Harold Cazneaux

(New Zealand, Australia 1878–1953)

Title

Doris Zinkeisen: New Idea portrait with leaf background

Year

1929

Media category

Photograph

Materials used

gelatin silver photograph, vintage

Dimensions

25.0 x 19.8cm image/sheet

Signature & date

Not signed. Not dated.

Credit

Gift of the Cazneaux family 1975

Accession number

164.1975

Location

Not on display

Further information

Harold Cazneaux’s portrait of Doris Zinkeisen was the first photographic cover for ‘The Home’ magazine. Launched in Sydney in 1920, ‘The Home’ was styled after the high quality and exclusivity of Vogue, and Cazneaux was its chief photographer. The magazine was one of the main sources through which Australian women were exposed to international modernist trends in art, fashion and furnishings. It set an avant-garde tone by employing contemporary artists such as Margaret Preston, Grace Cossington Smith and Thea Proctor, all of whom embodied the assertive, independent and free-thinking ideal of the modern woman. Doris Zinkeisen was a British painter and theatre designer who epitomised the ‘New Feminine Beauty’ described by ‘The Home’ in 1929 as: ‘stark simplicity of line, of corners, angles, slimness, sharpness … twenty years ago we were born curvy and now we are born straight.’ 1

Cazneaux’s portrait manifests Zinkeisen’s modernity in its clarity, its crisp use of line and its decorative use of pattern. The leaf backdrop painted by the Australian artist Adrian Feint was inspired by the newly minted ‘Poiret’ fabrics designed by the Fauve painter Raoul Dufy. Zinkeisen’s modish cloche hat echoes this background, creating an effect of simultaneous flatness and depth. This gesture towards modernism’s abstraction of form was a departure from Cazneaux’s signature pictorialist style. Conscious of the need to embrace the look of the modernist aesthetic it promulgated, ‘The Home’s’ editor, Leon Gellert, encouraged Cazneaux to challenge his own style, and this fine portrait is the result.

1. 1929, 'The Home', May, in Hill V 2000, 'The Cazneaux women', Craftsman House, Sydney p 73

Bibliography (13)

Philip Kelleway (Author), Highly desirable: the Zinkeisen sisters & their legacy, 2008, 163 (illus.). fig.13

Natasha Bullock (Australia) (Author), Harold Cazneaux: artist in photography, 2008.

7079 (Editor), Photography: Art Gallery of New South Wales Collection, 2007, 177 (illus.).

Architects of Glamour + Masters of Style: Excerpts from a Century of Fashion Photography 2003, 2003, 4, 5 (illus.). no catalogue numbers

Natasha Bullock (Australia) (Curator), Soft Shadows and Sharp Lines: Australian photography from Cazneaux to Dupain, Domain, 2002. no pagination or catalogue numbers

Mark Ferson (Australia) (Editor), Mary Nilsson (Australia) (Editor), Aspects of Art Deco in Australia: Sunrise over the Pacific, St Leonards, 2001, 131 (illus.). plate no. 50

Valerie Hill (Australia) (Author), The Cazneaux Women, St Leonards, 2000, 72 (illus.), 73, 91 (illus.). plate no. 20

Alexandra Joel (Author), Parade: The story of fashion in Australia, Pymble, 1998, 77, 94, 95 (illus.). This text was initially published in 1984 by Collins, titled "Best dressed".

S.H. Ervin Gallery (Australia) (Author), The Thirties and Australia, Sydney, 1980, 18. cat.no. 86

Gael Newton (Australia) (Author), Silver and Grey - Fifty Years of Australian Photography 1900-1950, 1980. plate no. 29

Gael Newton (Australia) (Author), Project 7: Harold Cazneaux 1878 - 1953, Sydney, 1975. cat.no. 19

The Home : an Australian quarterly Feb 1931, Feb 1931, cover (illus.).

Photograms of the Year 1929 1929, 1929, 20. plate no. 51

Exhibition history (7)

Project 7 - Harold Cazneaux: 1878 - 1953 (1975), Art Gallery of New South Wales, 30 Aug 1975–28 Sep 1975.

The Thirties and Australia, S.H. Ervin Gallery, 19 Jun 1980–13 Jul 1980.

Ten years on, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Jan 1986–Jan 1986.

Harold Cazneaux, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 22 Dec 1989–11 Mar 1990.

Soft Shadows and Sharp Lines: Australian photography from Cazneaux to Dupain, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 30 Sep 2002–17 Nov 2002.

Architects of Glamour + Masters of Style: excepts from a century of fashion photography, Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, 27 Jun 2003–07 Sep 2003.

Harold Cazneaux: artist in photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 05 Jun 2008–10 Aug 2008.