Guest contributor: JD Park
This article was originally published in the Victorian Artists Society (VAS) Magazine,
January–March 2023.
This smiling dimpled beauty titled Gypsy Belle is rendered with the dash and elan of a modern portraitist. Some will be surprised to know that it was painted in the nineteenth century by Josephine Muntz-Adams. More surprising, that it was painted about 1896 after her return from training in Paris.
This marvellous evocation of an old lady (1893) was titled Care and hung ‘on the line’ at the Paris Salon. It was the first painting by an Australian artist purchased by the Queensland Art Gallery.
In the same vein this pensive portrait titled Italian Girl’s Head. Some might wonder, who was this superstar and why don’t we know more about her? I have wondered the same thing.
In twenty-first century Australia, Josephine Muntz Adams appears to have largely been forgotten and become irrelevant to the mainstream of mid-century Australian art. I rang a prominent Australian gallery which owns several of her paintings. The curator seemed to be totally unaware of her as were most of my artist friends.
Some might wonder, who was this superstar and why don’t we know more about her?
At the seminal 2001 exhibition ‘Modern Australian Women’ 1925–1945 at the Art Gallery of South Australia, she does not rate a mention among the thirty-odd women painters who are detailed in the catalogue.
Her iconic image Gypsy Belle is in that Ballarat Gallery and the image is usually prominently displayed in the gallery publications room. Muntz Adams was a celebrated artist in her lifetime but has not received much attention since her death in 1949.
Josephine was the daughter of the shire engineer in Kyneton where she was born in 1862. She came from an artistic Irish family and at the age of 13 is recorded as travelling alone to Ireland to visit her grandparents in County Down – an adventurous young lady. Her father it should be recorded eventually became the shire engineer and subsequently the mayor of Prahran.
A student at the Gallery School with Streeton, she studied in Paris, was a friend of Rupert Bunny and exhibited several times at the Old Salon, Paris. In London she won a gold medal for portraiture.
She married in her 30s and was soon widowed. Her family situation left her in comfortable circumstances and she pursued a career in portraiture of the more traditional kind, no doubt demanded by customers in the early twentieth century. Perhaps her wealth and output of conventional portraiture dampened both the lively painterliness of her early images, and the impact she might have made on early modernist painting.
This image of a Victorian state premier, Duncan Gillies, reflects this evolution.
Perhaps we should resurrect the memory of this painter who was a supreme talent and who made some marks which appeared well ahead of her time.
This having been said she left a number of later landscape images which very definitely reflect a Modernist treatment.
Similarly, this portrait of Mrs Montgomery (above), painted when Josephine was 68 years old has a definite contemporary flair.
Josephine died in 1949 aged 87 years. This was the year after William Dobell won the Archibald Prize with an image of Margaret Olley.
There may be some renewed interest in Muntz-Adams as a self-portrait painted about 1896 was recently sold by Deutscher and Hackett at a record price of $73,636. Perhaps we should resurrect the memory of this painter who was a supreme talent and who made some marks which appeared well ahead of her time.
This article was originally published in the VAS Magazine, January–March 2023.
Josephine was a council member of the Victorian Artists’ Society from 1905–08, 1912–13 and 1916.
Postal ephemera: from Josephine to the VAS
This beautiful piece of ephemera, now held by the Victorian State Library, is a postcard sent by Josephine in 1896. It was addressed to the Secretary of the Victorian Artists Society, offering one of her artworks for display. It says ‘Mr Patterson* tells me that you have space on your walls for more pictures and would be willing to hang one of mine.’
* Mr Hugh Patterson was a key figure in the Australian art scene, playing a crucial role in founding both the Australian Artists’ Association and the Victorian Artists’ Society.
