Spring morning

Clarice Beckett
Spring morning c. 1925
oil on canvas on composition board
Benalla Art Gallery
Ledger Gift, 1988
Image courtesy of Benalla Art Gallery

A house in the distance is bathed in morning light, while contrasts of light and shade are clear in the newly flowering wattles that anchor the middle ground of this picture. Atmospheric effects caused and conditioned by light were the defining and enduring characteristics of Beckett’s imagery. Here, she celebrates spring light, its shifting movement throughout a day, and she hints at the changing intensity of light through the seasons.

Beckett’s tonal approach is supported by a complex composition of interactive colour. The architecture of the pink-roofed house gives way to abstract patches in the foreground that define a path and gardens cast with shadows. Here Beckett introduces a degree of ambiguity to charge what she sees with a sense of mystery: while real and observed, her shadows allude to the unknown, to things that can and cannot be seen.