From rags to riches: Pro Hart's life and legacy

‘‘He painted 70,000 pictures in his lifetime,’’ says Gavin Fry, who spent 12 months researching and writing the just released, Pro Hart: Life & Legacy. ‘‘If you compare him to Russell Drysdale because the paintings are of a similar subject matter, Drysdale only painted about 350 major pictures in his career.’’

Eight years after his death, Hart remains one of the country’s most recognisable artists. Overlooked by the art establishment because of his crass commercialism and questionable talent – his paintings were reproduced on Qantas in-flight menus, airconditioning units and in a TV advertisement for carpet – the self-made multi-millionaire was appreciated en masse by ‘‘ordinary’’ Australians. Regarded as the ‘‘working man’s painter’’, his work ‘‘reeked of outback authenticity,’’ says Fry. ‘‘Pro is a popular culture phenomenon. He’s not a great artist and if you look at the quality of his work, he doesn’t rank in the top 100 of his generation, but that doesn’t matter. At his best, and his best was something you didn’t see very often, he was a much better painter than I’d given him credit for.’’

Fry hesitated when he was approached to write the book by Melbourne art dealer and auctioneer Chris Deutscher on behalf of Hart’s son, John. ‘‘Chris and I have known each other forever and he sent me an email asking if I’d be interested in doing the book about Pro Hart, and I thought,’’ at this point Fry scrunches up his face and groans before continuing. ‘‘There’s two schools of thought about Pro – there’s all the people who love him, then there’s a number of people who’ve never come to grips with him professionally because there’s certain aspects to his career that have always been very problematic – the rampant commercialism and the unbelievable quantity of material.

‘‘You don’t question the talent and the mastery, but you do question the substance of the work. There’s not a lot of intellectual rigour.’’

In between mouthfuls of a smoked salmon sandwich at Maryville bakery Uprising, which is close to Fry’s home office where he wrote, designed and oversaw the publishing via China of the weighty and very readable hardcover book, he describes how he grappled with his own bias. ‘‘I thought it was arrogant of me to think I was too good to do it [write the book]. I’d simply never considered him an artist of any consequence, but what I’ve learned is that he had moments of brilliance. He had moments of genuine creativity where he came up with new ideas, but unfortunately those moments were too few.’’

John Hart, the eldest of Pro’s five children and an artist himself, commissioned the book so it could be sold in the family’s Broken Hill gallery shop. It had to be finished in time for a large-scale auction of the familys’ personal collection – 173 Pro Hart paintings in all – scheduled for Tuesday in Melbourne. ‘‘The book and the auction coincide, but the book doesn’t bear any relationship to the auction except some of the same pictures are in it,’’ says Fry. ‘‘When I agreed to do the book, I went to Broken Hill and met John because I wanted to lay some ground rules. It certainly wasn’t going to be the book about ‘Saint Pro’; it had to be an honest appraisal.’’

Kevin Charles Hart was born in Broken Hill on May 30, 1928, and spent the early part of his life on a sheep station east of Menindee. He left school at 15 and took on menial jobs. He was given the nickname ‘‘Pro’’ while employed at a soft drink factory where he enjoyed blowing things up with gelignite. The other workers dubbed him ‘‘The Professor’’ and it was eventually abbreviated. At 19, he started working at North Broken Hill Consolidated Mine and painted in his spare time. Eventually his earnings as an artist meant he could focus on painting full-time, which he did at 39.

Hart lacked formal training but received lessons from Florence May Harding, an accomplished local amateur botanical painter. Between 1940 and 1970 she was the sole art teacher at Broken Hill Technical College, where from 1947 she also ran art classes for local children on Saturday mornings.

Broken Hill was home to the state’s oldest regional gallery, which was established in 1904 with a bequest from one of the founders of BHP, George McCulloch, and there was a small but active artist community in the isolated town. ‘‘Art become more than a passing interest for Pro Hart,’’ writes Fry. ‘‘By the mid-1950s he was making the long journey to Sydney to see exhibitions and, importantly, to buy paintings and drawings.’’

Hart became an avid collector and work by Newcastle-born William Dobell was a favourite. At one point he owned 300 Dobell paintings – Hart also bought the contents of his studio after his death – as well as work by Tom Roberts, Robert Dickerson, Albert Tucker, Arthur Boyd, and John Coburn. While these artists went on to be embraced by the art world and national and state galleries, Hart’s path to wealth and fame serves as a cautionary tale.

Utterly lacking in business acumen and vulnerable to outside influences, Hart’s work became a form of currency. He used paintings to pay for cars and televisions and other services. Supporting his wife and five children might have been his initial goal, but then came the luxury cars and 17 staff. Hart became a victim of his own success.

‘‘He was enormously trusting,’’ observes Fry, who didn’t meet Hart but spent time with his wife Raylee and eldest son. ‘‘Part of the anxiety he suffered from meant he didn’t know how to say no to people, especially his kids. He was manipulated quite shamelessly by some people, which was most unfortunate but he still made a lot of money – though a lot of other people made more than he did.

‘‘I think the whole thing was grotesque. It was a case of an ordinary bloke who had a particular talent, which was to be able to produce the sort of appealing, untroubling images that people wanted. He had a way of producing them in huge quantities and he never said no when people dangled lots of money in front of him.’’