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Overview
The Terrace is a 1920 etching that depicts a crowd of figures on a terrace. Some are nude, while others are clothed in ambiguously historical costume evocative of 17th century Cavaliers. The Terrace is somewhat in the tradition of the fête champêtre or romantic pastoral scene. In particular, the composition and subject matter seem to draw from Pastoral Concert (c. 1509) attributed to either Titian or Giorgione. The costumes are reminiscent of the kind of fantasy literature which Lindsay read when he was young, including Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest), and Don Quixote, only reimagined as an adult fantasy. Nude figures are interspersed among the crowd. The clothed figures are particularly fascinated by a nude female figure who carries a parasol. She is influenced by Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (1484-1486) but parodies the Renaissance painting’s pious modesty. Indeed, in The Terrace the nude figure and her attendants are rendered with an obvious sense of eroticism. Another famous art work parodied in The Terrace is Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass). In the mid-ground of The Terrace, the pose of a nude figure seen from the back appears to copy that of the background figure in Manet’s painting.
The unsubtle references to acknowledged masterpieces all link The Terrace to the Western academic tradition of the female nude. Lindsay was perhaps inspired to reimagine these classic artworks in response to the fierce criticism his work had drawn for its lewd content when it was ‘exposed’ at the All Australian Exhibition in Melbourne in 1913, in particular the nude The Crucified Venus (1912). By referring back to these acknowledged masterpieces, Lindsay was perhaps attempting to suggest that he work had a noble precedent. He was surely aware of the irony of his work being condemned for its erotic content when the painting which had inspired him in his youth was the academic nude Ajax and Cassandra by Solomon J. Solomon (1886; Ballarat Art Gallery). Lindsay described his impression of it thus: "the special glory of it was the naked body of Cassandra, apexed by a pair of very lovely breasts. I seem to have spent hours in front of that painting, while [Lindsay’s grandfather] discoursed with ardour on its perfection, stultifying me to the boot heels with adoration for such an achievement and an abysmal despair at ever being able to compete with it" (Lindsay, quoted in Blunden, p. 11).
Something more sinister is suggested in Lindsay’s attempt at constructing an artistic genealogy for himself. Around the time The Terrace was created, Lindsay had begun to develop beliefs that "that denied all social and political progress. History was eternal recurrence. The creative mind, especially the masculine, existed apart from the mass mind which, essentially feminine, constantly attacked it with the aid of such lesser breeds as Jews, Asians and Africans" (Dictionary of Australian National Biography). Viewed in light of Lindsay’s sexist and white supremacist beliefs, the art historical references in The Terrace appear less as ‘fun’ parodies and more as an attempt to justify his beliefs and validate his own work as an artist. For someone who loved irony, it seems fitting that Lindsay’s idol, Solomon J. Solomon, was one of the very few Jewish members of the Royal Academy.
Sources:
Godfrey Blunden, Norman Lindsay – Watercolours (Sydney and London: Ure Smith, 1969)
Bernard Smith, Dictionary of Australian Biography
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lindsay-norman-alfred-7757 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Joseph_SolomonDr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art August 2018