Peintres Australiens à Etaples by Jean-Claude Lesage

Baker Clack (Arthur). Bateuax en chantier (Esquisse), 1914.

A NEW FRENCH & ENGLISH EDITION

This beautifully produced book, with its abundant colour illustrations, tells the remarkable story of the part played by no less than twenty-five 'antipodean' painters, twenty-two Australians and three New Zealanders, in the artistic life of Etaples, the small port town set on the River Canche near to the fashionable coastal resort of Le Touquet Paris Plage, a region known from its ancient name as Picardy.

The author, Jean-Claude Lesage, is an art historian who teaches at the University of Artois, and who has made it his lifetime work to document the activities of Australian and American artists who came to work in the Picardy region.

Etaples and the surrounding region had long been a location favoured by artists. The English painter Richard Bonington had worked there, attracted by its combination of sea and sky and the clear light of fine days along the English Channel. Then, from the 1880s onwards, the Picardy region became a magnet for Australian artists, particularly women artists. According to Jean-Claude Lesage, the attraction, at least initially, was the contrast between the perceived wholesome character of this provincial location and the 'mauvaise réputation' of the Paris art world. The list of these travellers includes some of the best-known Australian artists of the twentieth century, including as it does Isobel Rae, Ethel Carrick Fox, Hilda Rix and Margaret Preston. Word of mouth seems to have been the basis for many of these visitors choosing Etaples as a base, a point made clear by an extract the Lesage quotes from an article Alison Rae, Isobel's sister, published in 1891. The sisters had come to Etaples on the suggestion of friends in Melbourne and occupied the same house as their friends, where they found 'Australian books and eucalyptus leaves in the drawers of a desk'.

While the association between John Peter Russell and the Brittanny region is now well known, the link between Picardy and artists such as those already mentioned and others such as Arthur Streeton, Will Dyson, Rupert Bunny and Charles Conder has received less attention, except perhaps in relation to the work executed by Streeton and Dyson as official war artists during the Great War.

Of particular interest is Lesage's concern to provide a French audience with an insight into an important period of Australia's art history, the final two decades of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth. As he rightly says, in his 'Introduction', 'Australian art is poorly known in France'. This book should play a part in rectifying that situation, just as it offers an Australian audience a well-illustrated and documented account of the intersection between artists and place that took place at Etaples.

A handsome production, with a comprehensive checklist of painters, valuable chronologies and detailed listings of exhibitions and well as bibliographical citations. Hardcover: 28cm X 21.5cm [11 inches X 8.5 inches] Text in French and English. 136 pages; 58 colour illustrations; 30 black and white + maps. NEW with dust jacket featuring a detail from a painting by Isobel Rae. 

ISBN: 2904959165.
Price A$120.00