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NLA News - home November 2004 Volume XV Number 2

HEYSEN INSPIRED BY NATURE

Nancy Robinson Flannery recalls one of the nation’s foremost pastoral artists—his abiding love of trees, and his championing of conservation

'I love the life around me—cows, turkeys, fowls, they all interest me and I paint them ... the blossom on the plum trees, [and] on the apple trees, to try to convey that sense of beauty that ... surrounds me, everywhere. I love rising early in the mornings, to get the dew and lovely light ... with the sun veiled in mist and objects just emerging in mysterious and beautiful forms.’
—Sir Hans Heysen (1877–1968) to Hazel de Berg in an oral history interview (DeB26) recorded in 1960.

click to enlarge
Hans and Sallie Heysen at The Cedars on their wedding anniversary, 5 December 1954. Reproduced with the permission of The Adelaide Advertiser

As an octogenarian, an eminently successful artist with a prodigious wealth of creativity and prizes behind him, Heysen hadn’t lost the wonder of nature when he spoke to de Berg. He still lived at The Cedars near Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills, a property he’d bought in 1912 and developed to accommodate the needs of his growing family and his dedication to art.

In addition to the many books and papers by and about him, and a small cache of his artwork, the National Library holds a large collection of Heysen Papers (MS 5073), donated by the artist’s eldest son David in 1975. This includes a correspondence series 1904–1968 containing letters from no less than 1487 different people. One of the most prolific of these correspondents was Sydneysider Lionel Lindsay, a close friend and fellow artist for the greater part of the two men’s lives. The Latrobe Library, Melbourne, holds another large collection of letters, in this instance the mirror image—from Heysen to Lindsay (MS 9242). The prevailing theme of this correspondence is the love of Nature—always in upper case when in Heysen’s hand, a reflection of his near worship of what his eyes saw, his intellect noted and memorised, and his hands portrayed. ‘The sun is low and casts deeper and longer shadows, giving a greater feeling of bulk and weight to all in Nature. The Red Gums are particularly fine, and since you were here I have made many more studies of them.’

click to enlarge
Hans Heysen (1877–1968)
Mustering c.1920
oil on canvas
Courtesy of Chris Heysen

In 1939, Heysen wrote ‘A Plea for Our Remaining Gums’ for a small publication by my late father, Cedric Noon. In it Heysen expresses a love for the ‘serenity and beauty of the Onkaparinga Valley ... cows peacefully resting or feeding by noble gums’ and a hope that ‘a return of true tree consciousness and the replanting of our native trees ... will bring back some fraction of that precious something we call an Australian atmosphere’. It was a declaration ahead of its time in the cause of conservation, and one which wasn’t always appreciated by his contemporaries. There were recurring controversies with the local council regarding the axing of roadside trees, the genial but determined artist sometimes paying for the timber’s value in an effort to retain the trees in situ. And, despite having an abundance of vegetation on his own well-husbanded acreage, Heysen bought in firewood from a Mallee farmer who was clearing his land for cultivation, rather than felling his own trees.

The National Library holds a signed print from a wood engraving designed by Sir Lionel Lindsay (1874–1961) as a bookplate for Heysen. Depicting a somewhat grotesque representation of a large-trunked tree, the design shocked the recipient, for into the trunk was carved HANS HEYSEN in large block letters. As this mutilation of a tree seemed sacrilegious to Hans, the bookplate gift was an embarrassment. In order not to offend so close a friend, however, Lionel’s bookplate was used on a few volumes (still held at The Cedars); and so the uncharacteristic Lindsay environmental faux pas was passed over without causing a rift between the two artists.

click to enlarge
Sir Lionel Lindsay (1874–1961)
[Bookplate for Hans Heysen 1923]
wood engraving print; 7.3 x 5.6 cm
Pictures Collection,
nla.pic-an11052741

Although the majestic gums of the Adelaide Hills and the Flinders Ranges became the subject of many of Heysen’s outstanding oil and watercolour paintings, as well as charcoal and pencil drawings, other species also held his love. ‘I am sad over the fate of my lovely old basket willow, the one I have painted and drawn so often’ he wrote to Lindsay of a favourite Onkaparinga specimen. ‘The intricate mass of freshness and leaves sensitive to every movement of the air, is there no longer. I feel a distinct loss.’ This sentiment I share with him, for I lived close by and have the happiest of memories of the carefree after-school life my brother and I enjoyed in a canoe along that same meandering river, where the forests of basket willow which then shaded the yabby holes and the blackberry bushes have now been eradicated as a flood mitigation measure. Although I cannot recall having seen Heysen along the river, he was a familiar sight to us in the village streets and by the roadsides, with his folding stool and paintbox, dressed in his trademark knickerbockers. He even wore his tailored knickerbockers and long socks when accepting his knighthood at Government House, and—at another time—meeting the Queen.

Hans Heysen was born in Germany and migrated to South Australia at the age of seven.  His  formal and early art education was in Adelaide before studying in Europe for four years as the protégé of several far-sighted businessmen. By 1903 he returned to South Australia , where he had been ‘naturalised’ as a British citizen in 1899. He married in 1904 and with Sallie (née Bartels) had eight children, supported and liberally educated by the sale of his prolific output of art; no mean achievement for a nineteenth-century emigrant from a family of very limited means.

click to enlarge
Hans Heysen (1877–1968)
Sewing  1913
oil on canvas
Courtesy of Chris Heysen

Under the Heysens’ loving care and devotion, The Cedars became not only a gracious yet unpretentious home for their talented family but also a Mecca for artists and celebrities. The hospitality extended to people such as the singer Dame Nellie Melba (a loyal supporter of Heysen’s output) and dancer Anna Pavlova. With much of their own food produced in garden, farmyard and kitchen, life at The Cedars reflected the Heysen family’s love of nature and their doctrine of culture and simplicity.

In 1912–13 my uncle, Will Pain (known fondly to me as Nunkie), built an architect-designed chalet-style studio on a gentle hill slope a little apart from the homestead and its gardens. And later, the stables were converted to a second studio for Nora, fourth daughter of Hans and Sallie, who became one of Australia’s finest portrait and flower painters, a war artist, the first woman to win the Archibald Prize, and a recent benefactor of the National Library. In his biography, Heysen of Hahndorf, Colin Thiele describes Nora as having ‘the same indefatigable industry as her father’.

The Canberra suburb of Weston has Heysen Street (appropriately set between a forest and a park) which straddles an enclave named after other Australian artists, while South Australia ’s nomenclature commemorates the family name in many ways, not least of which is the Heysen Trail. This is one of the world’s longest designated tracks where bushwalkers can enjoy 1500 kilometres of vistas, bushland and broad acres reminiscent of those portrayed and ennobled by the eponymous artist. A spur track leads past The Cedars, which is still owned by some of Heysen’s descendants.

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Group portrait of (left to right) Harold Herbert, Sydney Ure Smith, Hans Heysen, Charles Wheeler, Sir Lionel Lindsay and H. Van Raalte, at Adelaide Artists’ Week, 1924
gelatin silver photograph;
14.9 x 20.1 cm
Pictures Collection,
nla.pic-an23513717

Here, lovers of art and nature can recapture the lifestyle and vigorous spirit of this historic piece of Australia. The home, the studios, and the garden are open to visitors six days of the week. It’s a step back in time and an emotional experience to see the main studio just as the artist left it (an unfinished landscape on the easel in the mellow studio), the warm and friendly house filled with flowers, paintings, books and art journals just as I recall it as a guest 60 years ago, the whole complex conserved and adapted as Sir Hans and Lady Heysen would have wanted. Images of and brochures on The Cedars are amongst recent additions to the Library’s Heysen Papers.

National, state, regional and overseas galleries and libraries hold many of Heysen’s paintings and drawings, as do private collectors. The Art Gallery of South Australia, alone, is custodian of more than 2000 Heysen works. While there was a period in the history of Australian art when his landscapes tended to go out of fashion, there is now renewed appreciation of the veracity, charm and sheer craftsmanship of his work. In Our Country: Australian Federation Landscapes 1900–1914, Ron Radford, the newly appointed Director of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, wrote of ‘the status the monumental gum was to assume. In these paintings by Heysen the gum tree became truly triumphant. Henceforth in Australian art, it would be impossible to paint the gum tree without Heysen’s symbolic use resonating in memory’.

At The Cedars, an Artist’s Walk around the 53.5 hectare property signposts scenes depicted by Heysen in some of his best loved works. But as the remaining vegetation has been under threat from virulent, non-indigenous species, concerted efforts have been made to restore the balance. Under the auspices of Landcare Australia around 5500 trees, raised from seeds of local native trees and shrubs, have been planted on the property in recent years, and the project continues.

December 2004 marks the centenary of the marriage of Hans Heysen and Sallie Bartels, a partnership of nearly 60 years which gave mutual support, comradeship, and pleasure in the simple aspects of country life. To celebrate this centenary, Sallie’s wedding gown is coming out of its tissue paper for display at The Cedars.

Hans Heysen (1877–1968)
Zinnias and Autumn Fruits  1923
oil on canvas
Courtesy of Chris Heysen

When Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova (1881–1931) saw Heysen’s still-life Zinnias and Autumn Fruits during a whirlwind visit to The Cedars, she tried in vain to persuade the artist to sell it to her. Heysen’s polite but adamant refusal was based on the fact that this particular oil painting (67.3 x 82.5 cm) had been a gift to his wife, designed for a specific position on their own walls. He did, however, accept a commission from Pavlova to paint another for her, making some slight alterations to the content before packing  and consigning it to the dancer in London.

A 1928 letter in the Library’s Heysen Papers (MS 5073/1/2045) reflects a clash of principles of the two consummate artists—on the one hand Pavlova demanded an exact replica or nothing at all; on the other, Heysen could not bring himself to compromise his own maxim of never painting ‘facsimiles’. And there the matter rested.

Pavlova left the second Zinnias and Autumn Fruits with the artist’s London agent, while—nearly eighty years later—the original still hangs above the fireplace in The Cedars dining room.

NANCY ROBINSON FLANNERY is an Adelaide writer and researcher, whose papers are held by the National Library. She can be contacted at ifnf@acslink.net.au

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