Sally Smart was four or five when she first heard stories of her great-aunt, Bessie Davidson. They were inspiring tales of a committed young artist who left behind the conservatism of early 1900s Adelaide to pursue her passion in Paris.
"I always wanted to be in Paris or New York and to be an artist," Smart says. "It was great in my family to know there was such a thing, to be an artist; that it was possible. Bessie Davidson was very powerful in that discourse, essential."
This month, the two women – who never met – come together in a joint exhibition at Bendigo Art Gallery. Bessie Davidson & Sally Smart – Two artists and the Parisian avant-garde combines Davidson's still-life, portrait and landscape paintings with Smart's contemporary responses to her pioneering relative.
Smart wanted her own works, which include a two-channel video work and several fabric-based installations, to tell the story of Davidson's life in a contemporary but personal way. "I wanted a lived bodily experience to be brought into the work so that it would almost be like bringing something to life,” she says.
Bessie Davidson, An interior c. 1920 (detail).
CREDIT: © ART GALLERY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA, ADELAIDE
When Davidson travelled to Europe in 1904, she went with her mentor, painter Margaret Preston. Davidson's father approved the trip only on condition that they go to Munich, not Paris. He was, the story goes, concerned about the morality of French men. Little did he know his daughter would end up spending most of her life in Paris.
Germany, it turned out, was disappointing for the ambitious young artists, who found few openings there for women. They stayed briefly, then hot-footed it for the opportunities and pleasures of the French capital. Mr Davidson, after all, was thousands of kilometres away in conservative Adelaide. Within a year of their arrival, Davidson and Preston each had works selected for the "Old Salon” (the Salon des Artistes Francais).
More than half a century later, Australian relatives travelled to Paris to visit the now established and committed artist. Among them was a niece who in 1960 would give birth to the girl who would follow in her footsteps to become one of Australia's finest artists.
Smart, as a child, knew of Davidson as a person who had firmly established herself within the artistic milieu of Montparnasse, and as a highly creative and courageous woman.
