Flowers and manliness: the flower paintings of George Lambert, Hans Heysen, and Arthur Streeton

Hans Heysen’s, George Lambert’s, and Arthur Streeton’s paintings are celebrated for their part in building a healthy national identity, and in the process they contributed to the social construction of Australian masculinity. But they also painted flowers and practised the feminine ideals of delicate work in interior settings. This paper discusses the flower paintings of Lambert, Heysen, and Streeton and theorises the cultural dynamics of manliness and the floral using historical evidence from the period in which they painted flowers. It speculates on the emotional and intellectual satisfaction that each gained from practising this already-feminised branch of still life painting and questions whether their flower paintings were a symbolic retreat into interiority brought about by the melancholy of the era and the circumstances of their lives.