Rosemary Ryan (artist)

Rosemary Ryan (10 October 1926–19 September 1996) was an Australian painter

Early life and training

Born Rosemary Elizabeth Chesterman on 10 October 1926 in Tasmania, she was the only child of parents Thelma and Rupert Chesterman. Her mother died when she was five years old and her father remarried. The family moved to Melbourne in 1937 when she was eleven years old and where she was educated at St Catherine's in Toorak.

Studying Humanities at Melbourne University she met 24-year-old journalist Patrick Ryan; they married in 1949 and lived in Williams Road, South Yarra. She developed a keen interest in art and enrolled at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in 1950-1, and at the same time in George Bell's private school, continuing there until 1952.

In August 1952 Patrick's father Rupert Sumner Ryan, grazier and Federal Liberal MP for Flinders since 1940, died leaving his property Edrington and personal estate valued at £163,520 (worth over A$6m in 2021). Though largely estranged from his parents, Patrick inherited the majority of the legacy, selling his share of Edrington to his step-sister Maie, wife of then Minister for External Affairs (later Governor-General) Richard G. Casey. The couple soon sailed for England, where Rosemary studied at the Chelsea Polytechnic 1954–55.

Exhibiting artist

After their return to Melbourne the Ryan's son Domenic and daughter Siobhan were born before 1960, when Rosemary began regularly exhibiting her paintings in a series of solo shows held every two or three years until 1993. Patrick joined Tim Burstall in forming Eltham Films as producer of its first film The Prize, which was awarded at the 1960 Venice Film Festival Son Domenic was inspired to become a filmmaker at age seven.

Early in her career Ryan experimented with using a spray gun in an approach to Pop Art, but consolidated in imagery of fin-de-siecle and Edwardian Australian idylls with a gentle feminist edge. She became known through exhibitions John Reed's now-defunct Museum of Modern Art Australia, at the South Yarra Gallery, Australian Galleries, Powell Street Gallery and Libby Edward Galleries. In 1971 Rosalind Humphries reprised the historic 9 x 5 Impression Exhibition held at Buxton's Galleries in 1889, in her own eponymous Armadale gallery, and Ryan was among artists Charles Bush, Charles Blackman, Arthur, David and Hermia Boyd, John Brack, Ray Crooke, Noel Counihan, William Dargie, Asher Bilu, Lawrence Daws, William Frater, Robert Grieve, Louis Kahan, Daryl Lindsay, Mirka Mora, John Olsen, John Perceval, Clifton Pugh, Michael Shannon, and Brett Whitely who responded to Humphries' challenge to create a painting on nine-by-five inch cigar-box lids.

As remembered by Susan McCulloch, to prepare for her 1983 solo exhibition at Zanders Bond Gallery Ryan held a barbecue for 30 friends on the banks of the Yarra in November 1982, where they posed for her Australian version of Seurat’s La Grande Jatte, and Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe.

The theme of another exhibition, in 1990, was the book Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay with whom Ryan was an acquaintance. Of the show Louis Montague remarked “Ryan has created a series of picnic vignettes. The naive style of these recent works captures the Australian bush with the sort of youthful charm that this natural monument so often inspires.”

Reception

Ryan's first solo show of 23 oil paintings was attended by 250 visitors and launched a conspicuous career, with a positive review from an unnamed Age newspaper critic who wrote;

To classify Rosemary Ryan would be difficult: she is a sophisticated painter who adopts a primitive style and has a watchful eye for shop windows, children's games and family ceremonies. Her exhibition at the South Yarra Gallery has a note of fresh and unselfconscious observation and a lot of carefully camouflaged technical skill. She can organise a composition, whether it is a group of children playing in a garden, or a complicated view of women looking into a shop window in Chapel Street. Occasionally she probes more deeply, but her preoccupation is the observation of people, gossiping or eating or shopping, and she paints them with humanist directness.

Art historian and critic Bernard Smith in The Age in 1966 identified Ryan’s contribution to the Georges Art Prize Diffusion as ‘outstanding’, in equal billing with works by Fred Williams, Louis James and Jacqueline Hick;

“Rosemary Ryan's Diffusion is an allegory on continuity and change; a kind of painting difficult to bring off. But this succeeds even if the personal meaning remains elusive. In the background is a recollection of Furse's Diana of the Uplands (a young woman alfresco with hounds on a moorland path) and William Butterfeld parsonage beyond: in the foreground, a young mother with two children, one advancing off-focus into blaze of sinister light. At left, a pattern of sea-shells. The surface, a fine, pleasant enamel. Refreshing to find an artist for whom life retains sanctity. Easier and much more tempting to treat it as a dirty joke.

In November that same year she was the subject, with Charles Reddington and Robert Jacks of Anne Pickburn’s ABC radio program Perspective on “The "hard-edge" painters” on 3AR.

Ann Galbally however, in reviewing Ryan’s 1971 show at Australian Galleries, notes her deliberate imitation of old photographs and Victorian albums to evoke nostalgic sentiment; “What with smiling aviators, picnics in the bush, family parties and songs in the rain, life couldn't be sweeter, or sicklier,” and Maureen Gilchrist is ambivalent about her “cute tricks with old master themes,” in her solo show at Powell Street Gallery in 1976, asking, “Where does the artist stand in relation to her content? Does she, or does she not, condemn woman as objects? Who knows?

In a 1991 article advertising the sale of Ryan’s house of 20 years, 16 Gore Street, Fitzroy, Rhonda Dredge (daughter of artist Margaret Dredge) describes her as a ‘nostalgia artist’.

In 2006, McCulloch's New Encyclopaedia of Australian Art describes her paintings as having; "poetically evoked memories of country life in Australia in pre-WWII times and occasionally allegorical scenes."

Later life

Ryan was active in the National Gallery of Victoria’s Women's Association. She died 19 September 1996, survived by her daughter Siobhan and her son Domenic, who remembered "She was a loved daughter, a selfless mother, a generous friend, a witty conversationalist, a wonderful host, sometimes a stern matriarch and a caring grandmother."

Exhibitions

• 1958, October: Contemporary Art Society, Museum of Modern Art Australia, Melbourne
• 1963, July: South Yarra Gallery
• 1965, solo show South Yarra Gallery The Age 23 March 1965, p.14
• 1966, February: Georges Art Prize
• 1969, from 24 March: with Richard Reardon, John Martin, Edward Kidson-Lord and Christopher White; Charity show to raise funds for Home for Unmarried Mothers, opened by Professor Vincent Buckley. Pink Pussy Cat Bistro, Cardigan Street, Carlton
• 1971, May: Australian Galleries (solo)
• 1976, 30 March–20 April: solo ROSEMARY RYAN, Powell Street Gallery, 20 Powell st South Yarra
• 1978, to 30 August: Recherche de Temps Perdu. Leveson Street Gallery, North Melbourne Galleries, The Age 11 August 1978, p.39
• 1983, October: Paintings by ROSEMARY RYAN, Zanders Bond gallery, Armadale. Galleries, The Age 14 October 1983, p. 35 Susan McCulloch Around the Galleries : Updating the classic painters The Age 18 October 1983
• 1990, February: Picnic at Hanging Rock : Rosemary Ryan. Libby Edwards Galleries, South Yarra Jan Blensdorf ‘Galleries’ The Age 9 February 1990 p.35
• 1993, 9–26 November: A [sic] recherche du temps perdu : Rosemary Ryan. Libby Edwards Gallery, South Yarra. Galleries, The Age, 5 November 1993, p.43