Spotlight on Ernest Buckmaster (1897-1968)
Ernest Buckmaster was born in 1897 in Auburn, Victoria, the firstborn of six boys and six girls. Due to ill health, he was sent away at a young age to live with his grandparents in Doncaster Road, Box Hill, Victoria where he developed a preference for going into the bush and drawing landscapes on a Sunday morning rather than attending church.
On returning to the family home, this habit made him somewhat of an outcast to his strictly Baptist family and earned him the nickname ‘mad artist’ from his siblings. Unperturbed, he pursued his drive to master drawing. ‘I’ve lived practically a world apart, a world of my own, wrapped up in my obsession for drawing with a brush.’ He left school at age 11, working in a chemist and then as an apprentice signwriter, followed by self-funded study at The National Gallery of Victoria under the tutelage of William B. McInnes and Bernard Hall. He admired the Heidelberg school painters and sought to follow in their footsteps, firmly rejecting the emerging trend of his peers towards modernism.
In 1932 he won the Archibald Prize for his portrait of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria William Irvine (1858–1943). The prize accelerated his career and generated a steady flow of commissions and critical acclaim. ‘Buckmaster's idealism is reflected in the nobleness of character so apparent in each [portrait], with unerring judgement, he sounds the innermost details of his sitters for those fundamental qualities of goodness and straightforwardness.’ His final self-portrait (lot 119) was painted in 1966 two years before his death and was selected as a finalist in the Archibald. His studious gaze off to the side reflects the artist's honest intentions to be observed without pretence. He diligently executed the painting with the use of several mirrors in his home studio in Warrandyte.
While Buckmaster’s bread and butter was portraiture, his love for landscape painting held significant importance in the artist's oeuvre. Buckmaster painted landscapes in the traditional en plein air method, as he felt this was the only way to capture nature ‘alive’. Up until his final years he was painting with the same exacting standards of perfection. This determination is exemplified in his accurate impressions of the haze over Eildon, a favourite location he returned to regularly throughout his career. He managed to paint the climate of a locale with deceptive ease. ‘It is a significant feature of Buckmaster's landscape work that a great many of his paintings depict still water under various influences. In this he reveals a remarkable ability to capture the very nature of the atmosphere.’
Over the years, ‘Buck’, as he was affectionately known, had formed a close acquaintance and friendship with many older painters from the Heidelberg school era, particularly Arthur Streeton, often exchanging letters. Streeton wrote to him from his deathbed in August 1942, wishing him well for his upcoming exhibition at the Athenaeum Gallery in Melbourne, lamenting that he could not visit. Such modest praise and attention from Streeton could not have been bestowed upon a more earnest recipient. Buckmaster never faltered in his devotion to nature and traditional art. His prolific writing encapsulates his artist's doctrine, which in essence expresses his genuine reverence for the act of painting. ‘Over my lifetime as an artist my experiences have caused me often to realise the truth of the old saying, “art is long and time is fleeting”. Words fail in any attempt to explain how I have loved and revelled in every painting day, never long enough for all that might be done…but aware of keen anticipation of what is waiting to be painted tomorrow.’