Velasquez Gallery


Velasquez Gallery, also known as Velasquez Gallery at Tye's, and later Tye's Art Gallery, was a Melbourne art gallery that showed contemporary traditional, and later, modernist Australian art, including some sculpture and prints, as well as Australian indigenous art. It operated from 1940 to 1955.

History

The Velasquez Gallery, located in the basement at the rear of Tye's Furniture Building, 100 Bourke Street, Melbourne, was one of the few places to exhibit in 1940s Melbourne. The gallery opened during WW2 on 4 June 1940 with an exhibition of work by Australian proponent of Tonalism, Max Meldrum, and "autumn leaves from Mr. Tye's Macedon garden decorated the gallery". When it first opened in June 1940, The Age described its facilities;
The Velasquez Gallery an interesting development in the progress of art in Melbourne is the establishment of a new gallery — to be known as the Velasquez Gallery— by Tye and Co., at their Bourke-street premises. The gallery, which is 50 feet square, is artificially lighted on a carefully considered plan, which allows for adjustments and modifications, and will ensure a uniform and even glow, such as cannot be got by a daylight arrangement. The general setting of the gallery is adequate, and pictures will be seen under the best possible conditions. The gallery will open with a one-man exhibition by Max Meldrum on June 4.

The business later expanded to 110-116 Bourke Street.

Ethos

The manager was painter/printmaker, critic, broadcaster and lecturer Stephanie Taylor, and director, the art collector and connoisseur George Page-Cooper. The gallery showed contemporary traditional, and later, Modern Australian art, including some sculpture and prints, as well as indigenous art. In 1948, twenty-seven of Sidney Nolan's Kelly series paintings were shown at the Velasquez Gallery for the first time. Under the management of Taylor, women artists were given much better exposure than at other galleries, and she organised a number of shows to raise funds for charities. A September 1943 report in The Bulletin demonstrates its optimistic openness to Modernism;

Closure

Page-Cooper moved on in 1952 with the unrealised intention to set up another gallery in the city before Velasquez Gallery closed early 1955. Taylor wrote to The Age newspaper:
Page-Cooper's collection, which included significant works by S. T. Gill, William Dobell, Arthur Streeton, Hans Heysen, Charles Conder and Tom Roberts, was offered for sale by the Leonard Joel auction house after his death in 1967 with further works disposed by auction in 1995.

Exhibitions

As 'Velasquez Gallery':
By the late 1940s in publicity and in general references to it, the gallery is usually just 'Tye's Gallery’:
  • 1948: Loan collection of paintings from Dr. and Mrs. T.J. Kiernan, Irish Legation, Canberra, A.C.T.
  • 1948, October: Stephanie Taylor, 64 watercolours
  • 1948, 26 October – 5 November: Loan exhibition of paintings of horses...to benefit Ada Mary A'Beckett Free Kindergarten, Fisherman's Bend.
  • 1949, June: Dutch paintings
  • 1949, from 13 September: paintings by official R.A.A.F. and War Memorial artists Eric Thake, Harold Freedman and Max Newton to mark Air Force week, opened by Air Marshal G. Jones
  • 1949, September: Stephanie Taylor, watercolours and oils
  • 1949, from 1 October: Leonard French
  • 1950, from 1 February: British Council exhibition of prints and photographs
  • 1950, from 7 February: Swiss poster design
  • 1950, 23 May – 2 June Tenth anniversary 1940 - 1950.
  • 1952, 11 March: Spencer Jackson Historical Australasian Art Collection, opened by Daryl Lindsay
  • 1952 Photographs of Yugoslavia
  • 1952, October: Children's Art Exhibition at Tye's Gallery, opened by Archbishop Mannix, included work by Germaine Greer in the Under-14 section
  • 1954, 6 April – 23 April: Contemporary Art Society commemorative exhibition; 86 painters and sculptors including women artists Mirka Mora, Erica McGilchrist, Ethel Barnes and Elizabeth Vassilief
  • 1954, 14 September – 25 September: Artists for Peace.
  • 1954, 6–23 April: Contemporary Art Society Commemorative Exhibition