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Australian beach pattern

Charles Meere1940

Art Gallery of New South Wales

Art Gallery of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia

Meere was one of a group of Sydney artists whose work modernised classical artistic traditions as a means of imaging national life during the inter-war period. The epitome of his vision by the late 1930s is 'Australian beach pattern'; a tableau of beach dwellers whose athletic perfections take on monumental heroic proportions. Meere created a crowded and complex composition through a pattern of bodies which appear as a still life of suspended strength. Perennially popular, the painting has contributed more than any other in Australian art towards the myth of the healthy young nation as told through the metaphor of the tanned god-like body of the sunbather.

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  • Title: Australian beach pattern
  • Creator: Charles Meere
  • Creator Lifespan: 1890 - 1961
  • Creator Gender: Male
  • Creator Death Place: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  • Creator Birth Place: London, England
  • Date Created: 1940
  • Location: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  • Physical Dimensions: 91.5 x 122.0 cm stretcher; 108.0 x 138.8 x 5.5 cm frame
  • Type: Painting
  • Rights: Purchased 1965 © Charles Meere Estate
  • Medium: oil on canvas
  • Description: Beach Pattern
Art Gallery of New South Wales

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