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Galleries/ Economies/ Reminscences

Jeremy Eccles
Eyeline 82
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How do you run a commercial art gallery in Australia, which will survive the vicissitudes of fortune over many years? In the year in which Sydney’s Watters Gallery turns fifty and Brisbane’s Philip Bacon Galleries passes forty, they are obvious exemplars to study—though the Australian Galleries in Melbourne and Sydney have moved through two generations en route to sixty years of survival in 2016; and Ray Hughes is in the process of passing the baton on to his son after forty-five years.


Inextricably linked to art dealership in Australia—and into the Bacon Galleries in particular—is Brian (and Marjorie) Johnstone’s Brisbane gallery, which ran from 1950 until 1972; a mere stripling at twenty-two, but certainly a pioneer in turning the gentlemanly world of art exchange into a viable business. For, while galleries run by the Bonython, Reed, Komon and Skinner families appeared profitable, they almost certainly lost money on art and survived on inheritance. Johnstone introduced the notion of profit. And both Frank Watters and Philip Bacon needed to make money to survive.


The University of Queensland Art Museum (UQAM) recently celebrated the Johnstone’s achievements with an exhibition curated by Nancy Underhill. For, despite privileged backgrounds outside art—Brian was an Adelaide private schoolboy with a military career that ended as Aide-de-camp to the Queensland Governor, and Marjorie had excellent Queensland country connections, ‘they only became rich through the gallery’, according to Underhill. ‘It was never just a little sideline for the wife’. And given an artist roster that included Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd, Russell Drysdale and Margaret Olley, Donald Friend and John Coburn, Lawrence Daws and Charles Blackman, Lloyd Rees, Jon Molvig and Ray Crooke, it is not surprising that... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Photograph of the Johnstone dining room. Scrapbook, page 111. RBHARC 7/1/11. ALA/SLQ. The Johnstone Gallery Archive, Australian Library of Art, State Library of Queensland.

Photograph of the Johnstone dining room. Scrapbook, page 111. RBHARC 7/1/11. ALA/SLQ. The Johnstone Gallery Archive, Australian Library of Art, State Library of Queensland.

Photograph of The Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane Arcade. Scrapbook, page 24. The Johnstone Gallery Archive, Australian Library of Art, State Library of Queensland

Photograph of The Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane Arcade. Scrapbook, page 24. The Johnstone Gallery Archive, Australian Library of Art, State Library of Queensland