White primula, 1931, was among seven paintings formally presented to the NGV by the Felton Bequest Committee in August 1937, the first purchases made by London-based Sir Sydney Cockerell as Felton Adviser.1On Cockerell, see Shane Carmody, ‘ “Vain, aggressive and somewhat quarrelsome”: The enduring impact of Sir Sydney Cockerell on the Melbourne Collections’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, vol. 13, no. 4, 2007, pp. 421–55. The painting was purchased from the London dealers Arthur Tooth & Sons for the NGV, along with Claude Monet’s Vétheuil, 1879, at a discounted price as requested by the Felton Trustees.2‘Advice was received of the purchase of Vétheuil, by Monet, originally offered at £1625, and White Primula, by A. John, originally £750, for £2046 the two’. ‘Self-exiled artist’, The Age, 25 Jun. 1937, p. 11.
The local press, consistently critical of the choices made by the Gallery’s London-based Felton Advisers, was predictably lacklustre in appreciation of Cockerell’s new acquisitions, although John’s painting fared better than the other paintings by Jacques-Louis David (now attributed to Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours), Edgar Degas and Wilson Steer. The Age (1937) opined that
the pictures are, upon the whole, disappointing. White Primula, by Augustus John, is an agreeable variation on his portraiture. The blooms are brilliantly painted in an insistent high key, though the background and general setting is inclined to be disturbing’.3‘National Gallery purchases’, The Age, 7 Aug. 1937, p. 22.
The painting was defended, however, by Basil Burdett, the art critic working for Keith Murdoch at rival newspaper The Herald (1937):
The John … is also a fine addition, beautiful in colour and painted with that dash and brilliance so generally typical of the artist’s work in this genre. It is not as admirably simple or convincing in design as the fine picture of the same flowers (begonias) in Sir Keith Murdoch’s collection, but it is, nonetheless, a refreshing acquisition and a welcome relief from the safe and dull academicism of so many Felton purchases.4Basil Burdett, ‘The new Felton pictures’, Art in Australia, 15 Nov. 1937, p. 17.
The local artist Norman Macgeorge also defended the work in a guided tour, which aimed to provide ‘an opportunity for visitors to the National Gallery to be enlightened as to why large sums were paid for certain exhibits in the picture galleries, which on the surface appeared to be dull and uninteresting’. White primula, Macgeorge told his audience, ‘showed charming quality and mastery over materials, having given depth without tone, which only the masters could achieve’.5‘Appreciating art’, The Age, 14 Oct. 1937, p. 10.
John first began a sustained campaign of painting still lifes in 1928, and soon proved to be as much a master of this genre as he was in both portraiture and landscape. The art critic Thomas W. Earp acknowledged this at the time, declaring the artist’s flower pieces to be
a new and deeply interesting manifestation of Mr John’s art …Without any attempt at setting a new convention, introducing a startling method of pose, but contenting himself with complete directness of approach, he has illuminated these entirely naturalist studies of random blooms – magnolia, cyclamen or cineraria – with all his gifts. The composition is stunning in its artlessness, the design has an electric vividness which it is a surprise to find elsewhere than in the portraits.6Thomas W. Earp, ‘The recent work of Augustus John’, Studio, vol. 97, no. 433, Apr. 1929, pp. 235–6.
An exquisite study of white and green foliage offset against a blue and white floral patterned sofa beneath a partial view of a framed painting, White primula is one of the finest flower pieces created by Augustus John. It was soon a favourite work for the National Gallery of Victoria’s visitors, as indicated by it being selected as one of only five paintings reproduced for sale as coloured postcards in 1943.7John Poynter, Mr Felton’s Bequests, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2003, p. 448.
Ted Gott, Senior Curator, International Art, National Gallery of Victoria
