Before the invention of the photocopier, people had to rely on all sorts of different techniques to make copies of correspondence and text. In the 1780s there was letterpress copying where a dampened sheet of thin tissue paper was laid against the inked side of an original document and then put in a press. The two sheets were pressed together producing a mirror image of the original text on the tissue. Due to the tissue’s semi-transparency, when it was held up to light the mirror image text could easily be read through from its back. The inks used in this process were made from oak galls (gallotannates) and logwood.  The most commonly used wet ink copy paper was high-quality Japanese tissue. The disadvantage with ink press was that the tissue paper had to be thoroughly wet to get the mirror image and only a few copies could be made. This made it a costly and complicated process.

Copying pencils were invented in the 1870’s and within a decade had overtaken the wet ink press method of letterpress copying. The younger generation might not know the magic of the colourful purple pencils. They were the predecessor to the ball point pen. Similar in appearance to graphite pencils, copying pencils contained a dye which turned purple when moistened. They were marketed as a product which could not be erased because the main component of the pencil was an aniline dye which produced a purple colour when dissolved in water or alcohol. The other components of the copying pencil were clay (kaoline) and graphite. Other colours used were red, black, green and combinations of dyes. The aniline dye in the copy pencil produced stronger copies and more copies. Another advantage was that the aniline dye was not affected by exposure to the air (as was the ink) and therefore copies did not have to be produced instantly.

The copying pencil rose to prominence during the First World War as it could not be smeared or erased easily. Archival records of the time show that Great Britain bought thousands of copying pencils per week to supply to British and Allied officers. These pencils were much more convenient to use in the field than were pen and ink.

George Lambert used copying pencil in some of his drawings including the work (left) Last Brigade Headquarters in the north: leading to Brigade Headquarters, with artist’s notes (loose sheet from the`Brown book’ ART11393.344). He was possibly issued some pencils by the War Records Section when he was commissioned and he also could have picked them up when travelling with the troops. Sometimes Lambert’s drawings were done completely with copying pencils and sometimes with a mixture of copying and graphite pencils. At the Memorial there are a few examples of these works. In preparing drawings for the George Lambert exhibition, we carefully surveyed all the drawings to make sure which ones might have copy pencil in them. Copy pencil drawings are easily identified under the microscope by their purplish tone, however identifying combination drawings can be problematic. To avoid dissolving the copy pencil component of a combination drawing, professional conservators conduct thorough solubility tests for every colour before washing and cleaning these delicate items.

Gajendra Rawat, Paper Conservator

Further reading:
1. Dube, Liz (1998). The Copying Pencil: Composition, History, and Conservation Implications.  AIC, The Book and Paper Group Annual, Vol 17, 1998.

The itinerary for the exhibition tour is developing and the following venues have been confirmed:

Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, VIC                            12 August – 28 October 2007

Gosford Regional Art Gallery, Gosford, NSW                           9 February – 30 March 2008

Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery, Toowoomba, QLD            12 April – 25 May 2008

Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, VIC                                             27 July – 31 August 2008

Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre, Gymea, NSW  12 October – 30 November 2008

LaTrobe Regional Gallery, Morwell, VIC                                  12 December 2008 – 15 February 2009

Port Macquarie Hasting Regional Gallery, NSW                      27 February – 26 April 2009

The Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, S.A.                  9 October – 6 December 2009

For any further information about the tour, contact the Memorial’s Travelling Exhibition Section, 02 6243 4574.

At last, after several years of research and preparation the George Lambert: Gallipoli and Palestine landscapes exhibition has opened at the Australian War Memorial. The last few weeks have been pretty intense with the building of the exhibition space, the final design elements being resolved and the installation and lighting of all the works of art, labels and exhibition panels.

No exhibition can open without a team of people all working together to bring it to fruition. But now it is completed, it is a great feeling to able to present the exhibition to our visitors. A longer post will follow soon, but here are a few photos of the exhibition.

We are grateful to David Cox, a grand nephew of George Lambert’s who has contributed the following post. David’s grandmother was Sarah (”Sadie”) Anne Cox, nee Lambert, George’s elder sister.     

Although often thought of as a quintessentially Australian artist, in his pre-teen years George Lambert had experienced only the cultures and languages of Russia, Germany and Britain. George Lambert was the youngest child and only boy in a family of four children. His American father (George Washington Lambert) died before George was born in 1873 in St Petersburg, Russia. George’s English grandfather Thomas Firth, who was at the time chief of the Alexandrovsky Railway Workshops in St Petersburg, assumed the role of breadwinner and helped his widowed daughter Annie care for the young Lambert family. In 1876 they moved from Russia to Esslingen, Germany, where Thomas Firth superintended the construction of locomotives and carriages for the Russian railways.

George’s sister “Sadie” talked about their childhood to her daughter Ida Cox who made notes in the 1940s:

“The Germans in those days were the greatest toy makers in the World, and beautiful toys the little Lamberts had in Esslingen.

Mrs. Lambert was a wonderful Mother and companion to her children. She sewed beautiful dolls’ clothes for the girls’ dolls by hand, the neatness and minuteness of the stitching being marvellous to see. She told them stories, just as she did in later years to her grandchildren – most wonderful stories, which it was a delight to hear. She taught them to read and write in English as well as German, though at that time they spoke German naturally, and English was a foreign language to them. She taught them Music and other lessons too.

The family travelled to Munich and to Cologne; at Munich they visited the Art Gallery. George was then a small boy of four or five, and little did his mother dream that one day a picture painted by him would hang in similar galleries all over the world !”

Hence young George spent much of his formative childhood in Germany, living there for the next five years. Then in 1881 the family moved to Yeovil, Somerset, England, where grandfather Thomas Firth’s second wife had relatives. Sadie recalled:

“When first the young Lamberts went to school in England they were laughed at for their foreign accent and for the German words they occasionally substituted for English, but they soon exhibited much brilliance. George won the [Science and Art Department] (South Kensington) Prize for drawing at the age of [thirteen], and it was not long before Sadie was top of her class.

The accompanying photos of George and Sadie were taken at William Mayer’s studio in Esslingen in about 1878, when George was five and Sadie eight years old.

 David Cox

When Gajendra Rawat and I (Sophie) surveyed the Lambert artworks on paper for the exhibition we identified a couple of works that required some repairs prior to being displayed.

This drawing Train station, Semakh by George Lambert (left) had areas of loss due to an insect attack (which happened before we purchased the drawing in 1930). Lambert described Semakh as “a railway station of picturesque conglomeration of not more than usually dirty Arab huts, and a few tents and horses of the occupation people on the shore, southern end, of the Sea of Galilee. It is really beautiful here.” ¹ The drawing was made in June 1919 as Lambert toured Palestine after his visit to Gallipoli with the Australian Historical Mission.

We decided to infill these losses with western style papers. Western papers are made from short fibres such as cotton linter or wood pulp. The paper was chosen based on its weight and texture being similar to Lambert’s. It is a medium weight western paper with no papermaking marks (chain or laid lines). As the paper was not the right colour it was toned with high quality watercolour paints. The shape of the loss area was traced to enable the most accurate reproduction of the paper shape required.

The western paper used for the repair was adhered to the drawing with dilute wheat starch paste with a Japanese tissue repair strip on the back for support. Japanese tissue paper is made from long ‘bast’ or plant fibres like Kozo, Mitsumata, or Gampi, which are all light and strong. We are guided by conservation ethics so we only use materials of the highest quality and most stable nature, for example starch paste and Japanese tissue, and the repairs must be completely reversible to allow for removal if it is necessary in the future. Once repaired the drawing was left under weights for a couple of days to make sure it was nice and flat. As you can see in the picture below, the end result was that the loss was disguised yet the modern repairs are still visible to the trained eye.

1. Amy Lambert Thirty Years of an Artist’s Life, Sydney 1938, p. 125.

Sophie Lewincamp, Conservator-Paper

The war diaries for the Light Horse have gone online and I have been madly scanning the pages for references to Lambert’s travels during 1918 and 1919. Lambert was accompanied by experienced Light Horse officers and fortunately there are a couple of references to him in the diaries. Lambert stayed with the 7th Light Horse Regiment for 5 days from 18 to 22 February when they were stationed along the front line at Nalin. Most interesting for me is that the diary for the regiment records Lambert’s arrival and provides an insight into the activities the artist would have witnessed.

The regiment had moved up to Nalin from its rest camp at Wady Hanein on 4 February and relieved the Canterbury Mounted Rifles. On 18 February just before Lambert arrived they were visited by the Brigadier General (Sir Granville de laune Ryrie) commanding the 2nd Australian Light Horse Brigade who arrived by motor car: “They inspected the position and work which had been done here and were well satisfied with the work carried out.” (war diary 18 February 1918) Shortly after, Lambert and three other men from headquarters arrived and over the next few days the artist made sketches of what was going on around him.

The 7th Light Horse’s position was close to the small village of Nalin and, although the local residents were told to stay away, Arabs often wandered through the lines as they tried to go about their regular business. On 20 February Lambert made a drawing of a party of Arabs taken in for questioning. The incident report stated: “They said the Turks had ordered them to go to Nablus, but they decided to come back through the lines.” Two men were taken on to Ramleh for further questioning while the others were allowed to proceed on their donkeys.

Although this was considered the front line the 7th only saw sporadic action; during the day the regiment observed any movement by the Turkish troops and at night patrolled the line. Patrols went out to reconnoitre the ground and locate water supplies and occasionally those in the line shot at passing Turkish planes. The daily routine also included rifle range and target practice. Most of the men were engaged in constructing and improving roads, digging trenches and reinforcing the sangars – fortified positions built from rock that served as observation posts and sniper positions. Material to reinforce the sangars was in short supply so they quarried and blasted stone. Travelling around the site on horseback, Lambert made sketches of the quarrying activities and two oil studies of the troops in the sangars.

Jebel Saba, near Nalin was painted on 21 February – a rainy day according to the unit diary. It shows troops in an observation post. Set amongst boulders and weathered limestone outcrops, Lambert has included the smaller details of the landscape – the cacti, an ancient tree and a spot of red, perhaps indicating a flower – to convey the essence of the landscape the troops inhabited. His other oil sketch Front line sangar, with the 7th Light Horse gives us a close up view of how the sangar was constructed and its prominent position in the landscape. The war diary notes that the walls of the sangars were about 8 feet thick at the bottom tapering to 4 feet at the top and inside there was a trench which was blasted out of the rocks.

On 20 February Colonel John Arnott, commander of the training centre at Moascar, visited the regiment. Lambert made a quick pencil sketch of Arnott meeting with officers in their mess – basically a makeshift table set up in a small cave or tomb. Lambert also made more detailed studies of the commander of the 7th, Lieutenant-Colonel George Macarthur-Onslow and Lieutenant Clive Holland the officer who compiled the diary entries.

On 22 February – another rainy day – George Lambert is noted as leaving the 7th Light Horse at Nalin to report to divisional headquarters at Jerusalem. The 7th Australian Light Horse Regiment was relieved just over a week later on 7 March 1918.

Janda

Lenore Heath who works in the Photographs section at the Memorial has an interesting link to George Lambert. Lenore’s grandparents, Ben and Alice Heath, owned the guesthouse ‘Windamere’ where Lambert died in May 1930.

Ben was born in Slough, England in 1887 and migrated first to New Zealand and then Australia, settling in Sydney. He married Alice Ward in 1915 and shortly after enlisted in the Australian Flying Corps, serving three months in Egypt as a sergeant air mechanic before being invalided back to Australia after being diagnosed with an ‘irritable heart’.

Ben and Alice bought the property in Cobbitty in late 1925. It backed onto the Nepean River and was ideal for a guesthouse. In 1928 they built ‘Windamere’ that boasted facilities including its own electricity plant (bought from a Kings Cross theatre), a nine hole golf course and polo ground, dining, lounge and dance rooms, and a resident pianist. Activities advertised included billiards, tennis, table tennis, shooting, horse riding, swimming, and fishing. Ben and Alice were helped by their four children one of whom was Jeffrey, Lenore’s father.

In May 1930 Lambert stayed at ‘Windamere’. Lambert had contacted his friend Brigadier General George Macleay Macarthur-Onslow to ask about horses he could ride during his rest break. Macarthur-Onslow suggested that the owner of ‘Windamere’, Ben Heath would have some good horses, but Lambert decided to take his own horse ‘Old Iron’. Although Lambert was under medical instructions to have complete rest, this did not stop him from riding ‘Old Iron’.

It was at ‘Windamere’, that Lambert, while repairing a feedbox had a heart attack and died. A newspaper reported the incident: “Yesterday morning he [Lambert] took some light exercise, and, in the early afternoon, he decided to get a piece of timber to mend a feed-box. He walked directly to the wood-heap, and as he was about to split a piece of wood he fell forward unconscious. Help was quickly forthcoming, and Dr. Crookston, who was summoned, made a hurried journey to Windamere, but the famous artist was then beyond aid.”

‘Windamere’ continued operating for some years but business declined and the Heaths sold it. During the Second World War Ben enlisted in the US Army Small Ships Division and served in the South West Pacific for ten months. His son Jeffrey served in 30 Squadron, RAAF in Papua New Guinea and fortunately father and son were able to meet in New Guinea twice during the war.

Today, the 100 acre Windamere property is surrounded by the rapidly growing outer suburbs of Sydney’s south west. 

Lenore Heath and Janda Gooding

This link will take you to the final program for the George Lambert Symposium to be held at the Australian War Memorial 29 June 2007.

George Lambert Symposium program

Registrations are now open and places are filling fast for the Lambert symposium to be held at the Australian War Memorial, 29 June 2007. This is an event hosted by the Memorial and developed in collaboration with the National Gallery of Australia.

We are delighted that the well-known art historian, curator and museum director Daniel Thomas has agreed to give the keynote talk at the symposium. Other speakers will include the Memorial’s new official war artists Charles Green and Lyndell Brown, curators and historians – Anna Gray, Mary Eagle, Janda Gooding, Andrew Sayers, Sasha Grishin, Anne-Marie Conde and Deborah Edwards – who will discuss the life, times and work of George Lambert. 

The cost will be $70 for the full day event ($55 for concessions) and this will include morning and afternoon tea and a light lunch. Attendees will also receive a complimentary ticket to George Lambert retrospective: heroes & icons at the National Gallery of Australia and entry to our own exhibition Gallipoli and Palestine landscapes. The full program will be posted next week – so watch this page!

For further information about the symposium or to register, phone the Australian War Memorial (02) 6243 4375.

Exciting things don’t happen every day in the Memorial’s Painted Surfaces Lab. For us, work on the Lambert exhibition mostly involves framing and glazing issues. The frames were originally covered in bronze leaf, but sometime later, probably in the 1960s, many of them were spray painted with nitro-cellulose based gold paint. Some of the mouldings on the frames have also been damaged or are missing. Our job is to remove the gold paint, rebuild any lost or damaged parts, retouch where necessary and glaze the painting ready for exhibition. A certain sameness can therefore creep into the work.

Every so often, however, a painting will come along that gives us a new challenge. Achi Baba from Tommy’s Trench, Helles was one of those paintings. There was great excitement when we removed it from its frame and discovered another sketch on the back. Instead of covering it up again, it was decided to frame the back of the work in such a way as to ensure that the sketch on the back remained visible. The challenge was to make sure it looked the same as the other frames for the exhibition.

Lambert frame before and during treatment

In accordance with our usual practice, the gold paint on the frame was removed. The moulding had been repaired previously but some pieces had not been replaced and others had been put in the wrong place. The latter were removed and new mouldings were made using impressions taken from undamaged frames. The repairs and damaged areas of bronze leaf were then inpainted with bronze pigments. As we did not want to change the depth of the frame our options were limited. It was decided to glaze the verso with thin perspex and to use a window mount to keep it away from the painting. Brackets were hand made from brass and the colour of the build up was continued onto the back of the frame.

Although the sketch on the back is upside down, it is still visible for future reference. At the same time the frame will sit flush against the wall for exhibition and will appear just like the other frames around it.

Sharon Alcock, Conservator, Painted Surfaces

For some more detail on the sketch that was uncovered see the post The rail journey from Gallipoli to Cairo