Public Works: Chinoiseries 1928

Max Meldrum Chinoiseries 1928. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. On display.

Max Meldrum Chinoiseries 1928. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. On display.

PEOPLE loved or hated Max Meldrum but, despite all the vitriol from his critics, he had a legion of devotees who religiously followed his every word. For many years he was the most influential figure in Melbourne art.

Born in Edinburgh in 1875, Meldrum arrived in Melbourne when he was 14 and later enrolled in classes at the National Gallery School. In 1899 he won the gallery's travelling scholarship and went to Paris when futurism, fauvism and cubism were creating much excitement.

Meldrum, however, was far from impressed. As a reaction to modernism he devised his contentious theory that art was impersonal and objective and that painting was a pure science. By painting the tones rather than by focusing on colour, the artist could accurately depict what the eye saw.

He was so zealous in his passion for his tonalist philosophy that he loathed modern art. He even became obsessed by the effect on morals. He believed that an excess of colour and distortion in painting reflected a decadent civilisation. On his return to Melbourne Meldrum founded his own art school and it was here that he preached his theories and developed a cult following among many Australian artists.

Meldrum was living in Paris when he painted Chinoiseries in 1928.

The subject is his 18-year-old daughter Elsa, who is smiling while she plays at dress-ups with a Chinese silk coat and Japanese pyjamas, surrounded by oriental textiles and draperies. Given Meldrum's dislike of colour and modernism, you are surprised by the striking canary yellows and brilliant blues of Elsa's costume, the red of her shoes, the purple and orange, and the luscious use of patterned fabrics.

The setting is Meldrum's studio in La Ruche, a circular building on de Passage Dantzig, in Montparnasse. Ironically, given Meldrum's dislike of modernism, it housed some of modern art's greatest artists, such as Chagall, Modigliani and Brancusi.

According to the NGV's Humphrey Clegg, Meldrum may have been anti-modernism, but while pursing tonalism he became "very modernist by default ... the yellow, the fantastic colour, was unusual for the tonalist agenda but I think that it is Paris, the international influence, coming though".