Australian Dictionary of Biography

Hugh Gilmour Jamieson (1934–1992), painter, was born on 31 January 1934 at Monto, Queensland, eldest son of South Australian-born Donald Gilmour Jamieson, farmer, and his Victorian-born wife Clarice Edith Ivy, née Webb. Gil attended the local state school and Gatton Agricultural High School and College. He contracted rheumatic fever during national service training, and a second bout in 1953 freed him from work on the family farm. Compensation from the government enabled him to start a welding company, Speedweld, with friends, but his interest in the business diminished as his interest in art developed, and the company later collapsed.

In Brisbane Jamieson worked as a clerk for the Southern Electric Authority of Queensland, drew political cartoons, and sketched patrons in pubs. He took evening classes in drawing at the Central Technical College (1956–57) under Melville Haysom, and spent time in the studio of the expressionist artist Jon Molvig. Both shared the view that art cannot be taught but were too temperamentally similar to get on. He began exhibiting his work in 1957.

On 21 February 1959 at the Presbyterian Church, Woody Point, Queensland, Jamieson married Maureen Joan Spradbrow, a governess (d. 1985). The couple moved to Melbourne where they rented premises opposite Martin Smith’s picture framing business in Hawthorn. Through this connection Jamieson was able to meet and befriend artists such as Asher Bilu, Charles Blackman, Sam Fullbrook, George Johnson, Clifton Pugh, Edwin Tanner, and Fred Williams, several of whom belonged to the group known as the Antipodeans. Jamieson existed on the fringe of this group, his work paralleling its figurative and expressionist approach.

The Melbourne art patron John Reed supported Jamieson in his first significant exhibition, showing alongside Sam Byrne at the Museum of Modern Art (and Design) of Australia in 1960. Reed later described Jamieson as a landscape painter with a difference: ‘Gil is painting his own life, and because this has involved participation in an intense daily struggle for a livelihood, with the bush an integral part of that struggle rather than as something seen objectively, his paintings often achieve a wild and sometimes tempestuous beauty which sweeps us along into a world of heightened emotional experience’ (Gil Jamieson 1997, 9). This remains an effective summation of the artist’s oeuvre even when Jamieson developed a more strident and colourful palette and an even more forceful brush-stroke.

In Sydney Jamieson’s art was championed by Rudy Komon, who exhibited his work regularly from 1960 to 1983. The National Gallery of Victoria awarded him the John McCaughey memorial prize for his painting The Pigs in 1965. In 1971 he returned to Monto, making this his base for numerous trips to Melbourne and to remote parts of Australia. His reputation was consolidated in 1973 when his seventy-two-foot-long (22 m) mural Jay Creek, painted on location near Alice Springs, was exhibited at the Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne. He received a grant from the Australian Council for the Arts that year.

Self-described as a ‘social realist of the bush’ (Dorey 1993, 6), Jamieson produced paintings of the most confronting and brutal aspects of life on the land. Critics commended his uncompromising style, hailing his 1988 solo exhibition, Passion of a Bushman, held at the William Mora Galleries, Melbourne, as a landmark for Australian landscape and expressionist painting. Jamieson identified strongly with Aboriginal people, both in his attachment to the land and in his deep and intuitive response to the landscape. He held more than thirty-five solo exhibitions.

Jamieson enjoyed smoking cigars and discussing poetry and philosophy. His friend and the chief chronicler of his work, Phil Brown, described him as ‘irrepressible, full of fun and satire and a desire to outrage his public’ (Gil Jamieson 1997, 4). He had married Beverly May O’Brian in Melbourne in 1987; they later divorced. Survived by his son and daughter from his first marriage, he died of cancer on 14 June 1992 at Monto and was buried in Monto cemetery. A retrospective exhibition, Gil Jamieson: Life on the Land, opened at the Rockhampton Regional Art Gallery in 1997. His work is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the Queensland Art Gallery.