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Artist, designer and teacher, Harry Raynor, was born on 12 June 1891 in Geelong, Victoria, the son of Frederick Raynor, tailor, who arrived from England in 1853, and Eliza Jane Gullick. Harry Raynor was the eldest of two children from his father’s second marriage.

Raynor attended secondary school at the Gordon Institute, Geelong, before leaving school at the age of sixteen to work as a shipping clerk with the firm of Huddart Smith. Raynor then returned to the Gordon Institute (1909-1912) to study drawing and design and subsequently worked in Melbourne as a designer in the architectural practice of Chris Cowper. In 1917, following his return to Geelong to take up employment with the Victorian Education Department as a junior art teacher at the Gordon Institute (1917-1924), Raynor married Frances Margaret Hanlon and attended evening classes in drawing, building construction and architecture at the Gordon Institute (1917-19). In 1925 Raynor transferred to Melbourne where he taught at technical schools in Brunswick, Sunshine and Caulfield and at the Bendigo School of Mines until his retirement in 1957.

Throughout his life Raynor pursued an interest in art. As a young man he sketched sailing ships moored in the port of Geelong; whilst in Melbourne he devoted weekends to sketching in the nearby Dandenong Ranges. In the 1920s and 1930s Raynor’s interest – like that of many other artists including Percy Leason and Arthur Murch – shifted to the depiction of Aboriginal people. In keeping with his era, Raynor’s fascination with Aboriginal representations was underpinned by a complex and contrary set of ideas. On the one hand Raynor’s primitivism allowed him to admire Aboriginal people whom he assumed to be doomed to extinction ('Artist on Need to Record Aborigines,’ Herald, 21 March 1934). At the same time Raynor was influenced by a growing humanitarian concern for the plight of Aboriginal people. From the late 1920s to early 1930s Raynor produced several major series of portraits and figurative studies, visiting Coranderrk Aboriginal Reserve near Healesville and Lake Tyers Aboriginal Reserve in Gippsland over the summer months, accompanied by his wife and children. It seems that Aboriginal people chose to willingly engage in Raynor’s projects. In the context of cross cultural exchange, Raynor’s interest created a social space of friendship between the artist and his subjects. Nevertheless it is possible to discern stylistic differences. At Coranderrk, a prior friendship of long standing with the elder Bill Russell allowed Harry to undertake a series of portraits of Bill Russell and his extended family. Significantly Russell was a major figure in the Coranderrk community, one of six senior custodians who had refused to leave the Reserve when it was closed in 1924 by the Victorian Board for the Protection of Aborigines. Raynor’s portrait of Bill Russell (in the collection of Museum Victoria) depicts the Aboriginal leader with considerable pride and dignity. At Lake Tyers, in contrast, Raynor undertook more general studies of individuals and groups aimed at recreating a past hunter-gatherer lifestyle. In so doing Raynor hoped that he might help to restore pride and dignity by depicting Aboriginal people 'in harmony with [their] natural surroundings’ ('Painting our Aborigines’ Argus, 15 September 1933). To ensure the accuracy of representations such as Warriors Fighting (Museum Victoria) Raynor drew upon Brough Smyth’s book The Aborigines of Victoria (1878).

Raynor held two major exhibitions of his drawings and watercolours at J Hogan & Sons Gallery, Melbourne, in September 1933 and March 1934. The critical response to Raynor’s Aboriginal studies was initially favourable. George Bell acknowledged the 'vitality’ and 'charm’ in Raynor’s work, commenting that 'Although the major claim to interest is ethnographic; in some cases the aesthetic aspect has been considered’ (George Bell, 'Three Art Exhibitions Reviewed’ Sun, 19 September 1933). Blamire Young also viewed the first exhibition in positive terms, commenting in particular on the portrait of the 'full blood’ Aboriginal Old Bill(Bill Russell) and Raynor’s account of his experiences with Aborigines (Herald, 18 September 1933). But the response to Raynor’s second exhibition in 1934 – which coincided with the Victorian Centenary – was more ambivalent. Blamire Young linked Raynor’s work to the photographic records then being undertaken by Professor Wood Jones of Melbourne University 'to preserve records of a dying race.’ (Blamire Young, 'Watercolours of Natives’, Herald, 22 March 1934). While Young noted a general improvement in quality, he opined that Raynor’s work was 'still too amateurish to be of great use as scientific records. To be of real value, [Young said], there should be a certainty and lucidity in the drawing that could carry with it a perfect sense of confidence in the artist’s powers of observation.’ (Blamire Young, 'Watercolours of Natives,’ Herald, 22 March 1934). Likewise a third artist/critic, Arthur Streeton, viewed Raynor’s work as 'illustration’ rather than art, 'of interest to those who wish to know how the aborigine [sic] sets about catching fish and other occupations which are passing away.’ (Arthur Streeton, 'Aborigines in Water-colour’, Argus, 21 March 1934). In response to such devastating criticism, Raynor abandoned his aspirations towards an artistic career to focus on teaching. Raynor retained his affiliation with the Victorian Artists Society and in 1959 he reviewed for Modern Art News. In 1958 and 1960, following his retirement from teaching, Raynor held several exhibitions of historic sailing ships on behalf of the Seaman’s Mission in Sydney. Harry Raynor died at the age of 72 at Muswellbrook, NSW, on 14 August 1963.

In recent years, revisionist histories have begun to reclaim recognition both for the Aboriginal portraiture of the between-wars period and lives of the Aboriginal people depicted by artists such as Harry Raynor and others. In response to this growing interest, in 1996 Margaret Chalmers (née Raynor) gifted five paintings from her father’s estate to Museum Victoria: two portraits (Bill Russell and Mrs Davis) and three figurative studies (Warriors Fighting, Morning and Evening, all c. 1933/4). Writing in the catalogue for Recognition: Percy Leason’s Aboriginal Portraits (1999) Sylvia Kleinert placed these artists in a broader postcolonial setting to argue for a more complex and considered reading for their work. In retrospect the critical response to artists such as Raynor and Leason can be seen to reflect both distinctions of taste within the art world and the colonial paradigms of a settler society. Over time however, our viewing position has moved considerably closer to that of the Aboriginal subjects for whom these representations were, and are, part of their cultural heritage.

Writers:

Kleinert, Sylvia Note:

Date written:

2008

Last updated:

2011

Status:

peer-reviewed