Max Meldrum (1875-1955), artist, trained at the National Gallery School in Melbourne before leaving for France on an art scholarship in 1900. Abroad for thirteen years, he returned to Australia to extol the virtues of tonal painting - which he regarded as a science - writing and lecturing ceaselessly and combatively on the topic and amassing a band of dedicated adherents known as 'Meldrumites'. He opened an art school in Collins Street in 1915 and was elected president of the Victorian Artists' Society in 1916; over the next ten years, many students from the NGV School left it to join Meldrum's. His lecture 'The invariable truths of depictive art' was published in Max Meldrum His Art and Views in 1919. After more time in France, he returned to Melbourne to open a new Collins Street school in 1937; he won the Archibald in 1939 and 1940. Meldrum was pugnacious and made some powerful enemies, including Baldwin Spencer, who called him a 'conceited little megalomaniac'. His methods were loyally perpetuated through his students, notably Hayward Veal in Sydney and Percy Leason in Staten Island, USA. The Science of Appearances as Formulated and Taught by Max Meldrum was published in 1950.
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