Patrick White, Painter Manqué
Paintings, Painters and their Influence on his Writing
It is a little-known fact that a vital source of inspiration for Patrick White was the art of painting. This brilliantly original and revealing book is the first study of this potent source in White's life.
Opinion
'With its colour and halftone reproductions, . . . its erudition and potential for teaching us how to look at paintings, this book is a must.' (Robin Wallace-Crabbe, Sydney Morning Herald, December 21-22, 2002)
'. . . provides some stimulating insights . . . The book is scholarly and exhaustively researched, and Hewitt's elucidation of the painterly influences on White's writing goes a long way to make the paintings and the movements they represent accessible to the lay reader.' (Kim Mahood, Times Literary Supplement, February 21, 2003)
About this Title
'I always see most of what I write, and am, in fact, a painter manqué. All those Goyas--I feel I want to eat them, and bury my face in them, and sniff them up!'
Patrick White
It is a little-known fact that a vital source of inspiration for Patrick White was the art of painting. A writer whose creative imagination was intensely visual and sensual, White considered the medium of paint to be a more direct, whole means of expression than words. Much of his writing attempts to recreate and investigate effects attainable through paint, and in many of his characters White explores the painter's psyche.
It was Roy de Maistre who first opened White's eyes to the power of painting. His work showed White how to represent the complexities of human relationship and consciousness--how, as White put it, to 'weave about freely on different levels at one and the same time':
I feel he taught me to write by teaching me to look at paintings and get beneath the surface . . . I always feel I began to write from the inside out when Roy de Maistre introduced me to abstract painting about 1936. Before that I had only approached writing as an exercise in naturalism.
White was a great lover and collector of paintings and had many close friendships with painters. As well as de Maistre, painters whose company White sought included William Dobell, Tom Gleghorn, Stanislaus Rapotec, Lawrie Daws, Sidney Nolan and Brett Whiteley. Earlier painters whose work inspired him included Walter Sickert, Paul Klee, Vincent van Gogh, William Blake and Eugène Delacroix. Throughout his life, White generously donated hundreds of works from his substantial and important collection to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
This brilliantly original and revealing book is the first study of this potent source in White's life. It traces the influence of twentieth-century Australian artists, and of European modernist and romantic artists, in his life and work.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Strangers in the Motherland
2 Jardin Exotique
3 'The Tree of Man Was Never Quiet'
4 Explorers
5 White and the Sydney Art World: 1
6 Jerusalem
7 Mandalas
8 Paradise Garden
9 White and the Sydney Art World: 2
10 Metamorphoses
11 Patrick White's Choice
Appendix: White's Gifts and Bequests to the Art Gallery of New South Wales
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Helen Verity Hewitt, teacher, traveller and sometime bookshop owner, has a PhD from the University of Melbourne and teaches in the Language Studies Department of Victoria University in Melbourne.
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