H C Simpson and his popular art


Glenn R Cooke

Australiana, Vol 44 no 3, August 2022

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Herbert Clarke Simpson (1879–1966), Jacarandas, possibly the avenue in New Farm Park, watercolour on paper, signed H.C. Simpson and dated 1942

While the artist H. C. Simpson (1879–1966) depicted subjects such as Mount Warning in northern NSW, his output is emphatically linked with the early years of the ‘Gold Coast’ and specifically the resort towns of Coolangatta, Currumbin and Tweed Heads. Although his work is not held in particularly high regard artistically, thousands of Queensland homes treasured his original landscape paintings of favourite, unblemished scenes that brought back happy memories. Some collect his works, but many are passed down through families as nostalgic links to previous generations, a reminder of a Queensland and the NSW Northern Rivers which has been swept away by (over-)development.

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