Loretta Barnard
Stolen From Grace
Shivering into splinters, the glass shimmied its way
to the terrazzo, leaving a sea of cruel tinsel
winking in the torch beam
shuddering the sheeny blackness.
From the weeping walls marigolds were plundered
daffodils, zinnias, a kitchen corner swaddled
with light, taken in the mangled darkness
by swift-shadowed thieves
with no time for flannel-flowered reveries.
In Turramurra, Grace’s tears,
like woebegone raindrops, snaked through
the runnelled dry creeks of her timeworn cheeks
like runny paint on this moment’s canvas,
pigments wept away swept away.
Figure in the window, the building of the Bridge,
cathedral towers and paths beneath the trees
her paintings now phantoms, conjured by stealth
to lord knows where. Never a trace to chase,
nary a notion or merest whiff of their clandestine fate;
will it ever, never, be known on whose wicked walls
Grace’s works now sit in secrecy?
Grace Cossington Smith (1892-1984) was a significant and pioneering Australian
modernist artist known for painting, in vibrant colours, scenes of Sydney urban and
suburban life. On 4 April 1977, when Grace was 85, 28 of her small works were stolen
from Macquarie Galleries in King Street, Sydney in a well-planned heist. The
whereabouts of the paintings remain a mystery to this day.