Margaret Preston and the Development of Australian Art

A Margaret Preston, one of Australia's most celebrated artists, produced a distinctive body of work that profoundly influenced the nation's artistic identity throughout the twentieth century. Born Margaret Rose McPherson in 1875 in Port Adelaide, South Australia, she was the daughter of a Scottish marine engineer and began her artistic education at an early age. Following changes in her family's financial circumstances, Preston relocated to Sydney with her mother and sister, where she attended public school and commenced private art instruction. Her formal training began in earnest when she enrolled at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in 1893, where she remained for just over four years, developing the technical skills that would later define her career. B Preston's early artistic output was characterised by naturalistic representation, reflecting the influence of German aesthetic traditions prevalent in Australian art education at the time. This approach, which emphasised accurate depiction of subjects from the natural world, dominated her work throughout the late nineteenth century. Her initial visit to Europe in 1904, which included study in the French capital, produced surprisingly little alteration to this naturalistic style. However, a subsequent extended period in Paris beginning in 1912 proved transformative, as Preston began to recognise the potential of art to serve decorative as well as representational purposes. This shift in perspective would ultimately revolutionise her approach to composition and colour. C The outbreak of the First World War prompted Preston to move to England, where she participated in exhibitions and pursued diverse artistic disciplines. Her studies encompassed pottery and various printmaking techniques, reflecting an increasingly experimental approach to her craft. During this period, she also taught basket weaving to injured servicemen at a rehabilitation facility in England's West Country, demonstrating her commitment to the therapeutic applications of craft. It was during her voyage back to Australia in 1919 that she encountered William Preston, a prosperous businessman whom she married shortly thereafter. The couple established their residence in Mosman, a harbourside suburb of Sydney, and Preston's artistic focus shifted towards capturing the distinctive landscape of her surroundings. Her prints from this era frequently depicted vessels on Sydney Harbour and residential structures clustered along the waterfront hills. D Preston's first significant Australian exhibition occurred in 1925, when she displayed her work alongside fellow artist Thea Proctor in Melbourne and Sydney. The prints featured in these exhibitions demonstrated a marked evolution from her earlier work, employing vivid hand-applied colours—predominantly scarlet reds, deep blues, and vibrant greens—and presented in frames of Chinese red lacquer. While harbour scenes remained prominent subjects, Preston's compositional approach had become notably more compact and dynamic, utilising stark contrasts between black and white combined with intricate patterns and rhythmic repetitions. Concurrently, she began producing still-life works featuring Australian native flora, and through these compositions succeeded in persuading the public that indigenous flowers possessed aesthetic qualities equivalent to those of exotic imported species. This achievement represented a significant shift in Australian cultural attitudes towards native botanical subjects. E In 1932, Preston and her husband relocated to Berowra, situated on the upper stretches of the Hawkesbury River, where they remained until 1939. This region, characterised by rugged natural beauty and dense bushland, provided Preston with her first experience of living in immediate proximity to native vegetation. Previously, the native flowers that appeared in her artwork had been acquired from commercial florists; at Berowra, such specimens grew in profusion around her property. This direct engagement with the landscape produced observable changes in her artistic output: her prints became larger in scale, less visually complex, and less dependent upon bright pigmentation. Furthermore, Preston abandoned the convention of depicting flowers arranged in vases, instead concentrating on botanicals in their natural growing state. F The Berowra period also marked the genesis of Preston's enduring fascination with Aboriginal art, undoubtedly stimulated by the ancient rock engravings located near her property. Upon returning to Sydney in 1939, she joined the Anthropological Society of New South Wales and subsequently undertook journeys to numerous significant Aboriginal sites throughout the continent. Preston developed a conviction that Aboriginal artistic traditions provided the foundation for establishing a uniquely Australian national art form that authentically reflected the continent's vast age and distinctive character. This belief would shape the direction of her work for the remainder of her career. G Throughout the 1940s, Preston increasingly incorporated motifs derived from Aboriginal art into her prints, alongside the muted, earth-toned palette characteristic of traditional Aboriginal painting. The dried, burnt colours—ochres, charcoals, and pale earth tones—replaced the vibrant hues of her earlier period. The titles Preston assigned to works from this decade frequently acknowledged her Aboriginal sources explicitly, revealing the extent to which she drew inspiration from indigenous artistic traditions to forge her own creative vision. This synthesis of European modernist techniques with Aboriginal design principles represented an innovative approach to Australian art. H At the age of seventy-eight, in 1953, Preston produced what many critics regard as her most accomplished prints. An exhibition at Sydney's Macquarie Galleries featured twenty-nine prints created using the ancient stenciling technique, many of which embodied her synthesis of Aboriginal and Chinese artistic concepts. Preston had admired Chinese art since 1915, when she acquired the first volume of what would become an extensive collection of books on the subject, and she had visited China on two separate occasions. In her 1950s prints, Preston integrated Chinese aesthetic principles with her understanding of the Dreamtime creation narratives central to Aboriginal cosmology. Despite advancing age, Preston maintained her rigorous working habits, and her passion for painting, printmaking, and travel remained undiminished. By her death in 1963 at the age of eighty-eight, she had created over four hundred paintings and prints, leaving a body of work spanning nearly six decades that demonstrated extraordinary originality and an unwavering commitment to the development of a distinctly Australian artistic tradition.