Catherine Hunter | Justin O'Brien film | The Sacred Music of Colour

Justin O’Brien | The Sacred Music of Colour

“I love colour. I think in colour. I’ve even dreamed in colour” Justin O’Brien, 1961

Justin O’Brien, Self portrait 1939, Private Collection, Sydney

Australian artist Justin O’Brien (1917-1996) was born in Sydney but his life and the focus of his art was firmly based in Europe. No other Australian artist has been so committed to religious subjects and the art of the Italian Renaissance. O’Brien renounced formal religion in the mid-1950s and yet continued to be inspired by its stories and motifs.

An art student from the age of 13, O’Brien volunteered in the Second World War and was sent to Greece as a medical orderly. Taken prisoner of war, he was sent to Poland where he made some of his most important portraits, those of fellow prisoners. Back in Sydney, he began teaching art at Cranbrook School where his students included Peter Kingston and Martin Sharp.

In 1951, O’Brien won the inaugural Blake Prize for religious art with his painting The Virgin Enthroned, later acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1973, O’Brien’s painting The Raising of Lazarus entered the Vatican Museum Collection. By 1967, he had become a full time painter and moved permanently to Italy.

Justin O’Brien Window © Fiona McDougall

“Justin was destined to actually go and be near the source of his true inspiration which was European painting and in particular early Renaissance. For him the great art was an international language,” explains Barry Pearce, Emeritus Curator, Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Justin O’Brien - The Sacred Music of Colour first screened on ABC Compass, July 26. It includes interviews with Justin O’Brien, Emeritus Curator Barry Pearce, O’Brien’s former art students Martin Sharp and Peter Kingston, as well as members of the Scardamaglia family, O’Brien’s adopted Italian family. It was filmed in Sydney and Rome and features Justin O’Brien’s 2010 retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Director & Producer/Catherine Hunter, Camera & Editor/Bruce Inglis, Script editor/John Muldrew

The film was produced with the assistance of the Margaret Olley Art Trust, the Estate of Justin O’Brien, Cabrini Health and Cranbrook School.

REVIEWS| Bridget McManus, Sun Herald, May 2, 2022

“This loving look at the life and work of the late Sydney-born artist, Justin O’Brien, explains the long and winding process from inspiration to exhibition. Charting O’Brien’s POW experience, his artistic awakening in Rome, where he refined his interpretations of Italian Renaissance and Byzantine-inspired styles, and his influence as a high school art teacher of artists Martin Sharp and Peter Kingston, this is an important chapter of Australian modern art history.”

Sydney Morning Herald

"I love colour. I think in colour. I've even dreamed in colour." The quote that begins this profile of Australian artist Justin O'Brien sets the tone for an exploration of a man's lifelong devotion to the world's beauty, and the process of bringing it out on canvas. O'Brien's work owed a heavy debt to the masters of the European Renaissance, and this program celebrates the ways that he paid homage to the past greats he so admired while still infusing his paintings with a modern vitality. A lovely demonstration of the delights and consolations of art, via the visual "music" that O'Brien was so adept at composing.”