1887 – 1935  Melbourne Artist

“Why were there so many good women artists working in Australia in the 1920’s and 30s, involved more with inventive, rather than imitative art?”

(Australian Art A History, Sasha Grishin, p219)

It takes a Melbourian to spot another; we feel comfortable with each other, despairing under the heavy grey roof of clouds, moody and cold; sharing the melancholy, the dullness and the empty vacuum of being alone within a cultural and landscape scene, of exciting monotony. Becketts urban scenes may have been painted 100 years ago, but the tone remains the same. We recognise ‘those days’ and ‘those streets’; the sound of wet rain on the road.

Beckett studied under Australian Master Artist, Fredrick McCubbin (1855-1917) in 1914, at the NGV art school when it was housed in the State Library. McCubbin is renown for his idealistic bush scenes of muted realism, although known as an Impressionist, his scenes were uniquely his own interpretation. He didn’t travel to Europe until later in his life and his art grew within the Heilderberg scene. He had studied under Eugene Von Guerard, and was influenced by his romantic storytelling, that made McCubbin a household name.

When Beckett studied under the older artist, he had returned from Europe and had launched into his lesser known period, where detail was abandoned for a blunter European Impressionism. McCubbin’s new focus was less colonial and more urban and this would have enabled Beckett a more local focus for her themes.

Beckett however broke away from the safe confines of her masters instruction and into the edgy new scene of modern Tonists that was led by McCubbin’s rival Max Meldrum (1875-1955), known as an ‘art upstart’. Beckett was Meldrum’s star pupil and member of the exclusive Twenty Melbourne Painters Society, that broke away from the Victorian Art Society, which is an art society limited to 20, that still runs today.

“Meldrum was in many respects an outsider, rather than an accepted member of the art establishment”

(Australian Art A History, Sasha Grishin)

Meldrum taught his students to use limited palettes, hazy outlines and attention to the breakdown of tones. He regarded he’s study of tone to be scientific and aimed to create compositions that explored light, atmosphere, space and distance. Simplified forms and how they contrasted tensions, created a structure of order, when the artist approached their canvas.

Melbourne’s moody skys and the strong contrast of seasons is the perfect homeland for an artist who lived and focused her work on the eastern bayside villages. Beckett’s work never received the fame she deserved in her lifetime and although she was a prolific artist, most of her work was destroyed in poor storage. A longer life may have solved the issue but harsh Melbourne winters took their toll, on a woman, her trolley and the outdoors.

This typical Melbourne scene has never been captured so well, a mood many morning commuters are familiar with. Her work evokes an emotional response like a shared memory of an event. She takes us on a urban tour through her art. Her work stikes a deeply personal tone within the viewer, it’s not a story, it’s home.