The document discusses how artists from different time periods and cultures have used interior spaces as subject matter in their artwork. It provides examples of 17th century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer and how he captured light and texture in interior scenes. Modern artist Henri Matisse is discussed and how he used flat areas of color and pattern to explore space and style. Australian artists Grace Cossington Smith, Brian Dunlop, Margaret Olley, and Brett Whiteley are also examined and how they represented interiors in their work. The document concludes with providing a task for students to create their own artwork representing an interior space.

1. Interiors
Year 7 Visual Arts

2. Interiors
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The theme of interiors spaces has been used by
artists in both past and present times often as a
means of commenting on the way human beings
construct their environment and their relationship
to these spaces. Some artists create studies of
interiors in as realistic as possible manner to show
the physical character of the space. Other artists
are interested in saying something about the
characteristics of the people who live in the space
and to reflect the relationship of human beings to
an interior. Still others use this theme as a means of
exploring an idea, to create meaning through
metaphor or as a vehicle through which to explore
personal artistic style.

3. 17th Century Dutch
Johannes Vermeer
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Woman with a Water Jug, is a
painting finished between 1660–
1662 by the Dutch painter Johannes
Vermeer in the Baroque style.
Vermeer (Dutch1632 – December
1675) specialized in domestic interior
scenes of middle-class life. Vermeer
was a moderately successful painter
in his lifetime. He seems never to
have been particularly wealthy,
leaving his wife and children in debt
at his death, perhaps because he
produced relatively few paintings.
He was interested in capturing the
light, texture and pattern of interior
spaces and the character of the
people who lived in them.
Look at this painting by Vermeer.
How does Vermeer use light in this
painting?

4. The Music Lesson
c. 1662-65
What similarities can you see
in his paintings?
Soldier and a Laughing Girl
c. 1658

5. Modern artist
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
(French1869 – 1954)
was a French artist,
known for his use of
colour and his fluid
and original
draughtsmanship.
Matisse was one of
the great artists of the
modern era. His
exploration of space
and colour was very
influential on younger
artists. He uses the
theme of interiors to
explore his own style.
Open Window, Collioure 1905

6. Harmony in red, depicts a maid
arranging fruit on a table in a
room dominated by its vibrant
red wallpaper. The painting is a
brilliant celebration of pattern
and decoration. The rhythms of
the foliage pattern on the
tablecloth and wallpaper are
echoed in the background
through the window, uniting the
interior with the cooler exterior.
In this work Matisse painted with
flat areas of colour, emphasising
the flat decorative surface of
the painting.
Give examples from the artwork
which show how Matisse
created pattern and rhythm in
this artwork.
The Desert Harmony in Red
1908

7. Australian artist
Grace Cossington
Smith
Grace Cossington Smith (1892 – 1984) was an
Australian artist and pioneer of modernist
painting in Australia and was instrumental in
introducing Post-Impressionism to Australia.
“My chief interest, I think, has always been
colour, but not flat crude colour, it must be
colour within colour, it has to shine; light must
be in it, it is no good having heavy, dead
colour … The room is in my own home here,
and the sunlight did not come in a definite
way but the whole room seemed to be full of
light, which is what I want to do more than
the actual sunlight. I feel that even the
shadows are subdued light and they must
have light in them as well as the light parts.”
In this painting, short brushstrokes of pure
colour animate the pictorial surface,
highlighting Grace Cossington Smith’s skill as
a colourist. By the mid 1950s the artist had
begun to concentrate primarily on domestic
interiors, party due to the fact that her muchloved sister had become ill.
Describe how has Cossington Smith has
composed this painting to add interest to the
interior.

8. Australian artist
Brian Dunlop
Room 1978
Brian Dunlop (1938–2009) was a still life and figurative painter
born in Sydney, Australia. He made his reputation as a painter
of tranquil interiors, where light was caught by translucent
curtains. His work was given a human scale by the
introduction of figures, sometimes nude.

9. What mood is created in Dunlop’s
paintings? How does he create this?

10. Australian artist
Margaret Olley
Margaret Olley (1923 – 2011) was an Australian painter. She is one of Australia’s
most revered and prolific painters, hers was a life devoted to art.
Olley’s home of more than sixty years was Duxford Street, Paddington, in Sydney’s
eastern suburbs. She bought the rambling property in the 1960s, renting its larger
terrace house and the garden rooms for income while she annexed herself
between them in the Hat Factory – a former milliner’s workshop. This allowed her
the financial security to paint and entertain as she pleased.
For over half a century this would be her home, her studio and her muse. It was
where she entertained around a large timber table she had brought from her
mother’s Brisbane home. The place her friends – painters, writers, curators and
critics – would come for a cuppa and a chat. The place where she died
peacefully in July 2011.
Over the years Olley had painted many interiors and still life settings in her home’s
rooms. Rooms she had painted in pomegranate, ochre and powder blue shades
that she had mixed herself. Against them she arranged rugs and busts and flowers
and fruit, on and around furniture of a kindly, weathered charm, beside windows
where the light was to her liking. Then she spent her days, weeks, months
capturing on canvas these scenes in her trademark daubs of oil.
Her house seemed not so much decorated as accumulated, more so with each
passing year. “This was not a domestic home, this was an artist’s home,” recalls
Christine France, a friend and art historian. “Mirrored sideboards reflected
carefully chosen objects and great bowls of flowers. Laden tables were placed to
catch a shaft of light. Wooden sheep, bowls of fruit and dried pomegranates,
balanced in an ancient jug, were arranged on kelim-covered chests.”

12. Photograph of Olley’s home in 2011

13. Margaret Olley, Yellow Interior, 1989.
What can you tell about Olley’s personality from her paintings of her home?

14. Australian artist
Brett Whiteley
Brett Whiteley (1939-1992)
The art of Sydney-born Whiteley was intimately
connected to his tumultuous, creative life.
Largely a self-taught artist, he travelled widely,
and live in London, the US and Fiji. In 1969 he
returned to Australia, settling in Lavender Bay.
Among many accolades, Whiteley won the
Archibald Prize twice (including for Self portrait in
the studio 1976) and the Wynne Prize and Sulman
Prize three times each, and was the first artist to
win all three in one year, in 1978.
This large canvas was principally inspired by the
art of Henri Matisse and uses ultramarine blue,
which Whiteley favoured for its ‘ecstasy-like
effect’.
It includes a snippet of real hair as well as a selfportrait of Whiteley in a mirror. The mirror acts as
an entry point to both a psychological space
(revealing something of his state of mind) and a
physical space (his home at Lavender Bay on
Sydney Harbour). The tiny portrait also reflects the
influence of Francis Bacon, another of Whiteley’s
artist heroes, and of Asian culture, in which
people are often portrayed as merely part of a
larger landscape.
What do you learn about Whiteley through his
painting of the interior of his home?
Which two artist’s in this PowerPoint were inspired
by the work of Matisse?
Self portrait in the studio 1976

15. Your task: My Space
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1. Brainstorm the topic of interiors. Make a list of
possible rooms in your home that you could use as
the subject matter for your artwork and record this
in your VAPD.
2. At home choose an interesting position in your
chosen room which includes a corner. Complete
a detailed, realistic representation of your interior
setting as a line drawing on A3 paper. Consider
creating the illusion of space by depicting
doorways and windows and try to capture the
surface quality of the different objects in the room.
3. At school do a couple of sketches of your
composition and experiment with using flat colour
and pattern inspired by the art of Matisse to
create a mood for your interior.
4. Use oil pastels to colour your artwork. Focus on
creating flat unrealistic colour and pattern.