George Frederick Henry Bell (1 December 1878 – 22 October 1966) was an Australian painter and teacher, critic, portraitist, violinist and war artist

Early life and education

George Bell was born in Kew, Victoria, the son and fourth child of Clara (née Bowler) and George Bell, under Frederick McCubbin and painting master Bernard Hall and also took private instruction from George Coates over 1895-6.

Europe

Bell's father financed his studies so he could afford to travel, and on 19 April 1904 he sailed for England, then Paris where studied with Jean Paul Laurens at Julian's atelier, then at the academies of the Spaniard Castelucha and Colarossi.

In 1906 he travelled to Italy to study the Old Masters, particularly Titian and Tintoretto, before visiting the Impressionist artists’ colonies at Étaples, and St Ives in 1907. That year he became a founder of the Modern Society of Portrait Painters in London where he later exhibited in 1915. Importantly, in 1908 he was accepted into the Royal Academy and joined the Chelsea Arts Club, mixing with Australian expatriates Will Ashton, Fred Leist, George Coates, Dora Meeson, Will Dyson and his wife Ruby Lindsay, and British artists George Lambert and Philip Connard.

War years

thumb|Portrait of Australian official war artists, 1916–1918 by George Coates, 1920. George Bell is seated in front

Bell remained in England at the outset of World War I, and being declared medically unfit, he taught at Highfield School in Liphook, and during 1917 worked in a munitions factory. From October 1918 to the end of 1919 he was an official war artist to the 4th Division of the Australian Imperial Force on the Western Front though combat had ceased when he arrived, so he documented scenes of the devastation, and the daily lives of soldiers, of whom he made twelve portraits. Bell's major war painting concerning the Battle of Hamel, Dawn at Hamel 4 July 1918, was completed in 1920, after his return to Australia in poor health in December 1919, and the work now hangs in the Australian War Memorial.

The Ballarat Fine Art Gallery collection includes his work entitled The Conversation. One of his early formal paintings, The Conversation was painted while he was overseas and was first exhibited at the Modern Society of Portrait Painters in 1911.

Postwar

Bell married English actress Edith Lucy Antoinette Hobbs, whom he had met in England in 1915. They had a house and studio built for them by Bell's cousin Marcus Barlow; 9 Selbourne Road Toorak remained his lifelong home and there the couple entertained often and artists including Will Dyson and Eric Thake visited to sketch. The couple's only child Antoinette was born in December 1922. Bell had also studied violin with Victor and Alberto Zelman, joined the Hawthorn Orchestra, and during the 1920s played the viola in the University Conservatorium Orchestra and later the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He involved himself eagerly in the community of artists, being elected to the council of the Victorian Artists’ Society, was a founder of the Twenty Melbourne Painters and in 1922 joined the Australian Art Association, serving as president between 1924 and 1926. One of a number of Australian art critics for news periodicals that proliferated in the mid 20th century, he contributed for The Sun News-Pictorial from 1923 to 1950. In 1925 he replaced the National Gallery School drawing master William McInnes while he was overseas. He continued in a Tonalist style though was increasingly attracted to Modernism by the 1930s.

In his teaching Bell adapted from the tradition of Raphael, whose art teaching elevated life drawing and the study of composition, by incorporating contemporary ideas of the 1820s English theorists Roger Fry and Clive Bell, the contemporary French artists André Lhote and Amédée Ozenfant and, after he undertook an extended study trip to England in 1934-5, particularly the Ideas of his friend Iain MacNab, In 1937, the federal Attorney General, Robert Menzies, established the Australian Academy of Art, an Australian equivalent to the Royal Academy. Bell was the leading opponent of the plan and a spokesman for "modern art", pursued a prolonged public argument with Menzies and was instrumental in it not obtaining a royal charter.

Exhibitions

Bell established his reputation in England in a series of exhibitions before the First World War. The Ballarat Fine Art Gallery collection includes his work entitled The Conversation. One of his early formal paintings, The Conversation was painted while he was overseas and was first exhibited at the Modern Society of Portrait Painters in 1911.

  • 1979, 10 – 25 May: Early works and others selected from the Harry Rosengrave Collection. Hawthorn City Art Gallery, 584 Glenferrie Rd., Hawthorn
  • 1981: Melbourne woodcuts and linocuts of the 1920's and 1930s. McClelland Gallery, Boundary Rd., Langwarrin; UQ Art Gallery, Level 5, Forgan Smith Tower, University of Queensland, St Lucia; Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Laman Street, Newcastle; Victorian College Of The Arts Gallery, 234 St Kilda Rd., Melbourne; Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, 40 Lydiard St., Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
  • 1983, 8 – 24 June: Images of Women Prints and Drawings of the Twentieth Century. University Of Melbourne Art Gallery.
  • 1986: Frances Derham MBE: a retrospective exhibition covering the period 1910 to 1985 including works George Bell, Danila Vassilieff, Geoff Jones, Ethel Spowers, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack. Jim Alexander Gallery, 13 Elmo Road, East Malvern
  • 1988, 13 August – 10 September: Fifty Years of Australian Printmaking Sydney Long to Eric Thake. Josef Lebovic Gallery, 34 Paddington Street, Paddington, Sydney
  • 1991, 17–28 April: The George Bell Group exhibition. A tribute to George Bell. Eastgate Gallery, 729 High St., Armadale, Victoria
  • 2025, 16 March–28 September: A modern turn. Castlemaine Art Museum

Collections

  • Australian War Memorial
  • National Gallery of Australia
  • Art Gallery of New South Wales
  • Art Gallery of Western Australia
  • Queensland Art Gallery
  • Newcastle Region Art Gallery
  • Potter Museum of Art
  • Ballarat Art Gallery

Legacy

Critic and historian Mary Eagle researched the George Bell school for an Honours degree from which the book The George Bell School: students, friends, influences was published in 1981, Works of fellow modernists, friends or those whom he admired, including Arnold Shore, Lina Bryans, Ian Fairweather and Roger Kemp were shown alongside those of his students; Peter Purves Smith, Ian Armstrong, Eric Thake, Barbara Brash; as well as the later work of his students Russell Drysdale, Sali Herman, Bill Salmon, David Strachan, Fred Williams, Dorothy Braund, Michael Shannon and others.

He died on 22 October at his home at Toorak in the same year, survived by his wife and daughter.