Jack Courier

Jack Courier (1915–2007), also known as John Courier, was an Australian Modernist printmaker, painter and teacher.

Early life and education Courier was born in 1915 in Elwood, Victoria. As a young man he took various jobs including work as a salesman in country towns.

He studied at the school established by George Bell and Arnold Shore at 443 Bourke Street, Melbourne, which became a centre for modernist art in Melbourne. He exhibited with the George Bell Group in 1949 and with the Melbourne Contemporary Artists in 1952. An early review by The Age art critic of the exhibition of the George Bell Group in their annual exhibition at the Victorian Artists' Society's Gallery in Albert Street, East Melbourne, noted that Courier's painting The Red Chair and a Peter Cox painting, were works "by younger men that impress".

Career Like other Australian printmakers, including Fred Williams, Ian Armstrong, Janet Dawson and Robert Grieve, Courier went to study abroad. From 1950 to 1951 he travelled in Europe, then, funded by a British Council Bursary, returned to England from 1954 to 1956 to study painting, drawing and lithography with Lynton Lamb and Ceri Richards, and also etching at the Slade School. The conservative magazine The Bulletin wryly commented;"Jack Courier is a Melbourne artist who went to London and more-or-less starved there while he studied at the Slade School. He emerged therefrom with a technical equipment sufficient to enable him to produce lithographs and drawings of bits of old London with a line which is often heavy and unfeeling, but sometimes light and expressive. His oils have an elusive quality about them as if painted in the twilight." His friend and colleague Peter Jacobs organised the acquisition of Courier’s works by the National Gallery of Australia, where Roger Butler, a senior curator remarked that "Jack is arguably Australia’s finest stone lithographer..."

Teaching Courier taught at Caulfield Technical College, where he introduced the teaching of lithography; at Prahran College and Swinburne Technical College. The couple exhibited together and she was frequently a finalist in the Archibald Prize. Mary's daughter was Barbara Courier McLeish (born 1936).

Exhibitions

Solo 1957, 19–28 March: Peter Bray Gallery 1991, 28 November – 18 December: Eastgate Gallery 2009: Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum 1989: Jack Courier, lithographs and oils. Eastgate Gallery

Collections

National Gallery of Australia National Gallery of Victoria Castlemaine Art Museum Latrobe Valley Mildura Warrnambool

Awards 1975: Alice Springs Prize (print acquired)