Urban landscape

Year 8 Critical and Historical studies - Frames

Grace Cossingtons Smith

- Known for being one of Australias most
important artists.
- First Post-Impressionists
- Renowned for her iconic urban images and
radiant interior artworks.
- Her artworks includes the themes of the
metropolis and Sydney Harbour Bridge,
portraits, still lives, landscapes, religious and
war subjects, theatre and ballet performances,
and domestic interiors infused with light.

- Her artworks often use repeated patterns

of pyramidal shapes and brilliant colours.
- The works are painted with a similar
palette, and the thick, choppy brushstrokes
which reflect an awareness of the British
Post-Impressionists.
- Documentary photographs of the time also
reveal that the camera played a part in the
staging of these images.

Structural Frame
Artist use visual language such as codes, symbols or signs
to convey their meaning. We can interpret works by
analysing elements of line, shape, size, tone, texture and
colour.
To discuss how an artwork is made.

Grace Cossington Smith, Centre of

the City, 1925
Centre of a city was painted
around 1925. It is an affirmation
of Cossington Smiths status as
an artist. Technical assurance
and compositional clarity convey
the sombre essence of modern
city life where humans, like
black ants, are dominated by
featureless windows within
towering, geometric buildings.
This is a ground-breaking work
for Cossington Smith, as it is the
first painting to display the sky

Grace Cossington Smith, Centre of

the City, 1925
Visual analysis
A sketchbook reveals at least 10 preparatory pencil studies
for this painting, which the artist only began when she felt
assured of its perspective accuracy and tonal resolution.
The vanishing point is related to the eye level of the artist and
is therefore found above the centre of the right-hand
pavement, at the point where the dark wedge of shadow
overlaps the most distant building.
All of the diagonal lines lead to this point. The little white
rectangle above this point also attracts the eye to this part of
the painting.
The foreground is in deep shadow and is populated by a cart
with horses, which visually connects with the rectangle of the
far building.
The artist emphasises the illusion of distance by sweeping the
wide road down and up and reducing the size of the figures.

Grace Cossington Smith, The Bridge

in Curve, 1930

The years from 1926 until the late

1930s were amongst the most
important in Grace Cossington Smiths
artistic life.
From the mid 1920s her paintings
became more colourful, with the paint
being applied in many small, separate
strokes. These juxtaposed touches of
paint, often in concentric radiating
patterns, give paintings from this period
a brilliant vitality.
The Bridge in-curve, with its sweeping
curves, auras of radiating lines, and
repeated rhythmic patterns of girders

Visual analysis

The horizontal collection of bushes in the

foreground creates a firm base for a
composition that becomes more dynamic,
angular and ethereal as the eye travels to
the focal point of the gap between the two
arches.
Diagonal cables and the suspended arch on
the left also direct the eye to this point.
The vertical lines of the power poles on the
right complete the circular movement,
grounding the viewer amongst the bluegreen foliage of the foreground.
The construction of the Sydney Harbour
Bridge began in 1923 and continued until
its opening in March 1932. The new Bridge
was a symbol of hope, unification and
progress at a time of financial depression.