SYDNEY LONG

The estate of the private collector, Melbourne; purchased circa 1985

Joanna Mendelssohn, The Life and Work of Sydney Long, Copperfield Art Collection, Canberra, 1979, p. 239, cat. 202 

Good condition. This painting is framed under glass.
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Sydney Long painted Flamingoes in 1910, the year he left for England and simultaneously abandoned his interest in Art Nouveau¹ and thus the overtly formalised and decorative qualities for which he was renowned.

Long and his contemporaries Conder and Roberts were influenced by the French symbolists of the late 19th century and looked to the movements' romantic fantasy world which was derived from mythology and dream imagery.

The English artistic and literary periodicals, The Yellow Book and The Studio were further influential to Long. Their Art Nouveau illustrations with stylised organic forms, decorative motifs and two dimensional picture planes were heavily referenced to translate the 'soul' of the Australian bush into pictorial dreamscapes littered with figures of classical mythology. In his archetypal Art Nouveau painting Pan, 1898, (Art Gallery of New South Wales) the god of nature and his satyrs and nymphs filter from the landscape as a very extension of it.

Such was the 'symbolist climate' in Sydney at the turn of the century that Norman Lindsay upon visiting the city wrote of its coterie of artists and writers 'On what an artist ought to paint I am shown a fire screens with pink cranes flying across a pale green sky and a red moon setting on a perfectly straight horizontal line' ²         

Long's use of the subject and indeed ambiguous mythology of the flamingo dates back to the major work in oil, Flamingoes, (1902, Art Gallery of New South Wales) and continued to be a major presence throughout the following twenty years of his career. In fact Donald Friend bluntly commented that Long did not have an affinity with flamingoes but in his working life the flamingo most identified him to his audiences. ³

In this picture, set against the familiar setting of nocturnal light and water, the flamingoes in their languid elegance form a lyrical, architectural formation of limp long necks and plump pink bodies. The modelling of the birds is more painterly than earlier versions and when placed against the subdued background come alive. It is primarily the placement of their floating figures that evokes tension and mystery.

1. Robert Hughes, The Art of Australia, Penguin Books, Victoria, rev. ed., 1970, p. 80
2. Norman lindsay, letter to Lionel Lindsay, quoted in Joanna Mendelssohn,The Life and Work of Sydney Long, Copperfield Art Collection, Canberra, 1979, p. 63
3. Donald Friend, letter to Joanna Mendelssohn, ibid., p. 76