Guide to the Papers of Clifton Pugh, 1943-1991

Summary

Collection number:

MS 9096

Creator:

Clifton Pugh and Dunmoochin Foundation

Extent:

5.28 metres and (15 ms boxes+ 1 archival box + 2 cartons + 6 large folio boxes + 1 phase box)

Language:

English

Preferred citation:

Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Clifton Pugh, National Library of Australia, MS 9096, [series and/or file number]'.

Availability:

Available

Access conditions:

Available for research. Not for loan.

Background

Content Summary:

The collection documents Pugh's career over a period of 45 years, but unevenly. It includes correspondence, diaries, legal documents, manuscripts, sketchbooks and sketches, exhibition catalogues, cutting books and photographs.

There is a long series of letters to his mother, 1943-46, and letters from a close friend, Bett Milner, 1944-76. Other correspondence and his Dunmoochin visitors book show his close association with Labor politicians and other public figures. Cutting books detailing his life and work from 1953 to 1990, photographs, and a long run of exhibition catalogues are the strengths of the collection.

Biographical Note:

Clifton Ernest Pugh was born in Melbourne on 17 December 1924. He was educated at the Ivanhoe Grammar School, the Swinburne Technical College and the National Gallery School of Victoria. A landscape painter and portraitist, he combined a passion for painting with a great love of the bush.

After serving with the AIF in New Guinea and with the Occupation Forces in Japan, 1943-47, he studied with Sir William Dargie at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School under the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Training Scheme. His need for a quiet environment in which to paint led him to acquire in 1951 15 acres of land at Cottles Bridge, four miles from the nearest township of Hurstbridge, and about 30 miles from Melbourne. The 15 acres, which he named 'Dunmoochin', grew to 200 acres as other artists came to join them. The community legally became the Dunmoochin Artists Society in 1953. Pugh's paintings often drew on the bush setting of his mudbrick home and wildlife sanctuary at Cottles Bridge.

When Pugh first moved to Dunmoochin his painting did not provide an adequate income. He worked part time to support his second wife Marlene and their two small children, but interest in his art was rapidly growing. His first exhibition, in Melbourne in 1955, was held with John Howley, Donald Laycock and Lawrence Daws. The exhibition by the Group of 4, as they called themselves, was well received.

Pugh was noted for his portraits of politicians, artists, writers, academics and Labor figures, including his prize winning Archibald portrait of Gough Whitlam in 1972. He had earlier won the Archibald Prize with portraits of Sir John McEwan (1971) and R.A.G. Henderson (1965). Equally acclaimed for his pictures of the bush, one of his best known paintings related to Ivan Smith's radio feature The death of a wombat (1972).

He played a major role in the development of the Australian Labor Party's arts policy, first in Victoria in 1971 and then during the Whitlam years. In 1973 he was appointed to the Australia Council for the Arts, from which he resigned in 1974. With Brian Westwood, Pugh was the Australian War Memorial's official artist at the 75th Anniversary of the Gallipoli landing at Anzac Cove in 1990.

Pugh married three times: June Byford, Marlene Harvey and Judith Ley.

In May 1989 he set up the Dunmoochin Foundation as a perpetual charitable trust, to provide studios for creative pursuits and to preserve the wildlife and native plants of the land he loved. The Foundation, the trustees of his Estate, received the bulk of his estate on his death on 14 October 1990.

Provenance:

The papers were purchased by the Library from the Dunmoochin Foundation, the Trustees of Clifton Pugh's Estate, in 1996.

Indexed terms

Names:

Dunmoochin Foundation

Conditions Governing Access:

Please refer to the collection's catalogue record for the access conditions (http://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn1690038).

Conditions Governing Use:

Copying and publishing of unpublished manuscript material is subject to copyright restrictions. For such material, written permission to publish must be obtained from the copyright holder(s). Copying of unpublished material for research purposes is permissible 50 years after the death of the creator of the material.

Preferred citation:

Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Clifton Pugh, National Library of Australia, MS 9096, [series and/or file number]'.

Location of this collection:

National Library of Australia

Parkes Place

Canberra ACT 2600, Australia

Contact:

Contact us