William Beckwith McInnes : an artist’s life

A$90 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Melbourne : Thames Hudson Australia Pty Ltd, 2022. Quarto, laminated boards, pp. 232, illustrated. New copy. The artist William Beckwith McInnes was a paragon of early 20th century Australian art, and the seven-time winner of the renowned Archibald Prize. An Artist’s Life is the first time his full story is being told. Winner of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ first four Archibald Prizes (1922 to 1925) – and several more thereafter – was Melbourne’s William Beckwith McInnes. With the Archibald wins, and then in his early 30s, McInnes was already an acclaimed landscape artist and had exhibited works painted in the British Isles, Spain and Morocco. After his Archibald successes he became, arguably, the country’s most sought-after portrait painter with official commissions to paint war heroes, prime ministers, lord mayors and other notables. In 1927 he was commissioned to paint the opening of Canberra’s new Parliament House and 1933 saw him in London painting The Duke of York who was soon to take the throne. In 1904, at age 14, McInnes was enrolled at Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria Art School with the support of its occasionally controversial Director, L. Bernard Hall. McInnes’s later success was founded on the academic training received at the School which, very much of its time, taught traditional skills of drawing and pictorial composition. After art school he became an active member of the arts community, participating in painting trips with well known fellow a

• Binding: Hardcover

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