Bantick, Chris Picture of the Past Between the Lines Sunday Tasmanian 10 December, 2006 p 6
Queenie: One Elephant's Story by Corinne Fenton, illustrated by Peter Gouldthorpe, Black Dog, $24.95
Peter Gouldthorpe id one of Tasmania 's most noted picture book illustrators and artists
His murals are found in North Hobart and South Hobart and his landscapes are sought after. Earlier this month, the illustrations for his latest book, Queenie: One Elephant's Story , were on display at Fullers Bookshop.
The book tells the story of Queenie, the fabled Indian elephant at the Melbourne Zoo. Noted as a docile and benign animal, Queenie provided rides, sometimes up to 500 a day, for children right through the 1930s and into the ‘40s.
This changed when, one day in 1944, Queenie crushed her keeper. In July 1945, Queenie was destroyed.
The book explores Queenie's life and yet leaves open-ended whether Queenie behaved out of character through overwork, tiredness or mistreatment.
Gouldthorpe said working with the book's author, Melbourne 's Corinne Fenton, provided its own challenges.
“I did not really work all that closely with the author, but Corinne had done a huge amount of work in the state archives in North Melbourne . She was really thorogh.
“I rode on her back as she'd done the research. I asked her which photographs and images I wanted as references. She already had them.”
While the story of Queenie can be authenticated from archival material, one of the problems facing Gouldthorpe as the illustrator was to capture the actual story events truthfully.
Gouldthorpe said there wasn't a record of Queenie's complete life.
“I used a little bit of licence about how they caught the elephant. Getting her on the boat with a sling in the air was the usual method. A bull elephant was necessary to get her on the truck.
“Still, what we tried to do was keep exactly to the actual events. My father actually remembers riding on Queenie as a kid. There are many people who remember Queenie and it is an era that is still relatively recent.”
To capture the events of the past, Gouldthorpe used extensive photographs and not his imagination.
While the pursuit of accuracy was paramount, he said he was uneasy about this.
“That was really scary. I was still nervous that someone will
Come and sue me or claim copyright. I worked from photos a lot and in fact photos were the inspiration for the style of illustrations.
“I wanted them to look like sepia photographs which had been hand coloured. I have recomposed them. I added things to some to get the content I wanted. Initially, I thought of the pictures as a collection of album photographs.”
The moment when Queenie crushes the keeper is suggested. While this is a reflection of the accuracy the book has maintained, Gouldthorpe said even the representation of the identity of the keeper is open to conjecture.
“There is a photo of one of the keepers holding her foot. He is sitting on a park bench with Queenie's foot on is knee. I have tried to re-imagine that scene.”
One image in the book shows boys in boaters teasing Queenie. Gouldthorpe is surprised when I mention to him that they are dressed in the colours of the exclusive Melbourne school, Scotch College .
It is purely an accident, he said. “That's all me. My mother said that boys didn't wear boaters back then, but there was an image with men in boaters. I wanted these little kids to be private school boys but there is no intention to single out a particular school. It was just the colour scheme.”
The book, besides being a poingnant story for young children, is also a snapshot of social and visual history.
Gouldthorpe said Queenie was used as a marketing tool by the Melbourne Zoo. “There were advertisements in newspapers about her birthday party. That is for real. She even had a birthday cake. Some of that memorabilia is still around.”
Andersch, Joerg Modern look at landscape The Mercury 26 November, 2005 p10
Tasmanian Landscapes
Colville Street Gallery, Battery Point
Price range; $650 to $5000
New on the Hobart art scene, the Colville Street Gallery is in the former Post Office building in Colville Street Battery Point.
Director Trudi Young's first major client is the well-known Tasmanian artist Peter Gouldthorpe, an award-winning illustrator and painter. Though the gallery's first show seems to follow a more traditional approach when inspected casually, neither Gouldthorpe nor other artists represented are followers of customary ‘traditional' expression.
Gouldthorpe is a painter of contemporary interpretations of the landscape, working in a manner not unlike the analytic technique the legendary Max Meldrum taught almost a century ago at the Victorian Gallery School in Melbourne . Post-modernism offers present art practices the opportunity to re-examine style forays into past expressions, extracting many beautiful and worthwhile interpretations that were trampled by the historic avalanche of modernism Andersch, Joerg Modern look at landscape The Mercury 26 November, 2005 p10
Tasmanian Landscapes
Colville Street Gallery, Battery Point
Price range; $650 to $5000
New on the Hobart art scene, the Colville Street Gallery is in the former Post Office building in Colville Street Battery Point.
Director Trudi Young's first major client is the well-known Tasmanian artist Peter Gouldthorpe, an award-winning illustrator and painter. Though the gallery's first show seems to follow a more traditional approach when inspected casually, neither Gouldthorpe nor other artists represented are followers of customary ‘traditional' expression.
Gouldthorpe is a painter of contemporary interpretations of the landscape, working in a manner not unlike the analytic technique the legendary Max Meldrum taught almost a century ago at the Victorian Gallery School in Melbourne . Post-modernism offers present art practices the opportunity to re-examine style forays into past expressions, extracting many beautiful and worthwhile interpretations that were trampled by the historic avalanche of modernism |
