DAVID Thomas finds it worrying that Newcastle Art Gallery and the city council is still making news headlines for the wrong reasons. And, as the second director of Newcastle Art Gallery (1965-75), he feels he is in a better position than most to voice an opinion.
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Thomas, now 81, finds it extraordinary the city still doesn't have an expanded art gallery to properly display its significant and growing cultural assets.
Speaking in Newcastle recently, Thomas said he found it "disgusting" that former gallery director Ron Ramsey was dismissed several years ago. He was also deeply saddened by the eventual loss of government money that would have kick-started a new gallery to feature Newcastle more prominently on the art world map.
"With the project stalled now, Newcastle Art Gallery has a long way to go to fulfill its true potential, to serve the community better," he says.
"You know, signing the building contract for what is the city's present art gallery (in Laman Street) was my parting gift to Newcastle. That was in my last week of work in 1975." (The structure, Australia's first purpose-built regional gallery, opened in 1977.)
Appointed as director in September 1965, David Thomas was 27, possibly the youngest art gallery director in Australia. He'd come from Canberra where he'd been Keeper of the Pictorial Collections at the National Library.
Thomas was described at the time as a livewire: enthusiastic, eloquent, more than a little high-pressure, exuding self-confidence and with a wide knowledge and an attractive approach to tackling goals. People were left with the urgent feeling that all sorts of things were just about to happen.
And they did. Besides the new gallery gift to the city, the dynamic David Emlyn Thomas during his tenure formed the Newcastle Art Gallery Society in 1969 and gallery guides were introduced in 1972. Working with a modest budget, he was also involved in a major controversy with Newcastle City Council after buying a masterwork by landscape artist Fred Williams in 1966.
Landscape in Upwey was bought for $1700 when it was valued at $2000, but some city aldermen seriously questioned the wisdom of buying the "highly abstract" painting. The hullabaloo became, in Thomas' words, "embarrassing because it hit the national press". Time has vindicated Thomas going into bat for the artwork, which is today worth about $1 million.
Officially resigning to leave for green pastures almost 10 years later, the move came with "bitter-sweet" feelings, but he was satisfied he had accomplished most major objectives, including a new gallery.
Thomas briefly returned to Newcastle late last week to celebrate the formation of the art gallery society 50 years ago and to deliver its annual Artspeak lecture 'Recollections: Evolution of an Art Gallery'.
Speaking before the lecture, Thomas said he had never gotten over earlier, extremely conservative views to art, especially modern art. In bygone days he said the views of a wife of a senior civic official were very influential. Thomas said a mayor once defined good public art as paintings of a ship in full sail, or floral arrangements.
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But this was a totally different era. Civic Park, for example, had once been a dustbowl, filled with parked cars. The city library for a while was in an army-style hut off King Street. City artworks also didn't have a proper home. The gallery then went into the second floor of the War Memorial Cultural Centre, which opened in 1957.
"It was all squeezed in up there. The Conservatorium of Music was on the third floor in the same building," Thomas recalls. "Bill Bowmore was a teacher at the conservatorium. He was very generous later with his bequests to both Newcastle and South Australian galleries (running into millions of dollars). He was a wonderful human being."
Philanthropist Bill Bowmore OBE was just one of many colourful people of that era. Bowmore, an accomplished pianist and cellist who made his money in Newcastle through investing in private hospitals, was a highly diverse art collector. At one stage, it was said his collection of art stored in his Church Street house was worth $20 million.
Another interesting character was famous, if shy, painter William Dobell, who became a virtual recluse at Wangi on Lake Macquarie after conservative artists branded his 1943 Archibald Prize winning portrait a caricature. A subsequent court case haunted Dobell for decades.
"Bill was, I think, regarded at one time as that weird artist from Wangi. But that all changed when he got his knighthood," Thomas says.
"After he was knighted by the Governor-General in Canberra, he stopped for a drink in a suburb called Acton. There the puzzled hotel barmaid said she recognised Dobell's face, but didn't know his name. 'I'm Bill Dobell,' he told the barmaid, at which she replied, unconvinced, 'Yeah. And I'm the Mona Lisa'."
Thomas said he also recalled when Dobell signed his famous 1969 painting, The Titivators, with the wrong date. "When I told him, Dobell replied, 'Only you and I know that'."
Police called Thomas to Dobell's house in 1970 to give advice after the artist died suddenly. An inventory of the house's stored artworks would later provide a definitive arc of the artist's career for future exhibitions.
Another great character of the era was art dealer, wine judge and bon vivant Rudy Komon (1908-1982). A man of roguish charm, the Viennese-born Czech got Thomas his prize Fred Williams artwork for Newcastle gallery. Komon's mission also seemed to be educating culturally unsophisticated Australians in the better things in life.
"I went to see Rudy in Sydney to collect our painting. He steered me around artworks on the walls saying things like, 'No, that one's not yours, that's for Murdoch. Here's yours. Now, let's have a drink'," Thomas says.
"We sat down at his desk. I expected champagne corks to be popping. Instead, he passed me a beer. 'Beer?' I queried, but it was from the recent Munich Beer Festival and he said, 'Shut up and drink the beer judged the best in the world'."
During his recent visit, Thomas strolled along Laman Street, Cooks Hill, to inspect the new street sculpture of legendary former commercial art galley owner Anne von Bertouch. She died in 2003, the same year she bequeathed her private collection to Newcastle gallery. Her quest had been to make Newcastle the art capital of Australia. Admiring the bust of the art matriarch, Thomas remembered her as "tough lady".
"By tough I mean she was of strong character, dedicated to making sure artists were well represented and improving the city's cultural life," Thomas says. "But I don't know how such sculptors can support themselves these days financially. Look around at the people who have enriched the life of your city, from painters to architects. You've got heroes here. If anywhere else, there would be statues to them."