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Matthew James MacNally (painter, critic and art teacher), was a well known watercolourist during the first half of the twentieth century. The only child born to Irish migrants, James MacNally was born in the north east Victorian town of Benalla on 5 July 1873. His parents were shopkeepers and they educated their son at Benalla College, and subsequently at St. Patrick’s College in Melbourne. As a youth MacNally wanted to be an architect, but due to failed family speculations he was forced into an insurance career in Melbourne. Several years later, in the mid 1890s, he moved to Sydney and became captivated in the world of art while continuing to work as a clerk. In Sydney he took drawing lessons with artists Hal Waugh and Hal Thorpe , and through them became friendly with several other painters, including Tom Roberts , who became an intermittent but lifelong friend. MacNally returned to Melbourne in 1899 and enrolled in the National Gallery of Victoria’s School of Design. He worked under Frederick McCubbin for a year, but the discipline of drawing from plaster casts was irksome. He later studied watercolour and printmaking with John Mather and etching with John Shirlow .

Family financial pressures again forced MacNally to abandon his art for a return to commerce. Turning his back on insurance, he began working for a butter exporting business. He found financial success in this venture, and soon purchased a studio apartment on the top floor of Oxford Chambers in Bourke Street, right at the heart of the fashionable Melbourne quarter known as 'The Block’. A very sociable man, MacNally began to mix with many of Victoria’s prominent artists, musicians, critics and connoisseurs. Despite his time-consuming business commitments, MacNally became increasingly dedicated to watercolour, often painting around Malmsbury (95 km north-west of Melbourne), and in 1908 he submitted several works to the Victorian Artists’ Society annual exhibition. He established a sketch club with a dozen or so artist friends (which included George Courtney Benson , Percy Lindsay and Ambrose Paterson ). MacNally’s involvement with the Melbourne art scene was curtailed for several years when he was relocated to England for extensive periods by his employer. Despite his English posting, MacNally continued to experiment with his art and enrolled at the Herkomer Art School in Hertfordshire. MacNally claimed that while in England he became a member of the prestigious Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours. While this may indeed be true, the Royal Institute has found no lasting evidence of his membership in their archives.

As war clouds formed over Europe, MacNally returned to Melbourne, but soon retired from the world of butter when his business was requisitioned by the government. MacNally’s wartime works were mainly pastoral panoramas dominated by large rain filled skies that showed the influence of J.J. Hilder . As well as his watercolours, MacNally also experimented in oil and revisited the art of printmaking. MacNally also began to regularly exhibit his work with the Melbourne art dealer, W.H. Gill, at his Fine Art Society Gallery. Dame Nelly Melba became friendly with MacNally, and in her circle he mixed with important art-loving establishment figures, such as Sir Baldwin Spencer and the war-time Governor-General, Sir Ronald Munro-Ferguson. During the final years of the war MacNally joined two professional art groups, the Melbourne-based Australian Art Association, and the all male, Sydney-based Australian Arts Club. Both organisations had small select memberships, which included some of the most influential artists in the country. MacNally’s friendly nature, art knowledge and powerful friends soon saw him appointed, in 1918, as the Victorian representative on the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board. That same year, MacNally gained national attention with an illustrated profile in Art in Australia . Written by Harry Julius , in the eulogistic style associated with the magazine, the article tells of MacNally’s harsh editing of his own work, especially in the early years of his career when he often destroyed his work. The lack of early examples of his painting – especially his European period work – certainly raises doubt to the artist’s claim that he was a member of the prestigious Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours when he was living in England before the war.

MacNally was recognised, by several commentators, as a man who helped and encouraged emerging artists such as the Ballarat born painter, Harold Herbert . MacNally had noticed the skill of this watercolourist and helped him get attention on the Melbourne art scene. This mentorship led to the pair holding three joint exhibitions of their work in Sydney and Melbourne during the early 1920s. These shows were popular, especially after the publication of a MacNally and Herbert joint special edition of Art in Australia magazine in 1920, a significant compliment for two early career artists. The period from the end of the war to the mid 1930s was arguably the busiest exhibiting period in MacNally’s art career and during that time he held over a dozen one man shows in the eastern state capitals. The popularity of his heavy wash watercolours reflected the public interest in the medium in the early interwar period. In the 1920s MacNally joined the newly established Australian Watercolour Institute, and exhibited at most of their annual shows. During the 1920s and 30s almost all of the Melbourne newspapers employed well known artists to comment on the goings on in the local art world, so it was hardly surprising that The Age engaged MacNally as their principal critic from 1924 to 1926. MacNally took easily to journalism and his art writing and book reviews soon became a regular feature of the paper.

While working on The Age, MacNally met the journalist and poet Margaret (Rita) McLeod (b.1891). Despite being 18 years his junior, the couple married on 19 March 1925. The following year the couple left Victoria for a new life in Sydney. Initially settling in the Pittwater area, MacNally began to paint the Northern Beaches area of Sydney. While in Sydney he joined the Royal Art Society. MacNally had several addresses in Sydney but by 1928 he was living in Cronulla, a beach side suburb on the southern fringes of the city. The birth of a son named William (Billy) made the family complete. MacNally became the Daily Telegraph art reviewer after moving to Sydney. Along with his exhibition reviews, he also wrote profiles on established traditional artists such as William Lister Lister , Hans Heysen and Lionel Lindsay . While these articles were not groundbreaking his observations on mild Modernists are sometimes revealing. After leaving the Daily Telegraph in 1927 MacNally wrote little until the early 1930s apart from the occasional journal article and sporadic review in the (Sydney) Sun newspaper.

During the early thirties MacNally became friendly with W.H. Ifould OBE, then director of the Mitchell Library. Through Ifould, MacNally received a large commission to paint many of the historic buildings in the 'Macquarie Towns’ west of Sydney. Many of these architectural themed works were included in a 1931 show at the Macquarie Galleries while others were later exhibited at the Mitchell Library. Through this large commission MacNally became increasingly known as a painter of historical buildings and he painted many grand Sydney houses during the Depression years. After moving to Adelaide in late 1935, MacNally soon connected with the local art community by joining the Royal South Australian Society of Arts while continuing to be a member of the Australian Watercolour Institute. After his move to South Australia he became the principal art writer on the Adelaide News and Mail and also became a lecturer at the state gallery in Adelaide from 1938 until the early 1940s. The artist rarely exhibited in Adelaide during his final years, the exception being at Preece’s Gallery in 1938 and at the Royal South Australian Society of Arts rooms in 1942. After a long illness the 70 year old artist died at his Mount Lofty home on Thursday 24 September 1943.

Although MacNally became an artist relatively late in life, he approached his new profession like he had his business career. Through a combination of hard work, talent and adept social networking he soon became a leading member of the art world during the post war boom in Australian art. His works were mainly landscapes or decorative house paintings, but reflecting his sporting interests also included the occasional image of golfers, boxers and fly fisherman. Although he did experiment with oil and printmaking, his reputation is based mainly on his skill with watercolour, and after the medium became less fashionable in the late 1930s, so did his reputation. The artist signed his work as 'M.J. MacNally’, but was known to friends as James MacNally or more informally 'Mac’. Since his death there have been two major exhibitions of his work, one atJohn Martin’s Art Gallery in Adelaide (1946) and a retrospective at the Benalla Art Gallery (1974).

Writers:

Clifford-Smith, Silas

Date written:

2007

Last updated:

2011