Misty Moderns: Australian Tonalists, 1915-1950

My wife and I had the pleasure of making a visit to The Art Gallery of South Australia during a memorable vacation in the wonderful city of Adelaide a few years back. There was an exhibition of an artist I had never heard of by the name of Clarice Beckett. We duly paid our money and both of us were blown away with her wonderful and truly underappreciated art.

For anyone that heads to Adelaide, I am unable to recommend The Art Gallery of South Australia enough. We had initially meant to spend just a couple of hours there, but the quality of the art was so high that time was stretched with no regrets. As to Clarice Beckett's art, wow! In the flesh they are amazing. I want to own a Clarice Beckett, but the likes of Russell Crowe, among others, are nowadays the owners.

I had purchased art from an English artist who was living in Brisbane at the time by the name of Jonny Arnold. He is worth the while of anyone that likes his style, a style I have a lot of time for. I was telling him about Clarice Beckett and he and his equally talented artist partner Cherie Strong had a copy of this magnificent book. They generously gave me their copy as they were moving to England and had too much to pack. I have finally got around to reading, and to say I have enjoyed this would be an understatement.

Misty Moderns: Australian Tonalists 1915 – 1950 was produced on behalf of The Art Gallery of South Australia for an exhibition of Tonalist artists held in 2008 with this book produced by exhibition curator Tracey Lock-Weir. I did not see this exhibition, regretfully, but if it was of the quality of this publication that regret is high.

To quote Wiki “Tonalism was an artistic style that emerged in the 1880s when American artists began to paint landscape forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist.”
“ Australian Tonalism emerged as an art movement in Melbourne during the 1910s.” and that is what this book and the exhibition it was produced for was about. Australian Tonalism was begun as a school by Max Meldrum and at the time had limited influence as most Australian art was in the direction of Modernism. Meldrum was also rather vocal in his dismissal of Modernism and hence had few friends in the art world. As a movement Tonalism all but disappeared a little after the 2nd world war only to be revived, rightfully so, after a new wave of younger artists and critics rediscovered the works of some of its prominent painters.

Misty Moderns in my opinion is a must-have for anyone that takes delight in this style of Australian art. The colour plates are absolutely magnificent, the text very readable in explaining the history of the movement, and there is a select biography that has me salivating.

The following are all by Clarice Beckett.

Across The Yarra




Wet Night Brighton.


Motor Lights.





Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in Australian Tonalists.