Little Red Ship
Maker
Aileen Rogers
(1916 - 1994)
Date1988
Object number00029644
NamePainting
MediumWatercolour paint, paper, wood, perspex
DimensionsOverall: 925 × 730 × 15 mm, 5.2 kg
ClassificationsArt
Credit LineANMM Collection
DescriptionA watercolour by the artist Aileen Rogers titled 'Little Red Ship' depicting a red painted ship raised on wharf.HistoryAileen Rogers (1916-1994 ) was an unusual artist who came to painting late in life and struggled to develop her own style. Working as a stenographer at the National Trust in Sydney, she studied part-time with Desiderius Orban from 1965 to 1977. She lived frugally in a basement room in Elizabeth Bay, and spent everything she had on painting. She was not able to devote herself full-time to art until she retired at the age of 71, in 1988, and it was only when she was in her seventies that her work began to achieve recognition.
Aileen Rogers won the Mosman Art Prize in 1977, the Pring Prize for Women Artists (AGNSW ) in 1985, the ACTA Maritime Art Award in 1991, and the Portia Geach prize in 1993. Her work was regularly hung in the Archibald and Blake prizes over two decades. She had a solo exhibition at the Blaxland Gallery in 1992 and a retrospective at the Ray Hughes Gallery in 1994, shortly before she died. Her work is represented at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the State Library of New South Wales, and the SH Ervin Gallery of the National Trust.
In an obituary in The Australian newspaper on 18 May1994 , art historian Professor Joan Kerr appraised Aileen Rogers as a 'significant Australian painter', and wrote:
'Like many women artists, Rogers found she could express her personal vision most powerfully through the traditionally modest mediums of watercolour and drawing... her best pictures have the freshness and immediacy of a passionate, involved person seeing and responding to the world as if for the first time."
Aileen Rogers worked at the National Trust on Observatory Hill, overlooking Darling Harbour, and often painted the ships and wharves in the immediate vicinity. The painting which won the ACTA Maritime Art Award was entitled 'Ship in Darling Harbour' 1991 and was said by the judges to stand out from a strong field because of its freshness and naive vision.
The two paintings by Rogers held in the Australian National Maritime Museum collection have this fresh and immediate character, the same quality noted by Joan Kerr. An initial impression of naivety is followed by a sense of the underlying strength and complexity of composition.
'Little Red Ship', painted in 1985, also has an unusual, arresting perspective. Seen bow-on from the wharf, the cargo ship with its derricks and rigging towers over the viewer. Again, the water and background have surprising delicacy against the red bulk of the ship. But despite the almost child like and jaunty feeling of the ship the picture also has strength, boldness and immediate familiarity as a common place wharf scene. The actual location of the painting has yet to be established, but it is undoubtedly in Sydney where Aileen Rogers found her subject matter and painted it in situ.
Both paintings give a distinct sense of the observer's point of view, large things seen from a small human perspective. They are unusual for watercolours because of their size, strength, and powerful use of colour. Aileen Rogers initially painted in watercolour because the materials were all she could afford, but she developed a style in the medium with expressed the force of her vision and creative drive.
Significance'Little Red Ship' presents a fresh and unusual view of commercial shipping in Sydney in the 1980s and 1990s .While serving as a document of the Australian maritime industry, the painting also has the aesthetic value of an original creative eye by a female artist.
