Adrian along with Paul Jones paintings were published in Professor E G Waterhouse’s two books ”The Camellia Quest” & “The Camellia Trail”
Adrian Feint was a Narrandera boy. So I thought I would find out why Feint had a camellia named after him seeing that he came from my then town.
Adrian George Feint, was born on 28 June 1894 at Narrandera, New South Wales, eldest of three children of Samuel Feint, stationer, and his wife Catherine Charlotte, nee Flood, grand-daughter of Edward Flood. From childhood Adrian was interested in drawing and decorated his Narrandera school exercise-books. In 1912 he entered the Sydney Art School.
Feint enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 21 January 1916, served with the 15th Field Ambulance on the Western Front from February 1917 and was praised in September 1918 for the gallantry he displayed near Peronne, France. He was granted three months leave in 1919 to study at the Academie Julien, Paris. He was discharged on 12 October 1919 and Feint returned to the Sydney Art School which was noted for its teaching in ‘black and white’. He worked extensively for Sydney Ure Smith’s advertising agency, and provided decorations and cover designs formagazines, Art in Australia (1928-40) and the Home. Regarded as having impeccable taste, Feint directed Grosvenor Galleries between 1924 and 1928.
Feint still sought acceptance as an oil-painter. He gave up commercial art in 1938 to concentrate on oil-painting. The best of his still life and landscape paintings have affinities with surrealism, but it is of the decorative English variety rather than the French. Feint’s paintings received critical acclaim in the 1940s and 1950s; Ure Smith published Adrian Feint Flower Paintings in 1948. His flower pieces were described as ‘flower arrangements meticulously designed, superbly painted. His bookplates, including those produced for Olive King, Dorothea Mackellar, John Mullins, Frank Clune and the Duke and Duchess of York, attracted local and worldwide attention, culminating in an exhibition at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., in 1930. His decorative penwork and designs for private press books, such as those published by the Australian Limited Editions Society, were also highly praised. He painted tropical fish and parrots on the glass panels for the Australian pavilion at the New York World’s Fair (1939).His bookplates, including those produced for Olive King, Dorothea Mackellar, John Mullins, Frank Clune and the Duke and Duchess of York, attracted local and worldwide attention, culminating in an exhibition at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., in 1930. His decorative penwork and designs for private press books, such as those published by the Australian Limited Editions Society, were also highly praised. He painted tropical fish and parrots on the glass panels for the Australian pavilion at the New York World’s Fair (1939).
The best of his still life and landscape paintings have affinities of surrealism. His paintings have been described as “flower arrangements meticulously designed, superbly painted and set in a related environment of time and space.”His imagination found an outlet combining manufactured objects from other lands with flowers and shells of the sandstone belt of the eastern coastal region of Australia. In his painting Garden in the Foothills, 1958, it depicts an area of their Carrick Hill garden overlooking the location of the former tennis court, now planted with the glorious blooms which is now the State Bank Heritage Rose Garden.
This painting provides an historical and sentimental link with a past era of the garden.
Adrian Feint
The red Waratah, white Flannel Flowers, Christmas Bush and Christmas Bells painted in 1930’s was uncovered in an old autograph book quite by chance.An interesting facet of Adrian Feint’s artistic contribution to Australia was his involvement with Camouflage. Camouflage in Australia in the Second World War hardly receives mention in contemporary military histories, but it is a subject which celebrates the contribution of Australian artists and designers to the war, and the ingenuity of the military Camouflage is based on the principles of concealment and deception. The Sydney Camouflage Group, which was formed in 1939 and was made up primarily of artists, photographers, architects, scientists, engineers and civil servants. and the group included Adrian Feint.
They shared the concern “that camouflage was still regarded in some quarters as a hobby rather than as an instrument of war.” After their secondment to the Department of Home Security, artists found themselves in a variety of roles, working alongside Army engineers, conducting camouflage instruction for the Air Force, and researching for the Navy. It is probably true that at the time of the Second World War, Australian artists and designers were not steeped in the history, philosophy, or practice of camouflage as a military science, but nevertheless artists and designers in general were major contributors to the war effort.Adrian Feint was described as a ‘remarkably handsome man, always immaculately but discreetly dressed’. Feint lived austerely, though early economies had enabled him to acquire beautiful examples of furniture, painting and other objects for his Elizabeth Bay flat. He died on 25th April 1971 in St. Vincent’s Hospital and cremated with Anglican rites
Acknowlegements:
Australian Dictionary of Biography On Line
Wakefield Press
Art Gallery of South Australia
Art Gallery of NSW
Art Review.com.au
Christies.com
Camellias Aust Image Library
Barry Di Salvia
Australian War Memorial Journal – The organisation of camouflage in Australia in the Second World War Ann Elias
Adrian Feint
