Who was Clarice Beckett?
Clarice Beckett (1887-1935) was born in Casterton, Victoria. She moved with her family to Melbourne, Ballarat and Bendigo as her father, a bank manager, was given new postings. After training at the National Gallery School, Beckett attended a lecture by Max Meldrum and was greatly influenced by his work on tonal relations. She spent a year studying with Meldrum, establishing a circle of friends among her fellow students and developing confidence with her own unique personal style.
In 1920 her father retired and the family moved to Beaumaris. With her parents now elderly and often ill, Beckett was obliged to run the household. However, she still found time to paint almost every day, and was in fact a prolific artist dedicated to her craft. Clarice died at the relatively early age of 47.
Clarice Beckett's work
Beckett held ten exhibitions of her work between 1922 and the early 1930s. Her reputation as an artist in her own lifetime suffered not only because she was a woman but also because her work was identified with the school of Max Meldrum. Many critics in the general press were not sympathetic to Meldrum's work, and the unique tonalist style Beckett developed was not highly regarded.
While very little of Beckett's artwork was sold during her own life, it was appreciated by her fellow artists and critics of the modernist school. Unfortunately only a small number of her works remain - over 1200 were damaged or destroyed due to poor storage after her death.
In the 1970s, exhibitions of Beckett's work at the Rosalind Humphries Galleries in Melbourne established her as one of the leading female artists of her time. These exhibitions, and a major retrospective exhibition in 1999, Clarice Beckett: Politically Incorrect, led to a new appreciation of her unique artistic vision.
The painting
The natural setting of road, rail and river intersection at the corner of Flinders and Swanston streets has been a popular subject for artists and photographers since Melbourne's settlement.
Beckett's choice of pink and greys highlight the distinctive structure of the bridge arches, which are further reflected in the turbid surface so characteristic of the river. The background composition of pedestrian and vehicular traffic on the bridge itself draws the eye up and into the painting, leading us to immediately imagine the cool and grey days that Melbourne was once so well known for. | 
