Title
(Ruined church with poppies, Villers-Bretonneux)
circa 1919
Artist
-
Details
- Place where the work was made
-
Villers-Bretonneux
→
Somme
→
France
- Date
- circa 1919
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- oil? on thick grey card
- Dimensions
- 39.0 x 30.5 cm board
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Bequest of Pamela Thalben-Ball 2015
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 21.2015
- Copyright
- © Estate of the artist
- Artist information
-
Evelyn Chapman
Works in the collection
- Share
-
About
Evelyn Chapman trained in Sydney under the Italian-born artist Antonio Dattilo-Rubbo, together with fellow students Grace Cossington Smith and Norah Simpson. She moved to Europe with her family in 1911 and attended the Académie Julian in Paris, gaining a classical training in life drawing. When war broke out in 1914, the family moved to London and Chapman spent time in St Ives, Cornwell, a thriving cosmopolitan colony for artists from around the world. She began painting vivid works in tempera and oil, which evidence her assimilation of French post-impressionist techniques.
In early 1919, Chapman accompanied her father, a member of the New Zealand War Graves Commission, to France, visiting the area near Villers-Bretonneux where many Australian and New Zealand soldiers had lost their lives. Struck by the destruction she witnessed in the villages and cities, Chapman set up her easel and began to paint the ruined buildings and landscape, annihilated by years of continued bombardment.
In a photograph taken of Chapman at Villers-Bretonneux in 1919, we see the artist seated amid the ruins of the church depicted in this painting. Despite the desolation of the landscape, the artist imbues a sense of optimism into the work, with its sunlit vista dotted with brilliant red poppies, thereby evoking hope, regeneration and life in a post-war world.
-
Exhibition history
Shown in 2 exhibitions
Mad through the darkness: Australian artists and the Great War, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 25 Apr 2015–11 Oct 2015
Intrepid Women: Australian women artists in Paris 1950, S.H. Ervin Gallery, The Rocks, 01 Dec 2017–25 Mar 2018
-
Bibliography
Referenced in 1 publication
-
Anne Gérard-Austin, Look, 'Remembering Evelyn Chapman: a new and unexpected bequest', pg. 14-15, Sydney, Apr 2015, front cover (colour illus.), 5 (colour illus.), 15.
-