work.186 In the introduction to the 1961 SASA
prospectus “A Short History of the School”, Gill is viewed as having made a great contribution to the SASA and the arts in South Australia.187
182 "South Australian School of Art, Prospectus 1960," (Adelaide: Education Department, 1960)., 9 183 Ian North, "Dates, Questions and the View from Mars: SASA 150th Anniversary Address," accessed
November 14, 2008. http://www.unisa.edu.au/art/150years.asp.
184 G. L. Fischer, "Gill, Harry Pelling (1855–1916)," Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of
Biography, Australian National University, accessed on July 4, 2012. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gill-harry-pelling-6381/text10901.
185 Ron Radford and Art Gallery of South Australia, The story of the Elder Bequest/Art Gallery of South Australia, (Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2000). 42
186 Shirley Wilson, From Shadow into Light: South Australian Women Artists Since Colonization, ed. A.
M. Dolling (Adelaide: Pagel Books 1988)., 41
In 1916, in the year after Gill’s death, sculptor John Christie Wright was appointed principal. However, his time in the position was very short. He was enlisted to fight in WWI six weeks after becoming principal and was killed in action in May 1917. Charles Pavia was appointed acting-principal until Laurence Hotham Howie returned from war service in 1920.188
Howie's stewardship was one of conservative and kindly management in the face of the serious problems of post-WWI in the 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s.189 During this time, the majority of teachers on staff at the South Australian
School of Art were women, which was notable compared with trends elsewhere in Australia. Many of these female teachers, Jessamine Buxton, Ethel Barringer, Marie Tuck, Mary Packer Harris, Dorrit Black and Jacqueline Hick, were instrumental in introducing modernism to their students.190 According to Professor Ian North in his SASA 150th Anniversary Address, the SASA has a distinguished history of employing women staff members, including Elizabeth Armstrong, who was the first appointed female painting teacher in Australia.191
Two women art teachers of particular note at the SASA were Mary Packer Harris and Ethel Barringer. Although they taught a variety of art subjects, their teaching had a positive effect on the development of printmaking and visual art in South Australia. Harris was appointed to the SASA by Howie in 1922 and she worked there until her retirement in 1953. She was born in England in 1891 to Quaker parents, and her “father shared implicitly the Quaker ideal of equality of the sexes. He used to recall when he was the only man on the platform upholding votes for women.” Harris was thus assured of getting an education equal to that of her two brothers.192
188 "South Australian School of Art, Prospectus 1961," (Adelaide: Education Department, 1961). 189 In a book written to honour her father, Mary Hotham Howie writes that Laurie loved teaching and
took some of his classes to the Botanic Park and Gardens. Howie suggests that her father would have liked to do more teaching but, as a principal, he had to spend a lot of his time working on
administration. As a principal, he was an advocate for better conditions for both his staff and students. He wanted a new, purpose-built school instead of the rambling and rundown rooms at the Exhibition Building in North Terrace. Mary Hotham Howie, Laurie's World: The life and art of L. H. Howie (Adelaide: Mary Hotham Howie, 2007)., 9
190 Jenny Aland, "Inaugural meeting of the Friends of the South Australian School of Art," (Bradley
Forum, Hawke Building: City West Campus, University of South Australia, 2008)., August 21, 2008
191 North, "Dates, Questions and the View from Mars: SASA 150th Anniversary Address," accessed
November 14, 2008. http://www.unisa.edu.au/art/150years.asp.. Elizabeth C. Armstrong was appointed to the School in 1893 as Painting Mistress, a position she held for thirty-six years, until her retirement in 1929.
192 Rachel Biven, "Mary Packer Harris," ed. The Walkerville Town Council (Walkerville: The Walkerville
Harris graduated from the Edinburgh School of Art in 1913. She completed a
postgraduate course in woodblock printing with Sir F. Morley Fletcher, and taught in Scotland until 1921. In keeping with her arts and crafts training, she made paintings, prints, printed fabrics, tapestries, stained glass and needlework. Harris exhibited for many years with the RSASA (1922-1967) and in many other exhibitions, including the CAS SA Anti-Fascist Exhibition at Adelaide in 1943. She also wrote and published books on art and Quaker philosophy, and edited the arts and crafts magazine The Forerunner from 1930 to 1938,193 which contained works of art, poems and stories by
such well-known artists as Ruth Tuck, Ivor Francis and Jacqueline Hick. She also took groups of school-children through the AGSA from 1937 to 1946 as she was a lecturer in art there.194 All forms of her art are held in the AGSA collection and some works in
the NGA collection. One of her prints, Nocturne, Elder Gardens is a linocut print of immense skill in the relief printing technique. Harris has created a print which, inspired by Japanese woodblock printing, maintains a watercolour wash quality not usually associated with linoblock printing. The use of colour perfectly captures the gloaming – the amazing light that can be experienced at dusk and before the night darkens.
193 Christopher Menz, "Mary Packer Harris, Biography," Design & Art Australia Online, accessed November
14, 2008. http://www.daao.org.au/bio/mary-packer-harris/#artist_biography. The Forerunner, which Mary Packer Harris edited, was produced by staff and students from the Girls Central Art School and the School of Arts and Crafts; the Girls Central Art School operated from 1932 until 1953. The school was co- located with the School of Arts and Crafts at the Exhibition Building on North Terrace. Many of the staff taught in both.
Illus 52. Mary Packer Harris, Nocturne, Elder Gardens, 1927, linocut, printed in colour, from multiple blocks, 25.7 x 18.0 cm. Image not reproduced owing to copyright
restrictions.
Harris was a member of the RSASA, and also a foundation member of the CAS SA. In 1939, Harris organised The Testament of Beauty exhibition with her students, which included her own work and that of Shirley Adams, Victor Adolfsson, Margaret Bevan,
Violet Buttrose, David Dallwitz, Ivor Francis, Ruby Henty, Jacqueline Hick, Jean Lowe, Kenneth Lamacraft, Helen Mackintosh, Robert Mansell, Doug Roberts, Ruth Tuck, Jeff Smart and John Welsh.195 The participants in this exhibition feature
prominently on the first committee of the CAS SA, and are recorded by Ivor Francis in his invaluable brief history of this organisation.196
Another important female teacher at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts was Ethel Barringer. A student of Gill’s at the South Australian School of Design, Barringer travelled to England in 1912 to study etching and enamelling at Goldsmiths' College, and elsewhere. Her enthusiasm for teaching at the art school and her
interest in etching culminated in her purchasing a large etching press for the school in February 1925. That same month, on February 11, a lengthy newspaper article in The News gave a glowing account of the new press that was “probably the largest etching press at any art school in the Commonwealth”. The article also described the etching process in great detail and noted how keen the students at the School of Arts were for their Thursday etching classes.197 Unfortunately, Barringer died
unexpectedly in May 1925.
195 Biven, "Mary Packer Harris," np
196 Chairman David Dallwitz, Vice-Chairman Dorrit Black, Secretary Max Harris, Treasurer Joan Dallwitz,
committee members Shirley Adams, Vik Adolfsson, Ivor Francis, Jacqueline Hick, Douglas Robers, Ruth Tuck, Selection Committee Mary P. Harris and Ruby Henty. Ivor Francis, Contemporary Art Society of Australia, (S.A.) Inc, A Brief Review Covering the Period 1942-1975, vol. Supplement to Vol.6 No.1, CAS Broadsheet (Adelaide: Contemporary Art Society, 1976)., 2
Illus 53. Ethel Barringer, The Fisherman’s Boat, undated, 6.9 x 9.4 cm. Image not reproduced owing to copyright restrictions.
Illus 54. Barbara Hanrahan, Dear Miss Ethel Barringer, 1975, etching, 60.6 x 43.3cm. Image not reproduced owing to copyright restrictions.
Her untimely death has not diminished her contribution to the SASA; as her colleague Harris stated, it was she who “is honoured as introducing the craft of etching into the curriculum.”198 One of her prints, The Fisherman’s Boat, is a handsomely crafted
etching, with a poetic and austere aesthetic. Her estate provided funds in her memory for a prize and a scholarship to be awarded to the best student in the etching class.199 The etching Dear Miss Ethel Barringer was produced in 1975 by
prominent South Australian printmaker Barbara Hanrahan. This etching has a wonderfully textured background, created by false biting, with a column of lusty carnival women frolicking in various dynamic poses, including the largest figure proclaiming a banner with the text ‘Balancing Act’ which is counterbalanced by a more demurely dressed female figure with an apron embroidered with ‘Dear Miss Ethel Barringer’.
198 Mary Packer Harris, In One Splendour Spun (Kadina, South Australia: A Coolibah Production, SA,
1971)., 29
199 Anita Callaway, "Ethel Barringer, Biography," Design & Art Australia Online, accessed November 14,