1. Duncan Max Meldrum was a Scottish-born Australian artist and art teacher, best known as the founder of Australian tonalism, a representational painting style that became popular in Melbourne during the interwar period.
14 Facts About Max Meldrum
1. 2.
Max Meldrum won fame for his portrait work, winning the prestigious Archibald Prize for portraiture in 1939 and 1940.
3.
Max Meldrum's father, Edward Meldrum, was an analytical chemist and his mother, Christina Meldrum, a schoolteacher.
4.
Max Meldrum's sister Elizabeth was born soon after their arrival in Melbourne.
5.
Once there, Max Meldrum decided the academic life was not for him and quit formal schooling.
6.
Max Meldrum entered the National Gallery Art School in 1892, the very same year that Lindsay Bernard Hall, a staunchly conservative English-born artist and teacher, began his long tenure as the school's director.
7.
Max Meldrum's submission emerged victorious, with Ramsey's piece coming second, amid some controversy.
8.
Max Meldrum chose Paris as his destination for the travelling scholarship.
9.
Max Meldrum set off for France in April 1900, arriving first in London before quickly making his way to Paris.
10.
Max Meldrum's apartment was a short walk from the Academie Colarossi, where he began studying under L JR Collin and Gustave Courtois, late proponents of the French Academic style.
11.
Max Meldrum had returned to Paris by 1902 to attend the Louvre to work on his copy of Paolo Veronese's The Flight of Loth.
12.
Max Meldrum ran the Meldrum School of Painting there between 1916 and 1926.
13.
Max Meldrum becomes great only by exerting himself to the limit of his strength the whole time.
14.
Max Meldrum died on 6 June 1955 in Kew, Victoria, aged 79.