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Neil Douglas (1911-2003)
CULTURE
Aotearoa New Zealander | Australian | British
GENDER
Male
BIRTH DATE
1911
BIRTH PLACE
Aotearoa New Zealand
DEATH DATE
October 2003
DEATH PLACE
Nhill, Victoria,
Australia
MOVEMENTS
Australia from c. 1912
Neil was born in
New Zealand in 1911, the son of Robert and Ethel Douglas. He then moved to Melbourne to study painting at the
National Gallery School of Melbourne, but devoted most of his time to
pottery, Douglas introduced a unique style of the environment to the
earthenware produced in the AMB (but also painted on a regular basis He
continued to make pottery until about 1964, at which time he resumed
painting, in the same year he held his first one- man exhibition of
paintings at the Toorak Gallery in Melbourne. Towards the latter years
in Neil Douglas career he found a keen interest in the protection of the
natural environment
Douglas introduced a quirky depiction of the
environment to the earthenware produced at AMB. Using a direct,
tempera-style technique – applying the underglaze colour onto the
leather-hard clay surface before the application of a clear overglaze
and subsequent firing – he created idiosyncratic pieces that combined a
feathery but skilful painting style with simple thrown forms.
Kangaroo platter, c.1950, is an excellent example of Douglas’s practice
of this time. It is wheel-thrown glazed earthenware with a painted
underglaze image of kangaroos in a bush setting composed with grass
trees and eucalypts. The form, a simple plaque, and the scene, deftly
painted but poetic, are characteristic of Douglas’s style. Formerly in
the collection of Gora Singh Mann, Sydney, Kangaroo platter was recently
acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria, along with three other
fine pieces by Douglas, from a prominent Melbourne collector.
Douglas moved to Kangaroo Ground, Victoria, in the early 1960s following
the closure of AMB. He continued to make pottery until about 1964, at
which time he resumed painting, which had been the major part of his
creative practice before the mid 1940s. In later life Douglas moved to
Nhill, in western Victoria, where he continued to paint, often spending
extended times in the bush.
During his lifetime, Douglas was
highly regarded as both a potter and painter. He was also recognised as
a passionate conservationist and a charismatic and eccentric individual.
In 1975 he was awarded an MBE in recognition of his services to
conservation and the arts. The occasion was described by Philip Jones in
an obituary that appeared in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald after
Douglas’s death in 2003:
On October 1, 1975, 63 distinguished
citizens of the State of Victoria foregathered, each to receive an
imperial honour … The male recipients, mostly sportsmen – including
footballer Keith Grieg and cricketer Ian Redpath – donned neat blue
suits … The odd man out was Neil Douglas. This much loved environmental
artist wore a hessian suit he had woven, dyed, and tailored himself. To
add insult to injury he was shoeless. His hair (which, he claimed, had
not been cut for 20 years) and his beard almost obscured his quizzical,
rosy, bony face … His contribution to our Australian civilisation was,
arguably, greater than any other of the Queen’s chosen few at Government
house that day.
National Gallery of Victoria
============
Neil was one of a kind. He battled government bureaucracy, vested
interest and public indifference to preserve the integrity of the bush.
He was a gardener of genius, a lobbyist of pragmatic skill and an
artist of talent. He was a proselytiser who constructed a unique
lifestyle; a way of living which would, he hoped, be emulated by a
generation of "drop-outs" - or, as he preferred to designate the
phenomenon, "drop-ins".
Neil's family emigrated from Scotland to
New Zealand after the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde at the end of the 19th
century in Britain. Bosie, Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar's lover, was a
cousin and the shame associated with the scandal drove this branch of
the family to the nether ends of the Earth.
Neil created three
distinct gardens throughout his lifetime. The first was a bush landscape
on Kangaroo Island (South Australia) when he was a teenager. When his
father asked Neil what he intended to do with his life after escaping
from the family home in Adelaide, he replied, "I intend to retire."
The second was an "English" garden on a property bought by his
widowed mother at Bayswater, Victoria.
"It is possible," he said,
"to make a few acres into an island of plenty, I planted the garden at
Bayswater like that, so it was at once useful, tame and ordered, and yet
everywhere a tumultuous tangle of tumbling richness all around the
house. When I came back from the army I can remember smelling my home
from half a mile away."
It all came to a tragic end when his
mother sold the property to a quarry and the garden was bulldozed. Neil
had mounted a campaign to save it and, although his efforts failed, he
discovered in himself a talent for public relations. The Age, in
particular, gave sympathetic coverage to his cause.
Sadly, the
problem emanated from Neil's estrangement with his mother. Once Mrs
Douglas had disposed of the property there was little that the state or
the media could do about the impending loss of a great garden. The
protective role of the National Trust was not to come for another
decade.
Neil's best-known garden - even by those who never
visited it - was at the Bend of Islands, Kangaroo Ground. In 1964 Neil
formed a co-operative consisting of 47 families who wished to live in
harmony with the bush and indigenous wildlife.
He was their
undisputed leader and became their spokesman for State Government
approval. Dogs and cats were banned, but Neil - to the chagrin of some
members of the community - insisted on keeping goats. He always tended
to be a law unto himself.
Neil enjoyed a comfortable childhood
and received a good education. His father was a businessman of middle
rank who, with his wife and three children, moved from New Zealand to
Australia.
Neil went to Brighton Grammar School, in Melbourne,
and St Peter's College, Adelaide.
He first became fascinated with
the natural world when, as a small boy, he explored the ti-tree coast of
Port Phillip Bay.
"There were possums, birds and wild orchids.
Apart from this patch of bush most of the beach front had been cleared
to the high-tide line and built on. I was angry at what my elders were
doing. It turned me into a raging conservationist."
At that time
Neil was aged eight.
Today the once misfit Neil Douglas is as
much honoured at Brighton Grammar as is the iconoclastic Barry Humphries
at Melbourne Grammar School.
Neil lived at Heide with John and
Sunday Reed in the late 1930s; he became their close friend, and worked
with them on their seven-hectare garden.
One humiliating incident
remained in his mind. After lunch one day the Reeds and Sidney Nolan
went down to the Yarra River to sketch.
"Since you're not
interested in art, you can do the washing up," John Reed instructed him.
When war was declared Neil joined the army and was permitted to join
the non-combative meteorological section. In the adjoining cartographic
division he met Arthur Boyd and John Perceval.
After the war he
worked with them firing and decorating pottery at Murrumbeena.
In
1949 he married Vivienne Eccles, a chemist with the Country Roads Board,
with whom he had three children. He was rarely out of the news and a
storm of controversy arose when his son Fabian was asked to leave the
Hurstbridge School because of his refusal to cut his long hair. Again
The Age supported a Neil Douglas campaign for personal expression.
Neil's last great cause was to fight the Board of Works decision to
allow wholesale development of 154 hectares of land in Warrandyte on the
opposite side of the river to the Bend of Islands. After a strenuous
campaign the forces of rural enlightenment won.
The Age reported
in November 1981, "He [Neil] would like to have it on record that the
battle was won because of the efforts of the locals, the shires, the
Liberal and Labor Parties and the government." A rare example of Neil
attempting to control his ego.
After his marriage to Vivienne
ended around 1960 he lived with his common-law wife, Abigail Heathcote,
at the Bend of Islands. They collaborated on two books, Far Cry, and
Book of Earthly Delights, which detailed their day-to-day lives in the
bush with Heathcote's daughter Biddie.
After this relationship
ended in the early 1970s, he became a recluse. He lived in a caravan in
South Gippsland and painted with furious intensity. Success, albeit late
in life, followed with exhibitions at the Georges Gallery and the Toorak
Gallery in Melbourne.
He spent his last, fading, years in Nhill
where he was cared for by his close friend, Pauline McCracken. It was
conveniently close to his beloved Little Desert, whose wild flowers he
had painted over several decades.
Neil leaves his sons Linden,
Fabian and Rowan, and his sister Margaret.
Philip Jones
Notes:
1. When I was introduced to this artist, I thought that
he would be a descendant of the Douglas family of Kangaroo Point, but
that appears not to be the case. I would welcome further details
of his ancestors. Perhaps there was a connection and that is why he chose
this location to settle in?
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