Merioola Group

The Merioola Group, also known as the Sydney Charm School, was a group of Australian artists active in Sydney during the 1940s and early 1950s. The group was named after ''Merioola'', a Woollahra mansion where many of its members lived.

Merioola house

The group took its name from ''Merioola'', a Victorian-era mansion converted into a boarding house in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra, managed from 1941 by Chica Edgeworth Lowe. Lowe consciously encouraged artists, dancers, writers and theatre people to take up residence, forming the bohemian artistic centre of Sydney in the immediate post-war years.

Tenants included the European-born and trained artists Arthur Fleischmann (sculptor), Roland Strasser, Peter Kaiser, Michael Kmit and George de Olszanski. Others, such as Donald Friend, Edgar Ritchard (artist and costume designer), Loudon Sainthill (later to become one of the most prominent theatre designers of the 20th century) and his life partner Harry Tatlock Miller (writer, critic and curator and subsequently the director of the Redfern Galleries, London), had lived and worked overseas. Others connected with the visual arts included photographer Alec Murray, painters Justin O'Brien, Mary Edwards, Frank Andrews, artist and later noted costume designer Jocelyn Rickards. Other tenants included dancers Alison Lee, Darya Collin, Beatrijs Vitringa and Edmee Monod, author and historian Hector Bolitho, architect George Beiers, civil engineer William Pierre Beiers, mathematician and astronomer John Sidgewick, musicians John and Norma Bannenberg, and many others.

When in Sydney, Ballet Rambert dancers often spent time at Merioola, where many theatrical and literary collaborations took place.

Merioola and the Sydney Charm School

Although there was no common style or ' movement' at Merioola, it could be said that its artists were more interested in art as a light-hearted and poetic expression of the spirit and less interested in art as a progressive force. Many of the group had spent long years in the armed services or had been displaced persons as a result of the war in Europe.

Artists under the label of the "Merioola Group" exhibited in both Sydney (November 1947) and Melbourne in 1947.

The "Sydney Charm School" was another term used synonymously to refer to the Merioola group of artists because they shared a light-hearted, decorative element in their work. The Sydney Charm School included painters William Dobell, Russell Drysdale, Donald Friend, Lloyd Rees, Justin O'Brien, Jean Bellette, Paul Haefliger, David Strachan, Sali Herman, Eric Wilson, Mary Edwell-Burke, Margaret Olley, Roland Strasser, Peter Kaiser, Harry Tatlock Miller, Jocelyn Rickards, Adrian Feint, Arthur Fleischmann, Eileen Haxton and applied artists Wallace Thornton, Loudon Sainthill and Wolfgang Cardamatis.

Paul Haefliger first used the phrase "Charm School" in 1948 in a review of the work of Jocelyn Rickards. Titled ‘Artist Relies on Charm’, Haefliger's review states that Rickard's work "certainly belongs to the charm-school and, as a substitute, it will carry this young artist quite a distance".

Later, the name "The Sydney Charm School" was disparagingly used by Australian Art critic Robert Hughes to describe the Merioola group of artists. He believed that the art made in Sydney in the period circa 1940–1955 was less worthy than the works produced in Melbourne as it was decorative and overly romantic, unlike the "truthful vital energy of Melbourne". Regarding the difference in art expressions between Sydney and Melbourne at that time Donald Friend commented:

By its ad hoc nature the Merioola Group were destined not to last, and by the mid-1950s its original members had left or were on the point of leaving, most overseas. But while it lasted Merioola provided a bohemian atmosphere, described by its chronicler Christine France:

Notes and references

{{Reflist, refs=
{{cite book , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=phKd3b6kQOwC , title=The Diaries of Donald Friend , publisher=National Library of Australia , author=Friend, D. and Gray, A. and National Library of Australia , year=2001 , pages=xxvii–xxviii , isbn=9780642107381
{{usurped,
Australia Dancing — Sainthill, Loudon (1919–1969)
}
{{cite web , url=http://www.nla.gov.au/exhibitions/dancepeopledance/lvl3-artistic_impact-7.html , archive-url=https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20040421140000/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/41570/20040422-0000/www.nla.gov.au/exhibitions/dancepeopledance/lvl3-artistic_impact-7.html , url-status=dead , archive-date=21 April 2004 , title=Dance people dance , publisher=National Library of Australia , access-date=4 September 2013{{cbignore, bot=medic
{{cite conference , url=http://www.nla.gov.au/events/donaldfriend/papers/cfrance.html , title=Donald Friend: Merioola and Friends , access-date=4 September 2013 , author=Christine France , editor=National Library of Australia , book-title=An Inventive Magic: Donald Friend and his Diaries , date=February 2001
{{cite news , url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article101973004 , title=Mystery in the ordinary. , work=The Canberra Times , date=30 January 1988 , access-date=7 May 2014 , location=ACT , page=17
{{cite news , url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18098956 , title=Artist Relies on Charm. , work= Sydney Morning Herald , date=20 October 1948 , access-date=7 May 2014 , author= Paul Haefliger as "Our Art Critic" , location=NSW , page=4
{{cite journal , url=https://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2012/jun12/two-expatriates-in-europe.pdf , title=Two Expatriates in Europe , author=Klepac, Lou , journal=The National Library Magazine , date=June 2012 , volume=4 , issue=2
{{cite web , url=http://www.abccommercial.com/librarysales/program/landscape-figures , title=Landscape with Figures , publisher=ABC (Australia) , access-date=7 May 2014
{{cite web , url=http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/media/downloads/files/17_Craig_Judd_15__16_Jun_2011.pdf , title=The not charming Charm School , publisher=Diploma Lecture Series 2011 , work=Art and Australia ll: European Preludes and Parallels , date=15-16 June 2011 , access-date=7 May 2014 , author=Judd, Craig
Donald Friend, quoted in {{cite book , title=The innovators: the Sydney alternatives in the rise of modern art, literature and ideas , publisher=Macmillan , author=Dutton, Geoffrey , year=1986 , pages=99–100

See also

Art of Australia

External links

YouTube short documentary about Arthur Fleischmann and life at Merioola



Some paintings of the Merioola Group

Bibliography

Merioola and After ''(Christine France, 1986)''

Australian art
Culture of Sydney
Organisations based in Sydney
Arts organisations based in Australia
Australian artist groups and collectives