Max Meldrum (1875-1955), Australian painter who twice won the Archibald Prize in 1939 and 1940. The Archibald Prize is regarded as the most important portraiture prize, and is the most prominent of all arts prizes, in Australia. ...
Born in Edinburgh in 1875, his family emigrated to Australia in 1889. He ran the Meldrum school of painting between 1916 and 1926. Lived in France between 1926 and 1931, then returned to Australia. Opened a new school in Melbourne in Collins street Edinburghs location in Scotland Edinburgh viewed from Arthurs Seat. ...
He is known for criticising Nora Heysen's 1938 Archibald prize win, saying that women could not be expected to paint as well as men. Nora Heysen AM (January 11, 1911 - December 30, 2003) was an Australian artist, the first woman to win the prestigious Archibald Prize for portraiture and the first Australian women appointed as an official war artist. ...
His archibald prize wins:
1939 - The Hon G J Bell, Speaker of the House of Representatives
Meldrum, who had developed his own artistic theory, “The Scientific Order of the Impressions”, claimed that social decadence had given artists an exaggerated interest in colour and, to their detriment, were paying less attention to tone and proportion.
Meldrum's radical eclecticism, pacifism and anti-establishment views attracted many young artists and one of Beckett's early exhibitions, in 1919, was a group show with students from Meldrum's private art school.
While Meldrum credited her as his model student Beckett only embraced some of his theories, in particular his insistence that accurate tonal rendition should be the main preoccupation of the artist and that the subjects be drawn from everyday life.
The prize has historically attracted a good deal of controversy and several court cases; the most famous in 1943 when William Dobell's win was challenged because of claims it was a caricature rather than a painting.
MaxMeldrum criticised the Archibald Prize winner in 1938, saying that women could not be expected to paint as well as men.
Nora Heysen was the first woman to win the Archibald Prize, with a portrait of Madame Elink Schuurman, the wife of the Consul General for the Netherlands.
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