Hindsight

The Pink House
View the image gallery

Colour is the key to the life of Melbourne artist Lina Bryans, who contributed to Australian culture on many fronts.

'Cheap rooms in the city are, in those days, easy to come by ... The attics and back rooms of Little Collins Street are rented by young artists of every sort who use the places as studios, love-nests, pieds-a-terre away from mum and dad, or merely as settings for booze-ups.' Hal Porter, The Paper Chase

Lina Bryans became an artist in the mid 1930s, a time when Melbourne artists were drawn in to battlelines around issues of modernism. She allied herself with no single party, but went on to become the centre of an artists' house in the 1940s. Residents included the charismatic Scotsman William Frater, the retiring Miss Ada May Plante and the secretive Ian Fairweather. Visitors included the Meanjin set, novelist Jean Campbell, and early broadcaster Adrian Lawlor—for parties that became legendary.

Lina Bryans captivated many who knew her, with her independence and her warmth, and her life has become increasingly the focus of attention in itself. Meantime her portraits—which can be found in every state art gallery in Australia—comprise a rich document of Melbourne's intelligentsia in the middle of the 20th century.

Participants:

Gillian Forwood, art historian
Mary Eagle, art historian
Gavin Fry, director, Newcastle Regional Museum
Jennifer Phipps, art consultant
Dr Juliet Peers, School of Design, RMIT
Bill Harding, artist
Lina Bryans, interviewed by Barbara Blackman for the National Library of Australia's oral history programme, August 1989

Further Information

The National Library of Australia holds more than nine million pieces in its collection, including about 100,000 digital images which are available online. Information about the Library's collection of books, paintings, manuscripts, photographs, oral histories, maps, music and ephemera, can be found via the above link

Publications

Title: Lina Bryans: a rare modern 1909-2000
Author: Gillian Forwood
Publisher: The Miegumyah Press, 2003.

Title: The Babe is Wise: Lina Bryans and her portraits
Author: Gillian Foward
Publisher: University of Melbourne, Museum of Art, 1995

Title: Lina Bryans : A Retrospective Exhibition
Publisher: Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1983.

Title: Adrian Lawlor, a portrait
Author: Gavin Fry
Publisher: Heide Park and Art Gallery, 1983

Title: Horned Capon
Author: Adrian Lawlor
Publisher: Oberon Melbourne 1949

Title: More than Just Gumtrees: a personal, social and artistic history of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors
Author: Juliet Peers
Publisher: Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors in association with Dawn Revival Press, 1993.

Presenter

Jennifer Bowen

Producer

Jennifer Bowen