I bought this Baxtergraphix tapestry called The Ferry from a woman in my tapestry group who had purchased a second hand floor frame on ebay and this tapestry came with it. It didn't appeal to her so I bought it for the princely sum of $15. It was quite an impulsive purchase but I've done a bit of research now and am thrilled I've launched myself into what is probably a life's work (hah). It is a very large tapestry. I've marked out the canvas into 10 equal portions and have, thus implicitly, given myself 10 years to finish it. This kind of thinking seems to disturb the ladies in my stitching group, yet it reassures me. I don't feel like it is impossible, just long and time consuming. That's OK. Long and time consuming is OK. We've all got to do something with our time and while I raise these young children I'm not exactly going anywhere. We moved a lot in my childhood and I don't particularly feel like doing that with my kids. So, I'm here. It can sit on its frame in the corner and wait while I periodically show it some love.
When I started doing research into the painting I was very excited to find out the real live painting, though painted in Europe, by an Australian painter, is actually alive and well in the NSW Art Gallery. I have already paid it a visit and intend to visit it periodically over the period of its stitching life.
From the Art Gallery of NSW site
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Among Fox's most sumptuous and colourful works, 'The ferry' is regarded as a masterpiece of the artist's maturity revealing a lifelong enchantment with sunshine and bright colour. Arising from Fox's visit to Trouville, a favourite beach resort in the north of France, the painting was based on rapidly painted sketches made out-of-doors, of striped bathing huts, umbrellas and holiday crowds.
When first exhibited in Sydney at the Royal Art Society in 1913, during one of Fox's return visits to Australia, 'The ferry' was an important source of inspiration for younger painters of the time like Roland Wakelin, Grace Cossington Smith and Roy de Maistre - who loved the painting for its broken brushwork and adventurous way of fragmenting and juxtaposing colour.
'The exhibition made a great impression on me ... we'd never seen colour like that here before. That was the thing that struck me most. Fox had been in France and had seen impressionist pictures which were scarcely known here then. Painting had been on the brown side - more tone than colour - this was expression through colour, we'd never seen it before.'
- Roland Wakelin, 1968
I've also borrowed books from the library and read about his life. He was reasonably privileged, old E.Phillips Fox. From Melbourne, his successful business-type brother helped support him while he went to art school. He then went across to Europe (as they did) and made a life as an artist, painting the world he inhabited, which was pretty sumptous if the paintings are any reflection.
I think I will spend quite a number of hours wondering about the lives of these women in my painting/tapestry. Who they were - apparently the woman in the blue stripey dress appears in a few of his paintings - what they thought and felt all those years ago. Again, privileged lives but still women with ideas, concerns, feelings, thoughts on their place in the world.
The stitching plan calls for reverse continental, horizontal half continental, fine oblique slav and continental and uses tapestry wool, perle 5, soft cotton and stranded cotton. Here's my progress after 30 hours (a lot of which was sewing onto frame, sorting, studying etc - actual stitching time was probably half of that). Its in three photos as it is a big tapestry - but then I've told you that... big, long, time consuming....
Right hand side
...notice..."adventurous way of fragmenting and juxtaposing colour"
Middle
Left hand side - the end of the Nanny's umbrella is the end of the first 1/10th of the canvas. My year end and begins at the annual creative tapestry stitching weekend in September.
