Painter, was an outstanding painting student at the Melbourne National Gallery School. He was at the design school in 1886-88, at the painting school in 1889-93. In 1889 he was awarded the prize of £5 for the best still-life picture in the exhibition of work by students of the Melbourne National Gallery School ( Illustrated Sydney News 28 November 1889, 24); he won first prize for a figure subject in 1891 and the Ramsay Prize (nude painting) in 1892 (Victorian Artists’ Society 1900). When he showed landscapes and still life at the student exhibition in 1890, the Australian Critic of December 1890 (p.75) commented: 'We have seldom seen better work in still life in Melbourne’.
Exhibited VAS 1893. Studied at Colarossi’s in 1896 and exhibited in Paris in 1895, at the RA in 1896. He returned to Melbourne and exhibited with the VAS until 1906 .
At the 1898 Society of Artists exhibition in Sydney Hansen showed Preparing for the Carnival (cat. No.62), which the Sydney Morning Herald (27 August 1898,7) commented: 'will be admired for its subject – a little green-robed girl who stands in a poppy-besprinkled meadow that extends to the edge of the sea, whilst she lights a Chinese lantern’. The Daily Telegraph (27 August 1898) noted that Mr Brooke Hansen, 'who has just returned from Paris, where he has been studying, is responsible for two large pictures – a Pierrot, cleverly treated as to drapery, but rather unsatisfactory as to the face, and “Preparing for the Carnival” about which one hardly knows what to say. It is decorative in design and colour but is not a great source of strength to the show.”
'Mr Hansen’ exhibited with the Royal Art Society in 1901 and 'P.’ [presumably 'B’] Hansen was included in the Society of Artists Commonwealth Exhibition in 1901.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2011
