Lina Bryans (26 August 1909 – 30 September 2000), was an Australian

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

painter.

Life

Lina Bryans was born in

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, on 26 August 1909, second daughter of wealthy prosperous Michaelis-Hallenstein family of industrialists, Australians Edward and Lina Hallenstein, who were then visiting

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. The following year they settled in

Toorak Toorak () is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Stonnington local government area. Toorak recorded a population of 12,817 at the 2021 census. The name ...

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, Victoria, and Lina grew up moving between

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and

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. She used her knowledge of French to work as a translator. She married Baynham Bryans in 1931 and they had a son, Edward (24 June 1932 – 23 March 2010), who made his name as a newsreader on ABC radio an
television
The marriage broke down and Lina moved to

South Yarra South Yarra is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 4 km south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the Cities of Melbourne and Stonnington local government areas. South Yarra recorded a populati ...

in 1936. She met William (Jock) Frater and decided with his help and encouragement to become a painter. She'd had no involvement with art before.

Early works

A modernist, Bryans was associated with Frater's circle which included Ada May Plante and Isabel Hunter Tweddle. Her first works were painted early in 1937 and Basil Burdett selected her ''Backyards, South Yarra'' in 1938 for the ''Herald Exhibition of Outstanding Pictures of 1937''. Her work was included in Burdett's article in ''Studio'' (1938) and in the exhibition, ''Art of Australia 1788-1941'', shown at

MOMA The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

(

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) in 1941.

The Pink Hotel

Bryans went to live in ''Darebin Bridge House'', a converted coach-house at Darebin, in the late 1930s, joining Ada May Plante. Bryans subsequently purchased it using her inheritance, painted and decorated it distinctively and named it "The Pink Hotel". It became an artists' colony for Bryans, Plante, Frater, Ambrose Hallen and Ian Fairweather and other artists. From 1945 she opened the doors to the ''

Meanjin ''Meanjin'' (), formerly ''Meanjin Papers'' and ''Meanjin Quarterly'', is one of Australia's longest-running literary magazines. Established in 1940 in Brisbane, it moved to Melbourne in 1945 and as of 2008 is an editorially independent impri ...

'' group: Vance and Nettie Palmer, Rosa and Dolia Ribush, Jean Campbell, Laurie Thomas and Alan McCulloch. There they joined the moderates in the Contemporary Art Society ( Norman Macgeorge, Clive Stephen, Isobel Tweddle and Rupert Bunny, Sybil Craig, Guelda Pyke, Elma Roach, Ola Cohn and Madge Freeman and George Bell). The liberal, conservative modernists in

were thus given an identity and a base, attracting group of writers associated with the journal

, in turn sparking an interest in journalism in Lina's son Edward.

Mid-career

In 1948 Bryans had her first solo exhibition. It included ''Nude'' (1945, NGV) and ''Portrait of Nina Christesen'' (1947), both painted at Darebin, which she sold later that year and moved to Harkaway, near Berwick. She took a few lessons from George Bell in 1948 and from Mary Cockburn Mercer in 1951. In 1953 she went to

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, then to

, where she studied for a few months at La Grande Chaumière and visited Mercer in the south of

. Back at

, she once more became prominent in the city's artistic and cultural milieu.

Recognition

Landscape painting was always important to Bryans and throughout the 1960s and 1970s, it became more dramatic and abstract. In 1965 she visited

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and painted modernist paintings of the Australian bush in heightened colour. She was awarded the 1966 Crouch Prize for ''Embedded Rock'' (1964, BFAG). Her major work ''Landscape Quartet'' from her second solo exhibition, held at Georges Gallery in 1966, was purchased by the

National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and list of most visited art museums in the world, most visited art mu ...

, which awarded her a retrospective in 1982, held at Banyule Gallery in 1982, which subsequently toured regional galleries in Victoria. Nevertheless, as Forwood notes (2001), her portraits 'best reveal her contribution to Australian art’, moreover, 'her seventy-three portraits of friends engaged in the world of art and letters form a pictorial biography of Bryans herself’. Her well-known, jaunty portrait of Australian writer Jean May Campbell, ''The Babe is Wise'', (named after Campbell's novel of the year before) was painted in 1940. It is held in the National Gallery of Victori
collection
Bryans was a member of the Independent Group. In 1991 she rejoined the

Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung/ or ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second most-populous city in Australia, after Sydney. The city's name generally refers to a metropolitan area also known as ...

, in which she had first enlisted in 1940 and quit in 1966. In the 1960s, as a guest exhibitor, she was one of the most important and professional artists associated with the Society, and critics consistently placed her works at the forefront of MSWPS group shows. In 1966 one faction of the MSWPS was anxious to see the high-standing artist Lina Bryans elected president for her dynamic outlook. In the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours Bryans was awarded the

Medal of the Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an Australian honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of then ...

(OAM) for "service to the visual arts as a landscape painter".

Exhibition history

Solo exhibitions

* 1948, 1966 Georges Gallery, Melbourne.

Major curated exhibitions

* 1937, Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne * 1941 ''Art of Australia'' Museum of Modern Art New York * 1988 ''Creating Australia'', Art Gallery of South Australia * 1988 ''The Face of Australia'' (National touring exhibition associated with the Australian Bicentennial * 1982 Retrospective National Gallery of Victoria * 1992 Survey exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria * 1995 Survey exhibition at University of Melbourne.

Collections

* Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat, VIC *

Art Gallery of Western Australia The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) is a public art gallery that is part of the Perth Cultural Centre, in Perth. It is located near the Western Australian Museum and State Library of Western Australia and is supported and managed by the ...

, Perth, WA http://www.artgallery.wa.gov.au/ *

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, New Haven, Connecticut, USA * Turnbull Library, State Library of New Zealand, Wellington, NZ *

Melbourne University The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state of Victoria. Its ...

, Melbourne, VIC * La Trobe Collection,

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, Melbourne, VIC * Art Gallery of South Australia,

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, SA http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/ * Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery,

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, TAS * McClelland Art Gallery, Langwarrin, VIC * Benalla Art Gallery, Benalla, VIC * Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, VIC *

, Melbourne, VIC *

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, Canberra, ACT
National Portrait Gallery
Canberra, ACT *

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

, Canberra, ACT http://cs.nga.gov.au/Default.cfm * Wollongong Regional Art Gallery, Wollongong, NSW * Manly Art Gallery and Museum, Manly, NSW *

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, Sydney, NSW, Australia http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/ *

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, SA * Geelong Art Gallery, Geelong, VIC *

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, the University of Melbourne, VIC http://www.art-museum.unimelb.edu.au/art_collection.aspx

References

External links

Papers of Lina Bryans, 1930-2000
''

State Library Victoria State Library Victoria (SLV) is the state library of Victoria, Australia. Located in Melbourne, it was established in 1854 as the Melbourne Public Library, making it Australia's oldest public library and one of the first free libraries in th ...

''
Lina Bryans
ustralian art and artists file ''

'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Bryans, Lina 1909 births 2000 deaths Artists from Melbourne Heide Circle Modern artists Alumni of the Académie de la Grande Chaumière Recipients of the Medal of the Order of Australia German emigrants to Australia 20th-century Australian painters Australian modern painters 20th-century Australian women painters