Margret Preston: A Collection of Important Prints

From the time of her first exhibition in 1925 Margaret Preston established herself as the most important artist printmaker working in Australia. The exhibition received critical and popular acclaim. It was described in the press as ‘a riot of colour’ and sold exceptionally well. The most desirable works were those dealing with Australian flora; Preston hand-coloured them in gouache which enabled her to exploit the effects of vibrant, saturated colours. Her work quickly became iconic, being illustrated in journals like Art in Australia and The Home and being acquired by public galleries.  The exhibition also marked the beginning of Preston’s commitment to the development of a national Australian art.

This important group of eight prints span the most productive years of Preston’s involvement with woodblock printmaking – ranging from her 1925 exhibition until 1939.

In Native flowers (1925), an arrangement of flannel flowers, Sturt desert peas and Christmas bells in a blue bowl, the flowers have a jewel-like quality, appearing vibrant against the solid black background. This was one of the best-known prints from the 1925 exhibition following its reproduction on the cover of Art in Australia in December of that year.

Throughout the twenties Preston continued to experiment with still lives of native flowers, the compositions becoming bolder and more commanding. She also produced landscapes of the Sydney foreshore. When Preston settled in Sydney in 1920, she lived in the harbourside suburb of Mosman and went on to produce several prints which show her affection for this picturesque location. Mosman Bridge (1927), one such view, was selected by the artist to accompany her monograph Margaret Preston: Recent paintings 1929. All impressions of this print are slightly different. Preston was not interested in printing in colour, but hand coloured each print, the distribution of colour often varying, imparting each with its own vitality.

By the end of the decade Preston’s still life prints had become highly abstracted. Gum blossoms (1928) is one of the outstanding prints of this period, the artist carefully designing a floral arrangement with a pre-determined pictorial composition in mind. The subtly coloured round gum flowers and triangular leaves push out to the edges of the image, constrained by the rigid black lines that define the composition.    

In the early 1930s Preston moved to live in Berowra, a rural area surrounded by dense native bush. She was aged in her early sixties and was recovering from surgery. Prints produced by Preston after this time are all rare. Whereas in the early 1920s her editions usually numbered 50 or 25, later editions are small, numbering only two or three, and in many cases impressions are unique. This is the case with Old Banksia Tree (1939), one of Preston’s most important prints from her Berowra years. The tree was located at the bottom of her property, gnarled by age but still productive; Preston obviously identified with it (there is a photograph of her standing next to it).

In this impression, the woodcut is not hand-coloured, but the artist has introduced background tone that emphasises the isolation and vulnerability of the tree. Produced on the cusp of the Second World War it marked the end to Preston’s Berowra phase of her career.

Roger Butler AM

Emeritus Curator, Australian Prints and Drawings

National Gallery of Australia