Luke Sciberras and Euan Macleod: mates go in search of artist John Peter Russell in Belle-Ile-en-Mer

For Australian artists Luke Sciberras and Euan Macleod, painting on the clifftops of Belle-Ile-en-Mer was a pilgrimage to uncover the little-known story of expat painter John Peter Russell.

Artists Euan Macleod, left, and Luke Sciberras on their painting trip to Belle-Ile-en-Mer in France last year. The artists were paying homage to John Peter Russell, the Australian artist who will be the subject of an Art Gallery of NSW exhibition from July 21. Picture: Bruce Inglis.

A remote island 14km off the French west coast hardly sounds like a “sacred site in Australian art”.

But for Luke Sciberras, tramping the precipitous clifftops of Belle-Ile-en-Mer in Brittany felt like a pilgrimage.

Darlinghurst-born artist John Peter Russell lived on Belle-Ile for 20 years from the late 1880s, and during that pivotal time in European modern art Russell was close friends and painting mates with towering figures including Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse and Auguste Rodin.

Matisse met Russell on Belle-Ile in 1895, and credited the Australian with teaching him colour theories that would eventually make Matisse a giant of modern art.

Russell had just learned these theories from Monet after bumping into the Impressionist master on Belle-Ile, where Monet was enjoying the raw elemental weather.

Calm Sea at Morestil Point, 1901, by John Peter Russell. Collection of Queensland Art Gallery|Gallery of Modern Art. To go on view at the AGNSW July 21 to Nov 11, in John Russell, Australia's French Impressionist

Russell and Monet became great friends, often painting, walking and sailing together. Russell was from a wealthy Sydney family and had at least one yacht moored off his waterfront home on Belle-Ile.

If that makes the island sound like some kind of Breton resort, nothing could be further from the truth. Belle-Ile was wild and windswept, its villages peopled with farmers and fisher folk.

Russell was also friends with Van Gogh, and the pair had actually exchanged portraits of each other. Van Gogh would write to Russell on Belle-Ile, the Dutch painter’s letters punctuated with sketches of pictures he was making in the south of France.

With such connections, and considering the quality of his own Impressionist-style paintings, Russell should have been famous in Australia. But he never was. He avoided the spotlight, preferring to make sure that his artist friends received the spotlight.

Port Goulphar, Belle-Ile-en-Mer, Brittany, France. This is the view Australian painter John Peter Russell would have had from his home on the island. A hotel now occupies the site. Picture: Luke Sciberras

Also, modern art was not at all well understood in the Antipodes. In fact, there was active antagonism towards it. So when Russell returned to Sydney in the early 1920s, few people from his homeland realised the significance of his role in the worldwide sensation that Impressionism and Post-Impressionism was already, by then, becoming. At least overseas.

Russell is now much better known in Australia, thanks to various exhibitions that have been mounted over the years. But Russell still has nothing like the profile of another of his close artist friends, Tom Roberts, who is a national icon.

Russell’s work, however, has always tended to attract the attention of other artists.

Luke Sciberras’ painting of The Needles, a rock formation off the coast of Belle-Ile that was painted by John Peter Russell when he lived on the remote Breton island. Picture: supplied

In the early 1990s, a Campbelltown teenager came across Russell’s Belle-Ile paintings in books. Aged just 16 or 17, Luke Sciberras rang the Art Gallery of NSW to further explore Russell’s paintings and to find out more about what he calls “one of the most colourful and exotic life stories in Australian painting”.

“Russell was great friends with Van Gogh, Monet, Matisse, Rodin and they held him in very high esteem,” Sciberras says.

When helpful staff pulled out wire racks of Russells in the AGNSW storage area, the pictures practically gave off the salt sea air. Sciberras was entranced. So, when the AGNSW announced that it would be opening a newly-researched John Peter Russell exhibition on July 21 — titled John Russell: Australia’s French Impressionist — Sciberras grabbed his mate, another leading artist called Euan Macleod, and told him they were off to Belle-Ile.

Australian artist Euan Macleod, painting a view from the island of Belle-Ile in Brittany. Picture: Bruce Inglis

Australian artist Luke Sciberras sketching a view from the island of Belle-Ile in Brittany. Picture: Bruce Inglis

Belle-Ile and Needles, by Euan Macleod. This work will be on view in the exhibition entitled Belle-Ile: Luke Sciberras and Euan Macleod, at the Manly Art Gallery and Museum from July 13. Picture: supplied

Artist Luke Sciberras painting The Needles, the rock formation off the coast of Belle-Ile-en-Mer, Brittany, France. Picture: Bruce Inglis

For Sciberras, the trip was laden with magical possibilities. For Macleod, New Zealand born, Russell was just “this strange Australian bloke that knew those people”. The trip to Belle-Ile opened Macleod’s eyes to the quality of Russell’s work.

Naturally, Sciberras and Macleod painted the views of the rocks and the ocean surrounding Belle-Ile, and these pictures go on view at Manly Art Gallery and Museum from tomorrow.

For Sciberras, the trip to Belle-Ile was like stepping into a dream.

“It’s like a place that heroes had dreamed up,” he says. “But there it is, still surging and pounding and heaving”.

Belle-Ile: Luke Sciberras and Euan Macleod, Manly Art Gallery and Museum, 1 West Esplanade, Manly; from July 13 until September 2, free, northernbeaches.nsw.gov.au