Sedon Galleries

Sedon Galleries was a Melbourne commercial art gallery representing Australian Traditional, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting and prints. It operated from 1925 to 1959.

Background

Proprietor was William Richard Sedon, who was born in Adelaide on 20 June 1876, the only child of English-born Thomas Sedon and his lover, Jane Franklin Kyle, and who grew up in Creswick where his father had gold-mining interests, and in the same town as the family of artists he later represented, the Lindsays. After his father was jailed for fraud, Sedon moved with his mother at 88 Belgravia Street in working-class Richmond. From the age of 20, he started dealing in art, perhaps drawing on he collection of his maternal grandmother. His marriage in June 1916, to Isabel Constance Crawford brought wealth from her inheritance in 1919 and the couple moved to 3 Russell St., Camberwell.

Establishment and influence

On 13 October, 1925 Sedon opened The Sedon Galleries, on the fourth floor of the Hardware Chambers (demolished 1972), which had been recently renovated after a fire, at 231 Elizabeth Street, opposite the GPO. Tonalist Max Meldrum’s 'Twenty Melbourne Painters Society' met in the same building and Sedon regularly exhibited its artists. For the first decade graphic art works were a substantial part of his sales, many assisted by his good relations with the National Gallery of Victoria print room, and the Felton Bequest selection committee which on one occasion met in the Galleries' chambers. He actively promoted Australian art and the inaugural exhibition was Leading Australian Artists; Arthur Streeton, Walter Withers, Elioth Gruner, Norman Lindsay, R. W. Sturgess, W. D. Knox, Nora Gordon, Gwen Barringer, Carl Hampel, and M. J. MacNally, and, in other shows, those emerging, including watercolourist Harold Herbert, Carlyle Jackson, Bernice Edwell and others still in their 20s or 30s.

Sedon enjoyed contacts in major state galleries through artists who had exhibited with him and who had progressed into influential positions in those institutions. Robert Campbell was appointed as Director of Art at the Launceston Technical School in 1941, and kept up correspondence with him in subsequent roles as the inaugural Director of the Queensland Art Gallery (1949-51) and as Director at the Art Gallery of South Australia (1951-67). Will Ashton, also Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was another exhibitor at the Sedon Galleries who was in regular contact and who introduced Sydney artist John Kilgour and Hilda Rix Nicholas to him as prospective exhibitors.

Expansion

Following the death of his wife, Isabel Sedon, aged fifty-three, on 13 January 1928, Sedon sold their home and a large part of his collection of ornaments, statuary, pictures, crystal, and works by signifiant Australian Impressionists. With the proceeds he built a second home not far away at 49 Mangarra Road, Canterbury, gave it the same name, and incorporated a capacious gallery to house his future purchases, including a Corot.

The Bulletin described him as ‘'one of our foremost dealers’. and the business emerged from the Great Depression unscathed. The space expanded to fill more of the Hardware Chambers building before moving to larger quarters nearby in Elizabeth House, 129 Elizabeth Street, then into its basement in 1936, then in April 1937 relocated to 107 Elizabeth Street in the Robertson and Mullens (now Angus and Robertson) building above the bookshop in a district known for arts and literature, including bookseller Margareta Webber and galleries The New, The Decoration and Joshua McClelland’s Little Galleries. Among guests to his home were artists John Longstaff, W. B. McInnes, Napier Waller, Dora Wilson, George Bell, and prominent members of Melbourne's medical and professional circles.

Conservatism

Frederick McCubbin (1886) Lost, exhibited by Sedon in 1931 for sale at 600 guineas, was included in a solo retrospective exhibition of McCubbin's oil paintings in September 1941

Sedon Galleries' annual Christmas exhibitions of etchings become a highlight in the artistic calendar. Its Exhibition of Oils & Water-Colors by the Master Painters of the '90s in 1931 signified the Galleries’ conservatism and alignment with traditionalist art, typified in its representation of Louis Buvelot and Charles Conder, and that of of Australian Impressionism, with regular solo shows by Streeton and McCubbin's work throughout the late 1940s and into the 1950s. In October 1941 the National Gallery of Victoria eventually expanded its Australian Impressionist collection with McCubbin's Lost (1886), exhibited by Sedon in 1931 with North Wind and Self Portrait, all purchased for the NGV’s collection through the Felton Bequest. Sedon Galleries conservatism was further demonstrated in offering the venue for an exhibition to defray the costs of artists Mary Edwards and Joseph Wolinski’s court case over William Dobell's winning 1943 Archibald prize with his portrait of Joshua Smith.

Decline

After WW2 Australian critics’ attention, and buyers’ interest, turned away from the traditional art by the likes of Norman Lindsay and Hilda Rix Nicholas that the Galleries represented, and embraced Modernism. Consequent decrease in sales forced a final move in August 1959 to a shop-front at 150 Burwood Road, Hawthorn. There, Sedon offered up his private collection but struggled to find buyers. He died at home on Friday evening, 18 December 1959, and was buried at Boroondara Cemetery in Kew.

Exhibitions

• 1926, 4–15 May: Walter and C. Meynell Withers, paintings
• 1933, 19–30 September: 1st annual exhibition of oils and water colors by members of the New Melbourne Art Club