Henri Joseph Bastin was born on 27 June 1896 at Châtelet Faubour near Charleroi, Belgium.
During World War I he was allegedly wounded by a German sniper as he cut telephone wires, and after receiving a silver anklebone from his captors, worked as a civilian prisoner on farms and road gangs near Magdeburg, Germany (Lehmann 1977, pg 87). Curiously he made two arrivals in Australia following the cessation of hostilities. The first was aboard the SS Raimund in Fremantle on 6 August 1919 without identification papers, apparently having walked on board the ship in Cherbourg, France, that was repatriating Australian troops (Riddell 1974, pg 7). Bastin’s second arrival was in April 1922 at Port Pirie, South Australia, aboard the SS Conde which had left Newcastle, UK, the previous year. This time Bastin had obtained a passport from the Belgium Counsel in London.
Bastin initially worked as a blacksmith and carpenter at Crystal Brook, near Port Pirie, and Broken Hill. It was in Broken Hill that he began his life long passion for opal mining. In September 1931 he married Minnie Wallsmith (b 1903), an English born station schoolteacher he had met in Bundaberg, Queensland. They had three children; Nancy (b 1931), Gerald (b 1933) and Peter (b 1938). Life in the 1930s for Bastin and his family was hard; moving around Queensland and New South Wales, prospecting as well as labouring at a variety of jobs for short periods, interspersed by periods on Intermittent Relief Assistance and often living in a tent. Bastin was frequently away from his family, and by the early 1940s it appears he was estranged from his wife. Despite their difficulties the Bastins were able to buy a house at Bunyaville in Brisbane, and on 4 September 1943, with support from his wife, Bastin became a naturalized citizen of Australia.
Bastin began painting around 1954 during a rainy day marooned in a shed on a station in southwest Queensland, having seen another’s pictures dabbed on the wall. Fashioning a brush out of horsehair and using branding paint on paper he had whitewashed, Bastin painted a picture of the shearing shed which he sold to the station owner ( The Herald [Melbourne] 1958, pg 1). Encouraged by the station’s owner, Major Harold de Vahl Rubin, a philanthropic grazier, art-collector and birder, Bastin continued to paint on readily available materials such as newspaper and cardboard signs, supplemented by paints and artist supplies Major Rubin exchanged for the paintings he and others in Brisbane bought (Lehmann 1977, pg 92).
His first exhibition was at the newly opened Gallery of Contemporary Art in Melbourne during 1957. Other exhibitions quickly followed including two at the Museum of Modern Art of Australia (Melbourne) in 1958 and 1959, where Alan McCulloch proclaimed the emergence of Australia’s first true modern primitive (McCulloch 1958, pg 20). It appears likely that John Reed introduced Bastin to Henri Rousseau’s oeuvre through the same 1942 Chicago exhibition catalogue that Sidney Nolan had seen at Heide. Bastin painted several homages to Rousseau centered on the burial of a dead Aboriginal queen. Bastin was fascinated by aspects of Aboriginal culture he encountered in the outback especially after working with Dr Flynn, who appropriated their churingas, and Daisy Bates. His paintings of Aboriginal people, such as those depicting ballerina and clown clad participants in corroboree have, far from intending any racial slur, been described as having “quirky integrity” (Pearson 1991, pp. 326-337). Similarly Primitive art (1965), Bastin’s interpretation of the Mona Lisa , with the figure set in the Australian outback replete with painted red fingernails, indicates the artist’s impish wit.
Bastin’s early works were of landscapes; intricately diverse coral reefs and beaches of tropical Queensland as well as drier inland plains and mountains of central Australia. He completed many paintings of the opal mining areas he lived and worked in, taking pride in displaying the accoutrements of his own mining camp; his tent, gun, shovels, axes, pots and pans all laid out around a campfire set among the opal field. He painted largely in gouache until the mid 1960s when he discovered that enamel house paints best caught the particular light he felt emanated from Australia’s landscapes. Bastin was also known for his restless inventive energy and generosity; fashioning toys for friends’ children, making “feel” paintings for the visually impaired and on creating “opal” out of coloured foil and epoxy resin, declaring “I mine opal – and I make opal!” (in Lehmann 1977, pg 83).
Animals, especially cockatoos, budgerigars and birds of paradise with outstretched wings became a recurring motif from the late 1960s onwards. While these were popular with the public some critics found Bastin’s work too “decorative” (McCaughey 1968, pg 6) and “knowing” (McCulloch 1971, pg 25), an accusation often made in attempts to distinguish the 'true’ primitive’s spontaneity with the formulaic and contrived arrangements of imitators of the 'style’. Bastin would methodically outline in pencil his gum trees, leaves and animals before painting them, and like many artists, created multiple versions of paintings. Unlike his fellow primitive painters whose work tended to be largely associated with one area, Bastin painted scenes from across Australia, often homogenizing disparate elements together, indicative both of his own peripatetic nature and his indiscriminate delight in the natural world he encountered.
The popularity of primitive painters in Australia during the 1960s and 1970s reflected an international trend. Bastin was the most represented artist in the now disbanded Harold E. Mertz Collection of Australian Art. Along with other leading Australian primitives Sam Byrne, Charles Callins, Lorna Chick, James Fardoulys, Irvine Homer, Victor Litherland & Muriel Luders, the National Gallery of Australia actively purchased Bastin’s work in the mid 1970s, acquiring ten of his paintings. Bastin’s work was included in the inaugural Christies in Australia auction on 24 September 1969 where realized prices were comparable to those of Albert Namatjira, Sali Herman, Donald Friend and Ray Crooke.
Henri Bastin died at a bus stop at Henley Beach in Adelaide following his usual evening walk on 28 September 1979 (Dutton 1979, pg 94). He was buried in Brisbane alongside his wife (d 1971) and youngest son Peter (d 1968) who had been accidentally electrocuted while serving with the RAAF. A couple of weeks before his death Bastin was afforded the accolade of “a living national treasure of Australia, one of the last of an extraordinary generation of primitive artists whose like we will never see again” (Dolan 1979). His friend Geoffrey Dutton established a public memorial fund with which money was raised to buy a large hanging canvas Australian Paradise , completed shortly before his death, for the Adelaide Festival Centre.
- Writers:
- Bull, Julian
- Date written:
- 2009
- Last updated:
- 2011
