Article by Senona Smiles in Fiji Times

Seona Smiles, the lovely Fiji Times reporter, has kindly supported our cause to erect a headstone for Dame Mary Edwell-Burke.  Interrupted by my inclusions and interjections, here is her article:

Where have all the paintings gone?

Seona Smiles
Sunday, April 10, 2011

Where are they now - the beautiful people painted by Mary Edwell-Burke?

 Painting by Dame Mary Edwell-Burke!

Or rather, where are the paintings?

It is certainly not a matter of 'where is she now' because for once we can be sure of that.

Fiji's 'Miss Mary' lies in an unmarked grave in Nasinu Cemetery and not beneath the headstone she desired.

 Dame Mary's grave!

Which is why a couple of other Fiji artists have taken an interest in tracking down her work and doing something about Miss Mary's last wish.  (Anne and Craig!)

She could be a demanding and difficult woman, let me tell you.

I used to wonder why some of her portrait sitters didn't look just plain terrified instead of reasonably relaxed.

Sometimes she was impossible to track down, and sometimes she was plain impossible.

But she was also talented, courageous, flamboyant and resourceful and when I did track her down, full of stories as colourful as her brilliant paintings.

I suspected there was more colour than truth to some of the stories while some of the true stories she would have preferred to forget.

Like the one about the 1943 Archibald Portrait Competition held at the New South Wales Art Gallery.

Although the Gallery bought one of her paintings, the prize was awarded to a portrait of Joshua Smith by another internationally-known Australian artist, William Dobell.

  "Portrait of an Artist"

The painting that caused all her future problems

 and current neglect!

Miss Mary had the courage to challenge the decision and in an historic and bitter court case, she and another artist sought to prove that the prize had been awarded for a caricature, not a portrait.

Dobell, whose award was ultimately vindicated by the court, went off to the country and Miss Mary packed her bags and set out for parts abroad, settling semi-permanently in Fiji.

She had already made her name - which was originally Mary Edwards but later changed to both her natural father's and her mother's names -- in the art studios of Europe by the time she was 20.

When World War I broke out she had taken a slow trip back to her original home in Australia that actually took her to India and then again to Europe and around the Pacific as far as Java and Tahiti.

A photograph of her that seems to have been taken at the beginning of her career shows a cheeky smile and laughing eyes that never missed a thing. (This is a stunning photograph.  I only wish my scanner was working so I could show you.)

She is wearing rather dramatic clothes, something with a big frilled collar and dashing hat.

Her outfits in the years I would see her in Suva streets always tended towards the interesting rather than the fashionable­; voluminous gowns I would now covet in lace-trimmed icky green or earthy brown, her still abundant though fading hair caught up with a velvet bow.  (How interesting is it that every single time I met her, she was dressed in white?  I know I said she always wore white - because that's what I believed - however no one else agrees with me on that point.)

We would occasionally meet, and if she was feeling friendly would tell me what she was doing and more importantly, where she was living.

She constantly chased the perfect studio location, where the light was right.

In Fiji it was for a while a bure on a ridge top near Mau Village, next to where Pacific Harbour is today.  (Yay, this is the one I remember, although I thought it was closer to Suva!)

Another time it was a bamboo raft houseboat on the Lami river, given up because her cats didn't like getting their feet wet. (I wonder if this is the bamboo raft houseboat that was still moored below the Laylor's hill in Lami last time I was in Suva?)

Several times she went off to northern Canada, the last trip when she was in her late 80s, to the great concern of her Fiji friends. (I recall her saying once that she was off to Canada, but that was in the '60s.)

Her last studio was at the Home of Compassion, set up by the good Sisters to her explicit instructions.
She lived there in her final year before passing away in January 1988, aged 93.

In that last year, a group of Miss Mary's friends and admirers got together with the Australian High Commission to hold a retrospective exhibition of her work in March 1987. (I have this catalogue, btw)

The list of the 90 paintings put on display read like a roll call of Pacific personalities and beauties, some of the names reflected in the exhibition committee and on the guest list.

Two Fiji artists who value her work are interested in locating her paintings again with a little project in mind.

They would like to have a commemorative event for Miss Mary and fulfil her final wish: to have a simple stone erected on her grave with the inscription 'Miss Mary' - Mary Edwell-Burke 1894-1988. (This request is in her will.)

 Instead of this!

If you have an interest in the project, or you have a Mary Edwell-Burke painting, contact seona.smiles@gmail.com

Fiji really shouldn't forget this woman; I certainly never will.