Grace Cossington Smith - Sydney Harbour Bridge Paintings

Sydney Harbour Bridge Paintings

Her paintings of the Sydney Harbour Bridge as it was being built are some of the best painted at the turn of the century when it was a symbol of what the people of Australia are capable of. Her first paintings of the harbour bridge such as The Curve of the Bridge, were of the bridge before the actual work on the arms had started, and to disguise this fact she concentrated more on painting the pylons in her earlier paintings of the bridge. She painted the arches as they were approaching one another, liking the tension between the two sides, and did not paint the bridge after it was completed. Though the painting The Bridge in Curve was rejected from the Society of Artists exhibition in 1930 it is now considered one of Australia's best modernist paintings. It shows the construction work continuing, with cranes fixed over the edges of both sides of the bridge. Her highly detailed drawn study for the painting shows her eye for details and her ability to capture a scene in a photo-realistic manner. Smith did in fact draw the Harbour Bridge completed in Great White Ship at Circular Quay, but here as the title suggests, the focus is more upon the ship in the foreground than the bridge itself.