National Gallery Of Australia | Audio Tour | George.w.lambert Retrospective

This painting presents a group of people in a reflected image. They stand in the low-beamed living-room of Belwethers, a cottage in the village of Cranleigh. The former country cottage of Mrs Halford, Lambert’s patron and friend, had been taken over by her daughter Mary and her son-in-law Sir Edmund Davis after her death in 1915. Sir Edmund stands at the window in the background; his wife, dressed in black, sits at the table; a maid serves tea; Amy Lambert, dressed in blue, stands; Sir Edmund’s sister-in-law Amy Halford sits with her hands on her lap; and the artist looks out of the image in the foreground. The oak beams in the ceiling take up half the picture and become, in the reflection, curved instead of straight lines, causing the design to flow in a circle – disturbing the very solidity of the room. It is a jewel-like piece of painting, with the lustre of a looking-glass, in which Lambert explored the distinction between how things appear in the picture or in a mirror, or how they are in life itself. H