02 Marine Paintings, With Footnotes, #258

Charles Meere, Australia, 06 Dec 1890 - 17 Oct 1961

Australian beach pattern, c. 1940

Oil on canvas

91.5 x 122.0 cm

Art Gallery of New South Wales

Charles Meere was one of a group of Sydney artists whose work modernised classical artistic traditions as a means of depicting national life during the inter-war period. The epitome of his vision is Australian beach pattern, a tableau of beach goers whose athletic perfection takes on monumental, heroic proportions. Meere created a crowded and complex composition through the pattern of figures, which appears as a still-life of suspended strength. This iconic painting encapsulates the myth of the healthy young nation symbolised by the tanned, god-like bodies of the sunbathers.

This work was a finalist in the 1940 Sulman Prize and was acquired by the Gallery in 1965. More on this painting

Matthew Charles Meere (6 December 1890 – 17 October 1961), generally known as Charles Meere, was an English-born artist who studied art in England and France, served in World War I, and eventually settled in Australia in 1932. While pursuing his Sydney art practice, he also worked as a commercial artist, exhibited widely and taught life classes. He achieved considerable artistic and commercial success, winning the Sulman Prize in 1938 with Atalanta's Eclipse, a neo-classical interpretation of the Greek myth. 

Meere is best known for his stylised art deco paintings dating from the interwar period, most notably Australian Beach Pattern (1938–40). Alternately criticised or praised for its studied formality, this painting has been variously interpreted as a celebration of Australian beach culture, a glorification of heroic racial purity, or as a nuanced reflection of Australia's unpreparedness for World War II. It was among the quintessential Australian images chosen for the opening ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics program and was included in the major exhibition of Australian art held at London's National Gallery in 2013. More on Matthew Charles Meere

Anne Zahalka, (b. 1957)

The Bathers, c.  1989/2008 

c-type photograph

93.5 x 110cm

Private collection

This work directly refers to Charles Meere's iconic painting "Australian Beach Pattern" (1938–40) (Above). Zahalka has used the same composition as the painting but has changed the characters to be more culturally diverse, thus altering the stereotypical view of Australian culture and challenging traditional representations of the beach. More on this work

Anne Zahalka (born 1957) is an Australian photographer. She was born to a Austrian mother and Czech father. Zahalka subsequently developed an interest in Australia's migrants and diverse cultures. Zahalka studied at East Sydney Technical College and Sydney College of the Arts, and began participating in group exhibitions in Australia and Germany in the early 1980s. 

Zahalka is one of Australia’s most highly-regarded photographic artists. She has exhibited extensively in Australia and overseas for more than twenty years. In 2007, the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne, mounted a major retrospective of her work. Zahalka has been the recipient of numerous awards and commissions. Her works are held in most major public collections in Australia as well as numerous private and corporate collections in Australia and overseas. More on Anne Zahalka

“I think photography is always about loss: lost moments, lost people, lost things. My work rewrites the narratives and histories of our past to include those not depicted within the national picture” Anne Zahalka

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