William Beckwith McInnes : an artist's life / by Margot Tasca

Winner of the Art Gallery of New South Wales' first four Archibald Prizes (1922 to 1925) - and several more thereafter - was Melbourne's William Beckwith McInnes. With the Archibald wins, and then in his early 30s, McInnes was already an acclaimed landscape artist and had exhibited works painted in the British Isles, Spain and Morocco. After his Archibald successes he became, arguably, the country's most sought-after portrait painter with official commissions to paint war heroes, prime ministers, lord mayors and other notables. In 1927 he was commissioned to paint the opening of Canberra's new Parliament House and 1933 saw him in London painting The Duke of York who was soon to take the throne. Margot Tasca's sympathetic, assiduously researched text, with numerous previously unpublished images, also traces the artist's personal and family life. Married to fellow artist Violet McInnes in 1915, they had six children and lived an idyllic life alongside other artists in Melbourne's Bohemian suburb of Alphington. With 'movie-star' looks and a kind and generous personality his story, which is not without tragedy, is now told in this important publication which hopefully sheds some new light on an occasionally misunderstood period of Australian art history.