Frank Wesley: The Queensland years

Abstract A little-known piece of Queensland’s art history is that the Indian artist Frank Wesley lived and worked in Queensland for nearly thirty years. From Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Wesley completed his art studies in India, Japan and the United States. He won the competition to design the urn that would hold the ashes of Mahatma Gandhi and had paintings exhibited in the Vatican Museum in Rome in 1950. His Blue Madonna painting was reproduced on the first UNICEF Christmas card. Wesley spent the last third of his life in Nambour. While he may chiefly be considered a watercolourist in the Indian Lucknow style, his media and practice were far more diverse. This article seeks to provide a brief overview of the work achieved by Wesley over this time, featuring biblical and Christian themes, and also landscapes and figurative pieces in a wide range of media and styles from various traditions. Among these are styles that emerged in more distinctive ways during his Nambour years, including the incorporation of the human figure or the hand of God in the landscape after seeing Indigenous rock art, and also the contrasting designs for two stained-glass windows.