Lina Bryans
The poet A.W.
Encouraged by the artist Jock Frater, Lina Bryans took up
painting in 1936. A modernist painter who used vivid colours
to express her immediate reaction to a subject, Bryans developed
her own style. The portrait of the poet A.W. by Bryans is of
her cousin Arthur Wallach. A regular correspondent of Bryans,
Wallach was a member of the group of artists and writers who met
at the "Painters Pub", the former Darebin Hotel purchased by
Bryans in 1943. In this image the sitter, who was not able to
devote all of his energies to his creative work, is shown dressed
in a business suit.
Bryan's circle of friends were later to become known as 'the
Meanjin set' after the publication in Melbourne in 1945 of Meanjin,
a journal which had been founded in Brisbane in 1940 by Clement
Christesen to provide art criticism that was "democratic left of
centre".