During the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Gallery of Australia's conservation team toiled away on a number of small studies and paintings by tonal artist Clarice Beckett, who captured the life and scenery of her coastal home in south-east Naarm/Melbourne.
The works, which were donated to the gallery by Beckett's sister Hilda Mangan in 1972, had been stored in boxes for years and, because of the materials Beckett favoured, were weathered and cracked, the paint peeling.
"Beckett often worked on cardboard. She would go out into the landscape and she would take her paintboxes and be outdoors, so it was easy for her to carry these small pieces of cardboard with her but because of that the condition of the works had through time become compromised," NGA senior curator of Australian art Elspeth Pitt tells ABC News.
The paintings were painstakingly restored, finished with custom frames, and a group of 27 of them taken on the road, touring regional Australian galleries.
Clarice Beckett: Paintings from the National Collection is currently at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery.
Here are three works to see at the exhibition:
"Seascape is a gorgeous work because it's really evidence of Clarice being in nature and being in weather," Pitt says.
"She would often use the tea-tree which was endemic to the area as a framing device for…
