Warrnambool Art Gallery

Jeffrey Smart’s first ambition was to be an architect, and love of the created environment and relationships between buildings and other man made structures and people has been the focus of his art for over 40 years. His paintings present a world of ideal beauty, of colour and form and also of the absurd and surreal.

Study for the Arrow Carriers carefully models forms of men and circular signs against flat planes of pavement and sky. The subject is about the effect of technology on our visual environment, that is the effect of the high speed long distance car and truck. The arrow carrier’s walk up a giant’s landscape of merging road surfaces which curve off into infinity. The painting is in part, an ironic comment on the scale of contemporary industrialisation- what is that the arrows, which dwarf their carriers, are meant to guide or ward off? The bright colours of the work counteract the suggestion of a sinister world where people are controlled and physically dominated by mechanical invention. The clear cool light, long shadows showing the scene lit from the side relate Smart’s surrealism to de Chirico.

Douglas Green was born in Ballarat in 1921 and attended Melbourne Technical College. From 1944-47 he was a student at the National Gallery of Victoria School and from 1946-47 a student of the George Bell School. It was while he was at the NGV School that the NGV Travelling Scholarship, which had not been given since 1938, was resumed. The Scholarship provided the winner with a monthly stipend to travel and study overseas for two years. The competition in 1947 was judged by noted Australian artists Daryl Lindsay, Alice Bale, Douglas Dundas and Eric Thake.

The entrants submitted a figure drawing, a painting of a half nude and a composition of the student’s own design, the award tending to rest upon the latter work. In a field of work dominated by tonalists, the judging panel broke with convention in the choice of the winning entry.

The Scholarship was won by Douglas Green for Second Class, which was painted in a traditional manner and was based on compositions by El Greco and Veronese. The
use of tempera underpaint and oil glazes was also in the style of Veronese. The image shows John Brack and Helen Maudsley who were drawn from life. The work is socially conscious art, it depicts the daily experience of the average Australian in the postwar social climate. The image shows the people who were the moral, social and economic spine of Australia. The figures are depicted at the moment between public and private spheres, between home and workplace. They are self absorbed, physically together yet emotionally apart without a sense of community. The painting seems to correspond with Menzies’ idea of the forgotten people- the middle class. However the irony of the image is that the prewar social order had not been replaced, it had been restored. The people who were the backbone of the nation were relegated to ‘second class’, hence the title of the work.

The painting was criticised when it won Green the scholarship because it was seen to flaunt traditional skills and endorse the modern movement. The painting was said to be composed not observed. The furore was not just public perception, one of the judges Mary Bale was known to favour the runner up, a tonal study by Judith Peny.

Douglas Green travelled to England on his scholarship. He returned to Australia in
1952 and worked as an advertising designer, then as a teacher with the Victorian
Education Department.

The Warmambool Art Gallery also owns several photographic studies for the work second class, as well as a preparatory cartoon and sketches which add another element to the work.