JEFFREY SMART Australian, B. 1921

Purchased by the present owner at Macquarie Galleries, Sydney in 1959

Private collection, New York 

Born in Adelaide and still painting in his eighties today, Jeffrey Smart has observed and commented on modern life with a vision that is unique in Australian art. In 1959, when he painted Park at Paddington, he was living not far away in Elizabeth Bay. The scene, as he has kindly confirmed, is Centennial Park. Having moved from Adelaide in 1951, he was now working for the ABC, presenting The Children’s Hour for both radio and television, and teaching life drawing at East Sydney Technical College (National Art School) two days a week. He had already held solo exhibitions in both Sydney and Melbourne.

As Smart has explained, many of his paintings have their origin in a passing glance. Here a man sits on a colourful park bench, reading in the sun. The playing fields are probably not in use, the scoreboard is empty. The magic of Smart’s art lies in his ability to capture the immediate and particular, and yet imbue his subject with universal human resonance. There is no overt narrative in Park at Paddington; rather the stillness of the scene evokes a sense of time standing still in a small oasis from urban life. For all their apparent simplicity, Smart’s paintings are unfailingly sophisticated in construction. Here his picture space is like a stage set, with a ‘backdrop’ indicating suburbia – and what must have been a very new TV aerial; and the possibility of an entrance from the ‘wings’ beyond the gate posts on the left. Elements in the composition are balanced with mathematical precision. As Smart has explained, his subject matter ‘is only the hinge that opens the door, the hook on which one hangs the coat. My only concern is putting the right shapes in the right colours in the right places. It is always the geometry’. ¹

Smart completed a number of other paintings of Sydney parks before his departure for Europe in 1963. These include Park at Kensington, also in 1959, Trumper Park, 1961, Beare Park, Elizabeth Bay, 1960-1 and paintings of Cooper Park between 1961 and 1963.

1. Quoted in McGrath, S. and Walker, R., Sydney Harbour, Paintings from 1794, The Jacaranda Press, Sydney, 1979, p. 90.