Eric Stewart

Eric Lewis Stewart (1907–1970) was an Australian outsider painter from Melbourne. Described as an “exile from any arts community”, he worked prolifically but in obscurity, painting privately in his own home while working as a night watchman. His merit was recognised posthumously by the Australian painter Clifton Pugh, who discovered his paintings in a junk shop and subsequently organised exhibitions for the late artist. Stewart was self-taught but was regarded by critics as an aberration in genre of naïve art, with some noting his works were more visually aligned with expressionism. Although he was not Aboriginal, Stewart's work drew primarily on Australian Aboriginal mythology.

Biography Little is known about the life of Eric L. Stewart. He was born in 1907 in Melbourne. Accounts described him as a quiet, uneducated and jovial man. Over the course of his life he held a range of trades, including farmer, butcher, bricklayer and wood merchant.

According to his daughters, Stewart was employed as a night watchman with the Postmaster-General's Department in Hughesdale for several decades. He continued working until only months before his death.

Posthumous discovery Several of Stewart's works were discovered by artist Clifton Pugh in a junk shop in Echuca, Victoria in early 1972. He had been accompanying the Victorian Labor Party leader Clyde Holding on a regional campaign tour. Pugh and Holding filled the government car with Stewart's dust-covered paintings.

Pugh publicly declared the unknown artist Eric L. Stewart to be a “primitive genius” in an article in Melbourne's The Age, expressing a desire to find him and help him.

Clifton Pugh had a raised profile at the time, having just won his second Archibald Prize for his portrait of Gough Whitlam. More of Stewart's paintings emerged following Pugh's publicity. It transpired that a Melbourne auction house had sold hundreds as a job lot, some months before Stewart's death in 1970, and that they were already widely disseminated. A short-term spike in private art market interest for Stewart's paintings coincided with the media attention.

News of Stewart's identity and death was revealed by one of his daughters, who contacted the newspaper The Sun following the publicity. Pugh expressed regret that Stewart had died in obscurity, but nevertheless proceeded to organise an exhibition of his works at Melbourne's Powell Street Gallery, opening in March 1972, and a second exhibition at Sydney's Macquarie Galleries in November 1972.

Work and influences Most of Eric Stewart's surviving paintings were of subjects drawn from Aboriginal cultural practices, hunting, mythology and Dreamtime narratives.

Stewart did not seem to paint for an audience aside from himself. Perhaps this lack of concern for the art market helps to explain why such expressive paintings were initially discovered in a second-hand shop. — Retrospective of Australian naïve art (2004) and the limited biographical information published at the time of his rediscovery did not indicate what his connection was to the subjects he painted. Handwritten notes on the reverse of Stewart's paintings indicate that his references on Aboriginal mythology came from published sources, including Myths and Legends of the Australian Aborigines (1930) by William Ramsay Smith, Brown Men and Red Sand (1948) by Charles Mountford, and Aboriginal Myths and Legends (1966) by Roland Robinson. The standard reference McCulloch's Encyclopaedia of Australian Art describes Stewart as an “interpreter” of Aboriginal legends rather than a practitioner of Aboriginal art.

Stylistically, Stewart used a rich impasto and a palette of subtle earth colours. His compositions were complex and fluid, characterised by sweeping brushstrokes and interlocking curved forms.

Critical appraisal Although Stewart's subject matter drew on Aboriginal mythology, critics did not consider his visual style to be derived from Aboriginal art. Poet and arts writer Barrie Reid noted possible affinities with Gauguin and speculated whether Stewart may have had any awareness of, or contact with, Australian modernist Danila Vassilieff.

Exhibitions Unbulleted list|Paintings by the late Eric L. Stewart (1972) Village Art, Toorak. |Eric L. Stewart (1972) Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne. |Raw and Compelling. Australian Naive Art - the continuing tradition (2004) Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Swan Hill (touring).