How an art competition led to Manly Art Gallery

The competition was the brainchild of Manly Daily owner Jo Trenerry, who was always keen to draw attention – and business – to Manly.

Trenerry advertised the art competition in the Manly Daily and other newspapers in late 1923, offering £100 in prizes.

There were two sections in the competition – one for oils and watercolours and the other for etchings and black and white drawings – but what every entrant had to fulfil was the condition that the subject of the artwork be a sea or landscape of the northern beaches.

Six hundred entries were received and a special pavilion in Gilbert Park was erected for the exhibition to house the best entries, from which the best three artworks in each category were decided by respected artists on December 15, 1923.

The main prize of £50 for the best oil or watercolour was won by local artist James Jackson for his work Middle Harbour from Manly Heights, a view from Seaforth looking west over Middle Harbour.

The best 205 entries remained on exhibition in the pavilion in Gilbert Park from December 22 until the end of February 1924.

During the exhibition, numerous local residents and artists lobbied Manly Council to buy Jackson’s painting, hoping it would form the nucleus of an art collection that would eventually be housed in a council-owned art gallery.

The council acceded to the lobbying and the Manly Art and Historical Society was formed just two months after the Manly Daily art competition.

Manly Council’s decision was a brave one – there were no other suburban art galleries in the country and only a few outside the major cities – so it generated great interest in the art community.

The committee consisted of three councillors and nine residents, including two artists, under the patronage of NSW Governor, Admiral Sir Dudley de Chair, and the vice-patronage of Dame Nellie Melba and General Sir Granville Ryrie.

Trenerry, a Manly councillor as well as the owner of the Manly Daily, was one of the three executive officers – an association with the art gallery he maintained for 27 years until his death in 1951.

Although the money to build an art gallery was slow in coming, ideas and donations of paintings were not.

The list of donors reads like a Who’s Who of Australia art – Lindsay, Rees, Ashton, Preston, Lister-Lister, Fulwood, Proctor, and Dattilo-Rubbo being just some of those who donated artworks to the fledgling collection.

At first the collection was housed in the council chamber but it was barely accessible to the public so regular exhibitions were held in Victoria Hall on The Corso and in the Manly Literary Institute.

It was hoped by members of the Manly Art and Historical Collection that Dalley’s Castle might be bought and used as an art gallery but nothing came of the idea.

When Manly Council was discussing construction of the Town Hall in the late 1920s, it was hoped it could incorporate an art gallery.

Eventually a council-owned concert pavilion at the western end of Manly Cove that had been built in 1922 was converted to an art gallery, which was opened on June 14, 1930, by Chief Justice Sir Philip Street.

By this time the collection had grown to 200 exhibits, including 79 paintings.

The concept of a suburban art gallery must have pleased many artists because the donations kept rolling in.

In 1939, one of the original committee members, artist Antonio Dattilo-Rubbo, donated a valuable collection of 100 artworks.

Such a large donation moved Manly Council to finance the construction of a second wing to the art gallery, which was opened on September 26, 1940.

In the same year, Colonel A. Spain donated several works, including one of the gallery’s most treasured paintings, The Flower Sellers, by Tom Roberts.

In 1947 P.S. Garling donated 55 paintings, including works by both Australian and European artists.

But while the first decades were good for the art gallery, the 1950s and 1960s were bleak – the building deteriorated and the collection suffered from damp conditions, worsened by poor funding, no staff and a lack of proper storage facilities.

In 1966 Manly Council returned to the plot and, with financial assistance, renovated and extended the building with a new gallery, storeroom and entrance, and appointed an honorary director, which later became a paid position.

From that point on, the vision of the gallery’s pioneers was maintained – fresh donations were made, administrative and social networks were established, as were active acquisition and broadened exhibition programs.

But in May 1976, six valuable paintings were stolen from the art gallery, including Roberts’ The Flower Sellers.

Eventually all six paintings were recovered.

In 1981 the State Government contributed to the building of a museum wing on the harbour side of the art gallery and the new Manly Art Gallery and Museum was opened by premier Neville Wran in September 1982.

Donations and bequests continue to augment the gallery’s own resources and none was as welcome as the 1984 bequest of $100,000 by Lady Askin, wife of former premier Sir Robert Askin.

But to Manly Council must go most of the credit for the stature of Manly Art Gallery and Museum.

To invest public money in a suburban art gallery in the 1920s was a brave and far-sighted move and successive councils have had the courage of their predecessors’ convictions to continue funding the gallery.

And Jo Trenerry would certainly be pleased – the gallery which grew out of the art competition he organised, and of which he held office for 27 years, is recognised as one of the finest regional art galleries in the country.