Jean Appleton, painter
Hyfler/Rosner
Jean Appleton
Painter
1911-2003
Jean Appleton was a small, gentle woman of quiet intelligence with a
wonderful smile. Only when you turned to the subject of art did you detect
the determination and passion which governed her career.
Appleton, who has died aged 91, belonged to a generation for whom becoming
an artist involved lengthy scholarship and a long period of working
privately before there was any chance of a solo exhibition. Very few artists
hoped to make a living out of painting so an artist needed determination and
belief in what they were doing.
Women made up a large proportion of art classes, but, for most, embarking on
a serious artistic career was seldom considered. However, Appleton's early
resolution to be an artist remained steadfast.
She was born in Sydney, the second of Charles and Elizabeth Appleton's three
children and the only girl. Her father encouraged his children towards his
own love of books, her mother had a great love of music and her adored elder
brother Frederick encouraged her spirit of adventure. Her great-aunt Agnes
Blackwood, an independent woman who slept under a glazed roof in her large
library, engendered Jean's lifelong interest in the performing arts by
regularly taking her to the theatre.
Even as a child, Jean knew she wanted to be an artist. After gaining her
intermediate certificate (with an A in arts and an F in maths), she enrolled
at the East Sydney Technical College in 1928. Both parents were supportive
but Jean felt that her father, a man of his time, never really took her
artistic ambitions seriously, hoping that she'd soon marry and paint as a
hobby.
The art scene in the late 1920s in Sydney was, as Bernard Smith has written,
"heavy with the arrogance and respectability of old men", and there was a
desire to keep Australian art healthy and sane by rejecting the modernism of
Europe.
Appleton remembered her first teachers as dull and very academic. But in
1930 Douglas Dundas joined the staff after two years in Europe. To the
students he was a breath of fresh air.
Despite the Depression, Apple- ton completed her diploma; she won a college
scholarship and her father was able to support her.
However, she had had a revelation. After seeing an exhibition of
post-impressionist prints in the department store of Anthony Hordern's she
became obsessed with the idea of travelling to Europe to find out more about
modernist art. Her father's response was an emphatic "no". No daughter of
his was going off to live by herself in London.
So for a long time she worked in a studio, shared with fellow artist Dorothy
Thornhill (Dundas's future wife) at the Quay end of town an area greatly
favoured by Sydney's art world and bohemia. Here the two artists submitted
works to the Society of Artists' annual exhibitions, saved for the trip and
eked out an existence by designing fabric and running a sketch club.
In 1935 Appleton's father died and her mother, persuaded by Aunt Agnes,
agreed to her going to England. Eight years after her enrolment as a
student, Appleton departed on the cheapest means of transport, a cargo ship
with 10 passengers and only one stop three hours in Dakar in the middle of
the night.
On arrival in London she found cheap lodgings and enrolled at the
Westminster School, where she attended both day and evening classes under
the tutelage of Bernard Meninsky and Mark Gertler, both significant painters
and interesting men. Bloomsbury and the writing of Roger Fry and Clive Bell
dominated art debate.
The Slade and the Royal Academy, with their emphasis on representational
art, were seen as rather academic by those who followed Fry's dictum, "Do
not seek to imitate form but seek to create form, not to imitate life but
find an equivalent to life." West- minster was more avant-garde and here
Appleton completed two of Australia's earliest cubist paintings, Still Life
1937 and Painting IX 1937.
In these prewar years a number of other prominent Australian artists,
including William Dobell, Donald Friend, Eric Wilson and Arthur Murch, were
also working in London. Friend moved into the room above Appleton, who used
to wake him in time for morning classes by pulling on a rope outside her
window. The other end was tied to Friend's bed.
Murch was hired to design an exhibit for the International Wool Secretariat
at the British Empire Exhibition in Glasgow and called on the help of his
fellow Australian artists. Appleton was part of the team which, amid much
hilarity, made a 45-metre felt mural and a huge gilded ram intended to
surmount the tower of the exhibition building.
The artists built the giant ram in a room in Pimlico, then discovered that
they couldn't get it out of the normal-sized doors and windows. Eventually
the ram was cut in half, transported to Glasgow by Appleton and other
helpers who worked through the night to reassemble it, finishing seconds
before King George VI arrived to open the exhibition.
War was looming and Apple- ton's mother was anxious that she return home.
Distressed at having to leave the Westminster School and London, Appleton
decided to give herself a farewell present. She spent the money earned from
the wool venture on a trip to Paris to see the Centenary Cezanne Exhibition,
then went on to Italy where the Fascist guards failed to deter her from
looking at art in Milan and Venice, where she boarded a ship in Naples and
returned to Australia.
Teaching was one of the few ways for an artist to survive so in 1940
Appleton began to teach at the Church of England Girls Grammar School in
Canberra, and then, as part of the war effort, with the Occupational Therapy
Training Centre in Sydney. Also in 1940 she had her first solo exhibition at
the Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, the beginning of her 38-year association
with Macquarie.
The '40s were anxious years for Appleton. In 1943 her brother Frederick was
killed in action while her younger brother Ronald spent four years in a
prisoner-of-war camp. Also in 1943 she married the painter Eric Wilson, who
died of cancer only three years later. Wilson was a very strong personality,
convinced that his attitudes to art were right. He was also a Seventh Day
Adventist, with definite views on the role of his wife. It was a marriage
which Appleton was later to describe as not unhappy, but difficult.
Following Wilson's death, Appleton took over his teaching at the Julian
Ashton Art School and in 1947 also began teaching at the East Sydney
Technical College. She was a sensitive and inspiring teacher and many of her
students remained lifelong friends. Employment made it possible for her to
save and build a small house in Pymble and, in 1951, to have a second trip
to Europe, where her visit to Cezanne's studio in Provence renewed her
interest in the formal structure of her work.
In 1952 she married the painter Tom Green, whom she had met on this trip,
and in 1953 their daughter Elisabeth was born. Both the marriage and her
daughter were a great joy to Appleton. Tom respected her artistic
independence and, like many women, Appleton successfully juggled the roles
of wife, mother, teacher and painter.
She also enjoyed a wide circle of friends within the art world, among them
Lloyd and Margery Rees, Roland Wakelin, Thea Proctor and Grace
Cossington-Smith. She and Cossington-Smith would often spend days painting
in the North Shore bushland.
In his book on Cossington-Smith, author and critic Bruce James describes how
Cossington-Smith would equip herself for such outings with "a huge black
umbrella, painting material, stool, packed lunch and various provisions, an
enormous hat and enshrouding garments together with a home-made padded box
to insulate her feet from insects and the elements".
Over the years Appleton's work received much recognition. She exhibited with
Macquarie and was acquired by state galleries. In 1958 she won the Rockdale
Art Prize, in 1960 the D'Arcy Morris Memorial Prize, in 1961 the Bathurst
Art Prize and in 1965 the inaugural Portia Geach Memorial Award.
In spite of this success, by the late '60s Appleton felt a need to refuel
and re-evaluate her painting. Green was anxious to expand his art education
knowledge, so the family moved to England.
It was a fine opportunity to study great art but it was also a time of
social change and student unrest. Some of the art schools were closed to
staff, others were experiencing disruption. These difficulties and a feeling
of alienation from the prevailing art styles of the '60s persuaded the
Greens to return to Australia and settle at Moss Vale in the Southern
Highlands. Here there were fewer interruptions, more time for painting, and
they felt free to pursue their own artistic directions as well as creating a
splendid garden.
Early in 1981 the close relationship she had shared with Tom was shattered
by his death from cancer. Appleton decided to visit her daughter Elisabeth
and husband Axel von Krusenstiena, who were living and working in Dharmsala,
home to the Dalai Lama, high in the Himalayan foothills of India.
Here she had her own small house, walked in the hills, sketched and made
friends with the many Tibetan refugees.
On her return to Moss Vale, and for the last two decades of her painting,
she concentrated on interiors and still life. She exhibited with Robyn
Brady's Painters Gallery and her work attracted a wide and dedicated
audience.
In 1991, aged 80, she underwent cataract operations and, thrilled with the
result, undertook a large mural-size painting as well as working towards a
solo exhibition. In 1996 the Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery held
a retrospective of her work.
Until recently Appleton remained active, painting and travelling to visit
Elisabeth now a Buddhist nun living in Canberra as well as other friends
such as the sculptor May Barrie and painter Elisabeth Cummings.
Appleton was greatly admired professionally. Her warmth and questioning mind
attracted many friends and, as Cummings has said: "She was never didactic
but interested in exploration, so her thinking was always moving." She had a
life and career which were pursued quietly, but with unabated curiosity,
energy and dedication.
Bill Schenley
> Painter
> 1911-2003
> Jean Appleton was a small, gentle woman of quiet
> intelligence with a wonderful smile.
Not much of a fan of her work ... but it was a great
obituary.
Here are a few of Appleton's paintings:
http://www.evabreuerartdealer.com.au/appleton.html
http://www.artbank.gov.au/artbank/artists/appleton.htm
Then, there is always this one:
http://www.lapdonline.org/get_involved/stolen_art/files/paintings/a/appleton_jean_arrival.htm