b'4The Art ofConstantRearrangementThe Joshua McClelland Print Room & Rathdowne GalleriesThe Joshua McClelland Print Room came to life when our father opened a small gallery in Little Collins Street, Melbourne, in 1927. When he died in 1956 our mother, Joan, took over the business. A few years later, our mother heard rumours that the trade had given her six months before folding. The gallery survivedand sometimes prosperedfor another sixty-two years, so there must have been something in the Joshua McClelland Print Rooms particular art of constant re-arrangement that made it the longest surviving, continuously functioning gallery in Melbourne and probably Australia. Our mother died in late 2017 at the age of 104 and we decided, in the wake of that loss, that we would begin the difficult task of closing down. This catalogue and auction, containing some very early acquisitions and some of our very recent ones, will be the final chapter and, we hope, a lasting remembrance of our late parents and the roles they played in the cultural life of the city.Our father had grown up in Flinders Street, in a large old house where the Herald and Weekly Times offices werewere various popular lunch places nearby, not to mention later built. He, and his younger brother, were thrown outthe Oriental and Occidental hotels. Among the frequent of the house for raffish behaviorracing their horses alongvisitors, the director of the National Gallery of Victoria, Swanston Street! He was obviously a spirited young man,Daryl Lindsay, would drop in to discuss a new acquisition. a fine combination of rebel and aesthete and it would appear that the Melbourne of the period, the early 20s,In those days, what was to become the print room was suited his temperament.used for special exhibitions. Then, in the early 1950s, His first venture, The Little Gallery, was opened in 1927when the bank needed to take over the premises, our in Little Collins Street, behind Georges Departmentfather decided to sell up the antique furniture side of the Store. Then, in the early 30s he moved to an upstairsbusiness and concentrate on using the basement as a room further down Little Collins Street. He told us it waspermanent gallery. hugely popular with his friends in winter as it had an openWhy did he call it The Print Room? We never really asked fireplace and it became something of a gathering placehim that question, but certainly, in the 1940s and 50s, for artists and dealers. Our fathers interests at that timethere was a climate of great respect for the print. There were antiquarian. The first exhibition was tantalizinglywas the fabulous print room at the NGV supervised by called Rare Lithographs and it was almost certainlyUrsula Hoff and it was a highlight of a fine arts course predominantly English and topographical images. to have tutorials in the print room and pour over the In 1936, the year our parents married, the gallery movedWilliam Blakes. The Australian Painters & Etchers Society, to 79 Collins Street, a long, narrow, street-level shop,established in the 1920s, was at its peak and many very light and with a beautiful faade, where furniture,collectors who bought from our gallery would include silver, porcelain and paintings were offered. Next door, atsharing their latest additions to their print cabinets with 81, was the downstairs print gallery and the storeroom.dinner guests. And it was during these years that a greater No.79 turned out to be a very convenient drop-in spot forappreciation of early Australian historical maps and prints the Collins Street doctors and other inhabitants of thatwas becoming evident. Among the artists exhibited at The part of town, and many of them became collectors andPrint Room in the 1940s and 50s were Lionel Lindsay, long-term clients. One could park right outside and thereJohn Shirlow, Sydney Long, Sydney Ure Smith, Penleigh Boyd, Napier Waller, Fred McCubbin and Arthur Boyd.'