QUEENSLAND CAMERA CLUB
ROSE SIMMONDS ARPS
DOB 26th JULY 1877 Islington, London, England
DOD 3rd JULY 1960 Auchenflower, Brisbane, Queensland
Information from Australian Dictionary of Biography by Keith Bradbury
Rose Simmonds, photographer, second daughter of Millice Culpin, medical practitioner and his wife Hannah Louisa, nee Muncey. The family migrated to Brisbane about 1891 and Dr Culpin established a practice at Taringa. Rose studied art with Godfrey Rivers at the Brisbane Technical College. On 30th March 1900 in her father's house she married with Baptist forms John Howard Simmonds (d.1955), a 37-year-old stonemason. John kept a photographic record of his commissioned headstones and maintained a darkroom at home for developing and printing negatives. Rose was soon processing her own photographs, mainly snapshots of her sons.
From about 1927 Mrs Rose Simmonds submitted photographs to the monthly competitions run by the Queensland Camera Club and the Australasian Photo-Review. Although her early entries in Queensland Camera Club competitions were ranked either first or second in the B-grade section, she quickly won awards in the A-grade division. She was elected to the club's committee in 1928. In May that year her 'Pear Blossom' was placed fourth in a special still-life contest run by the Australasian Photo-Review and in the August issue her 'Playground of the Shadows' came first. For twelve years her work regularly won prizes or received special mention in Australasian Photo-Review competitions, which attracted entries from such noted photographers as Harold Cazneaux and Max Dupain. The editor commented on her photograph 'Still Life' in 1929: this certainly would have had a prize but for the fact that Mrs Rose Simmonds won the competition with another fine print.
Her photographic interests were those of the pictorialist and her evolving style was guided by the artist's vision. Simmonds regularly attended monthly excursions to locations in south-east Queensland which were conducted by the Queensland Camera Club to provide members with inspiration and recreation. Through its competitions the club passed judgment on the work produced on these outings. Artists were invited to monthly meetings of the Queensland Camera Club to speak about accentuation, atmosphere, balance, gradation, genre, subordination, point of interest and suggestiveness. Simmonds's work was grounded in her knowledge of Queensland painting. 'Playground of the Shadows' owed much to the Impressionist style championed by William Grant in the 1920s; her well-known photographs, 'Morning Light on the Sand Dunes' (1930) and 'Last Rays on the Sand Dunes' (c.1940), had an affinity with the paintings of Kenneth Macqueen.
Simmonds's reputation won her selection in national photographic exhibitions, including one run by the Photographic Society of New South Wales in 1932 and another organized by that society, the Professional Photographers Association of New South Wales and the Sydney Camera Circle in 1938. An associate (1937) of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, she was also represented in an exhibition of pictorial photography held in Adelaide in 1940.
A collection of her photographs is held by the Queensland Art Gallery.
Rose Culpin was born in Islington in 1877. She was brought up in the United Kingdom by her parents Hannah Louise and Dr Millice Culpin. She and her parents emigrated to Australia around 1891 and her father established a medical practice at Taringa. She attended Brisbane Girls Grammar School and Brisbane Technical College, but she did not become interested in photography until after her marriage as her new husband, John Howard Simmonds. It is presumed that she was intrigued by her new husband's darkroom as he developed his own pictures of his stone masonry commissions.
Initially Simmonds took pictures of her sons but by 1928 she had been entering her pictures into monthly contests organized by the Queensland Camera Club and the Australasian Photo-Review. By August 1928 she was a committee member and, building on her knowledge of painting, her impressionistic photograph "Playground of the Shadows" took first place.
Her work reflected her artistic training and her style has been compared to Claude Monet. The University of Queensland compares her work to painters such as Arthur Streeton, Elioth Grüner and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Simmonds was taking photographs until the 1940s and in 1941 she had a solo exhibition of her work.
Simmonds died in Auchenflower, Queensland in 1960.
"PLAYGROUND OF THE SHADOWS"
First prize, A.P.-R. competition - August 1928
"PEAR BLOSSOM"
Fourth prize, A.P.-R. Special competition - Still Life - 1928
"QUEENSLAND SUMMER"
Third prize, A.P.-R. competition - December c.1928-29
"BEAUMONTIA GRANDIFLORA"
First prize, A.P.-R. competition - April c.1929
"ROSES"
Highly commended, A.P.-R. Special competition
STILL LIFE c.1929
"CAKE OR BISCUIT"
First prize, A.P.-R. Special competition
STILL LIFE c.1929
"SPRING"
Second prize, A.P.-R. competition - May c.1929
"RIVER OAKS"
First prize, A.P.-R. competition - February c.1929
"SUNSET AND A HILLTOP"
First prize, A.P.-R. competition - c.January 1929
"AT COOLUM BEACH"
Second prize, A.P.-R. Special competition
SHIPPING AND MARINE c.1929
"MORNING LIGHT ON THE SAND DUNES"
Second prize, A.P.-R. competition - April c.1929
"YELLOW BANKSIA"
Second prize, A.P.-R. Special competition
STILL LIFE c.1929
"SYDNEY"
Third prize, A.P.-R. Special competition
CHILD STUDY c.1929
"THE COW SHED"
First prize, A.P.-R. competition - May 1930
"THE FAIRY MELLALEUCA"
Fourth prize, A.P.-R. competition - June 1930
"MORNING AT COOCHI-MUDLO"
Highly Commended, A.P.-R. competition - February 1930
15th September 1930
Page 424 - Vol. 37 No. 9 Australasian Photo-Review
"NEAR BRISBANE"
Highly Commended, A.P.-R. Competition - April 1930
"NATIVE HANDWORK"
Highly Commended, A.P.-R. Special competition
STILL LIFE c.1931
"THIN CAPTAINS"
First, A.P.-R. Special competition
STILL LIFE c.1931
"THE BENT TREE"
Exhibited at the Victorian Salon of Photography c.1931
"MISCHIEF BREWING"
First, A.P.-R. Special competition
CHILD STUDY c.1931
"LOQUATS"
15th September 1930
Page 442 - Vol. 37 No. 9 Australasian Photo-Review
"OLD CHINA"
Highly Commended, A.P.-R. Special Competition - Still Life
"BOY SCOUTS SISTER"
"POTTERY AND FANS"
"COMPOSITION"
"A GREY DAY"
"BLUE WATERLILIES"
First, A.P.-R. Special Competition - Still Life c. 1933
"COLD WATER AND FRUIT"
"FUNGUS"
Third, A.P.-R. Competition
July 1933
"COLONNADE"
First, A.P.-R. Competition
June 1934
"SUNLIT GUMS"
Third, A.P.-R. Competition
December 1934
"PATTERN"
First, A.P.-R. Special Competition - Still Life
c. 1935
"THE TOP OF THE PINCH"
Second, A.P.-R. Competition
January 1935
"TIED UP"
Second, A.P.-R. Competition
April 1935
"TALL AND STATELY"
Fifth, A.P.-R. Competition
November 1935
1st February 1937
Page 80 - Vol. 44 No. 2 Australasian Photo-Review
"COOLING OFF"
Second, A.P.-R. Competition - June 1935
"GETTING OUT"
First, A.P.-R. Special Competition - Child Study - 1937
"LATE AFTERNOON ON THE HILL"
Third, A.P.-R. Competition - July 1937
The following is from the QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY | GALLERY OF MODERN ART web site.
Rose Simmonds photography has an important position in the Queensland Pictorialist photography movement. Emerging directly from the International Pictorialist movement which began in England and France at the end of the nineteenth century, local practitioners of this style continued to work in a manner which encouraged the acceptance of photography as a valid art-form. To this end, they explored techniques and processes which endowed their photographs with a more painterly quality. The inherent ability of the photographic image to reproduce a scene with accuracy and sharp detail was suppressed in favor of soft-focus and low-toned prints, producing romanticized images of the subject.
Unlike Pictorialist photographers in Sydney and Melbourne who chose the city as a recurring subject, Queensland Pictorialists favored images of the rural landscape, waterways and the coastline, revealing a nostalgia for Australia’s pastoral past depicting scenes which avoid emphasis of specific detail in favor of the generic and atmospheric.
Although Simmonds is best known for her work in the Pictorialist style, some of her photographs also reveal modernist tendencies. Viewed as a whole, Simmonds photographic work presents an insight into photography in Australia.
SHADOWS c.1930
SABBATH ON THE FARM c.1930
THE VALLEY FARM, CURRUMBIN c.1934-36
THE THREE WITCHES c.1937
EDGE OF THE FOREST AT SUNRISE c.1937
LAST RAYS ON THE SAND DUNES c.1939-40
STORM c.1940
SHADOW ON THE TENT c.1940