Charles Blackman: the love letters

The love story between Charles Blackman and his wife, Barbara, revealed in a trove of letters

Various mail envelopes addressed to Barbara Blackman nee Patterson. Barbara would later marry Australian artist Charles Blackman.

When my mother — now 95 — turned 90, I visited her with the gift of a cotton cardigan that I had spent several years knitting. She wasn’t up for walks but was definitely up for receiving visits, especially the happy hour ones. In the mornings she would request her coffee to be improved by Queensland joy (aka Bundaberg Rum) and she devoured bowls of succulent sliced mango and pawpaw, which transported her to her tropical roots.

With so many hours to fill, we sifted through her old manuscripts. I pulled out one folder tied in a ribbon, filled with fragile documents. They were letters of a love long past. We spent days pacing through them, stopping for a nap, cup of tea, piece of music, visitor, glass of champagne, sometimes all at once. It was a wilful submersion into the sentimental landscape of her past, with all the distortions that memory imposes as it billows out, strays or lingers.

These were my father’s youthful inscriptions, in that scribbling hand­writing so familiar to me, letters that transported us back through time, on a journey narrated by his young voice. They were love letters to my mother, written to a continual heartbeat drumming out the anxiety of the distance of love.

An undated photo of Australia artist Charles Blackman and his wife, Barbara.

My journey into their intimate love story was coloured with the knowledge of their future, our present. His ignorance of this lay between those very pages; they contained the excitement of youthful discovery. All his joys and sorrows, triumphs and despairs from over 70 years ago apparent. They were a total immersion. We couldn’t put them down. They wouldn’t let us go. His voice from the past was compelling, always concluding with Love Charles:

“I’m naked, lonely and without you, weeping does me no good, and when you come to mind I shudder, and cry on the shoulder of the nearest thought.”

My father’s letters document the initial fledgling bond between my parents. I slowly read them to my mother (who is blind.) She was both erudite and droll and her comments were all, “Oh, isn’t that sweet” and “How nice”.

My dad is writing as a young man, pouring out his heart or being deliberately factual, as he tries to impress his beloved Barbara; choosing a complex language for informative discussions and resorting to a more fleeting expressive stream­ of­ consciousness vocabulary for the emotional. Reading them illuminates some of the mysteries of their lives prior to my existence. Drawn back through time, buffered by the tales that I was told as a child, the letters colour familiar tales, unfinished stories and the unknown.

I could not resist. It was a story begging to be told. It was my rabbit ­hole.

Charles Blackman / Australia 1928–2018 / Feet beneath the table 1956. Presented through the NGV Foundation by Barbara Blackman, / Image courtesy: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

My siblings — Auguste, Felix, Beatrice, Axiom — and my nieces, Daisy and Georgina, allowed all the Blackman images to be included. My brother Auguste was by my side in choosing and remembering. My brother Barnaby, who died unexpectedly three years ago, made me realise that this book needed to be done now. The transcribing of our parents love letters accompanied the deepest moments of my unfathomable grief at his loss.

Charles Blackman picked himself up from being a street kid, a self­-described “gutter snipe” who used to dive off Manly pier for pennies thrown by tourists.

Unbeknown to him, he was heading toward National Treasure status, with a future OBE. My mother, Barbara, reached deep into her tough centre, to affront life with humour and humility. Her writings, poems and many books offer perceptions and descriptions of people and situations that are acutely insightful, way beyond ordinary observations.

She, too, became a patron of the arts, a poet and a librettist with an Officer of the Order of Australia honour of her own. The Blackmans were unique in their singularity and even more extraordinary in their union.

I was fortunate to have come across my parents’ letters, which give such insight into what was to be. They dreamt big, and that dream became a heady reality when it connected with the rest of the world. By surrounding themselves with intellectuals, artists, musicians, poets, writers, actors, philosophers, architects, critics, gallerists and patrons, they shaped and wove their united dream intricately into the Australian ethos. A dream that is part of Australia’s cultural backbone for all time:

“Your lips and my lips, what a lovely kiss they’d make.

When asleep and when awake dreaming; and listening, for I have a kiss for you on every breath and thought.

Now all I may do is to smile shyly, and wish your dreams are of me.

I kiss Barbara and love her and love her and love her ….”

Christabel Blackman reflects upon the love story that was the marriage of her parents

Charles and Barbara Blackman: A Decade of Art and Love by Christabel Blackman, published by Thames & Hudson, RRP $59.99 is out now.

Australian painter, Charles Blackman, and his wife, the writer Barbara Blackman, met in 1948, and married soon after. She had poor eyesight, and would soon become blind. As newlyweds, they lived in Melbourne, supported by her income as an artist’s model and the blind pension, while he made and tried to sell his art.

They thrived as a couple, raising three children, and although they would eventually divorce, their daughter, Christabel, has decided to celebrate the love they had for each other in a new book, which draws on the letters they wrote to each other over three decades, which reveal the influence the couple had on each other, and on the Australian art world. The book also includes more than 160 images of Blackman’s works, previously unseen sketches, and photographs.

Charles Blackman died in 2018. Barbara is now 95, and living the final chapter of her life. Says Christabel: “She is not as much in contact with the world as the world is in contact with her. People still visit continually and some of the country’s greatest musicians go to play for her at her bedside.”