Untitled (Wilsons Prom)

Anne Montgomery was a well-known modernist painter and teacher in Melbourne in the 1930s and 40s. Raised in a creative milieu that included the most significant female artists of her day as role models and later colleagues, she was associated with key modern schools of artistic thought, becoming a respected teacher as well as practicing artist over several decades.

Most prominent and active during the 1930s, when she exhibited widely and was considered a major new talent, Montgomery’s work of the period had a light touch with an emphasis on the decorative, showing parallels with contemporaries such as Adelaide Perry, Thea Proctor and Klytie Pate. She was one of several artists who adopted modern principles of design and colour to address the landscape in new ways. In contemplating nature, these artists replaced realistic details of landscape with pure form and colour, infused with dynamic rhythms that suggested the animating energies of place.

This lyrical and luminous watercolour is infused with the decorative forms of art deco – while based on observations of the Victorian south coast, Montgomery has expanded on specific notions of place by downplaying naturalistic detail for an expression of heightened colour, volumetric mass and rhythmical formations of clouds, geology and trees.