Australian Art and Artists in London, 1950–1965: An Antipodean Summer draws upon the previous research of Mary Yule, Wendy Bradley, and myself, as well as interviews with key players and extensive primary source material drawn from archives in Britain and Australia. This provides the foundation for a narrative that locates the life and work of Australian artists within the context of the British art scene. The story begins with Kenneth Clark’s visit to Australia as Felton Bequest adviser in 1949, and his significant meeting with Sidney Nolan, one that led to Nolan’s relocation to London and his subsequent international success. It concludes with the demise of Australian art’s popularity in Britain, coinciding with the rise of American art, Young British Artists, and the decline of the Commonwealth ideal. Pierse’s analysis identifies four main periods in the reception of Australian art in London: discovery, augmentation, historicising, and absorption into the greater British and international art world. These phases are set against the backdrop of the Commonwealth.

In places the book is revelatory. It sheds new light upon the role that Robertson’s exhibition Recent Australian Painting played in the debates between Australian abstract and figurative artists, sparked by the publication of Bernard Smith’s controversial Antipodean Manifesto in 1959. The details that are presented surrounding the meeting between Clark and Nolan also sift the facts from the myths.

Another highlight of this publication is its inclusion of photographs featuring exhibition installations, key works of art, artists, and patrons. These images convey the diverse experiences of Australian expatriate artists in London. For the majority of these artists, including Albert Tucker and Francis Lymburner, London did not pave the way to fame and fortune. For others such as Anthony Underhill, survival depended upon absorption into the British art scene. Only a select few enjoyed the critical acclaim that greeted the work of Nolan, Boyd, and Whiteley. The book clearly shows how precarious the success of Australian artists actually was. It depended upon when the artist arrived in London; his or her connections with artists, patrons, and galleries; and the quality, style, and subject matter of his or her art.

While Pierse has a comprehensive understanding of the ‘British context’, there are some omissions that reveal his failure to fully understand the significance of these artists, exhibitions, and works of art in relation to Australian art, history, and culture. He correctly states that Aboriginal art did not figure within group exhibitions of contemporary Australian art until the mid-1960s, but in claiming that ‘the appropriation of imagery and stylistic motifs by non-Aboriginal artists’ was interpreted at the time as ‘merely another influence of the land’, he underestimates the ways in which some Australian artists utilised their arts practice to highlight the plight of Aboriginal people and the significance of their culture through reference to Aboriginal subject matter and through the depiction of Aboriginal people. David Boyd’s Truganini’s Dream of Childhood (1959) and Arthur Boyd’s Bride Drinking from a Creek (1960) and Reflected Bride (1959), from the latter’s half-caste bride series, are illustrated in this publication because these works were exhibited at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, but their intention of providing, in Bernard Smith’s words, ‘a universal expression of the conflict between white and coloured’ is not explored. The display of these works in an international context was significant because it highlighted the status of Aboriginal people at a point when the Australian government’s destructive assimilation policies were at their height. This situation stimulated international interest in paintings of Aboriginal people, who, some believed, were part of a ‘vanishing race’.

At the same time, London critics characterised some of Nolan’s work as a type of mythic ‘white dreaming’. John Russell commented that Nolan’s Leda and the Swan series was ‘a mingling of our sooty London swans with the Aboriginal girl swimmer of Central Australia’. After all, Nolan was profoundly influenced by his friendship with the anthropologists Axel and Roslyn Poignant, who lived near him in London. Nolan’s Leda and the Swan, and his Convict and Mrs Fraser series, drew inspiration from both Indigenous Australian rock art and European myths.

Pierse’s interpretation of a photograph of two Aboriginal girls presenting Queen Elizabeth with a gift during her 1953 visit to Australia also fails to acknowledge its full significance. He sees the image as evidence of the optimism surrounding ‘a young and prosperous Commonwealth’. The irony that the Aboriginal girls were not classed as Australian citizens, let alone citizens of the Commonwealth, or that they were likely to be members of the Stolen Generations is not commented upon.

The crucial work of art historians Nicholas Thomas, Ian McLean, Terry Smith, Howard Morphy, and Deana Murray concerning the links between Aboriginal and settler culture is overlooked in this account, with the result that little connection is drawn between the current international popularity of Indigenous arts practice and the previous successes of Australian settler art.Nor are the experiences of Australian artists in London located within current debates concerning the globalisation of art history. Here and there, Pierse’s British perspective does not fully consider people and events from an Australian angle. Hence, Clark is described as a chairman of the War Artists Advisory Committee who ‘supported and protected UK artists with commissions’. Yet, from an Australian perspective, Clark’s arrangements to place more than ten thousand works produced by British war artists in Commonwealth provincial galleries was not entirely positive. Clark could also be much more negative about Australia and its art than Pierse suggests. After all, he advised a potential applicant for an Australian gallery directorship that ‘Australian painting, although better than one would expect, is inevitably rather provincial and mediocre. You might feel that you were cut off from great works of art and that your standards were slipping.’

The book succeeds in providing a broad overview of Australian artists in London based upon extensive and detailed archival research. It clarifies the machinations behind the major exhibitions of Australian art held there and the significant role played by British art patronage. But it often fails to relate this extensive empirical research to broader current debates concerning the relationship between settler and Aboriginal art and the significance of the experience of Australian artists in London within the context of calls for a ‘global art history’. Nonetheless, this lavishly produced publication highlights the important contribution that London patrons, galleries, and exhibitions made to the international success of Australian artists during this period.