Frederick McCubbin’s painting Down on his luck, Art Gallery of Western Australia

The oil painting Down on his luck (fig.1) was painted by Frederick McCubbin in 1889. It depicts an unlucky swagman or prospector seated by a campfire in the Australian bush, his head rested against his hand in a contemplative and melancholic gesture. The painting was praised by critics of the time for being ‘thoroughly Australian in spirit’, (Table Talk, 26 April 1889, p.5) and it has since become a well-known example of Australian colonial art, celebrated for its moving depiction of early settler life in Australia.

Figure 1: Frederick McCubbin, Down on his Luck, 1889, oil on canvas, 114.5 x 152.5cm, State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Purchased 1896.

The painting Down on his luck reflects a significant moment in the history of collecting in Western Australia, as one of the earliest and most important artworks to be collected for the State Art Collection. It was purchased by the Perth Museum in 1896, shortly after a museum management committee had been established to administer the museum. This committee consisted of several influential figures in the colony including Sir James G. Lee Steere and Sir John Winthrop Hackett, who quickly set to work appointing a curator for the museum, Bernard Woodward, and advocated strongly for the commencement of an art collection to expand on the museum’s existing collections of biological, mineral, paleontological, botanical and ethnological material. Within a year of its establishment the committee had acquired several artworks for the museum including George Pitt Morison’s painting Spring-time, Herbert Gibbs’ painting Cottesloe Beach, a copy of Rembrandt’s An old woman, and plaster casts of Greek and Roman statues and busts from London. They also employed a respected ‘art connoisseur’ from Melbourne, Joshua Lake, to recommend a selection of artworks for the collection which included McCubbin’s Down on his luck.

Correspondence between Joshua Lake and the museum committee reveals some of the underlying beliefs that influenced the early selection of artworks for the Perth Museum. In his report to the committee dated 11 January 1896, Lake wrote:

The Pictures selected for a New National Gallery, in a new and at present necessarily not highly artistic, community, should be such as will, in the first place, give pleasure to the community, in the next add a refinement to their tastes, next lead them to love that which is beautiful in nature as well as in art, then teach them to perceive beauties they perhaps have not seen, and at last to distinguish between good and bad, to form a high standard of taste and in the end a habit of enjoying good painting in all its forms from whatever school or varied aims it may come.

Lake’s comments reflected a commonly held view of the time that art had an important role in civilising and educating colonial society, and Down on his luck was one of the works acquired with this in mind. The educational value of this painting is also clearly illustrated in a photograph by E.L. Mitchell published in the Western Mail in 1920 with the caption ‘The educational value of the Museum and Art Gallery’ (fig.2), which pictured the art curator George Pitt Morison showing a group of school children through the art collection, with McCubbin’s painting featured prominently in the background.

Figure 2:  E.L. Mitchell, photograph published in the Western Mail, 2 September 1920, illustrated section p.7 with the caption: ‘The educational value of the Museum and Art Gallery’. A copy of the photograph is held in the State Library of Western Australia (SLWA 013898PD).

Today, the painting Down on his luck is held within the Art Gallery of Western Australia, where it continues to play an important educational role for gallery visitors. Its educational function has, obviously, evolved over the century. Whereas at the time of its acquisition in 1896 it represented a current portrayal of early settler life in Australia by a then contemporary painter, today it is interpreted as an iconic example of Australian colonial art, which reflects historical ideas about European settlement in Australia and notions of national identity at that time. It can also be seen as a fascinating reminder of the historical development of the State Art Collection of Western Australia, being one of the earliest artworks collected by the Perth Museum in the late nineteenth century, when it was first establishing an art collection.