Upcoming & Recent books from The Beagle Press

The Beagle Press was established in 1980 by Lou Klepac, to publish books on Australian art and has published and produced well over 100 fine art books to date. The Beagle Press has produced books for many public institutions including the Art Gallery of New South Wales; Powerhouse Museum; National Library of Australia; and many leading artists. A high standard of quality and production is a hallmark of all Beagle Press books.

Greg Hansell The Purity of Australian Light

Greg Hansell is a landscape painter known for his exclusive devotion to pastels, some of which he makes himself. He is best known for his corrugated iron subject matter which features frequently in his work. He has been hung in the Art Gallery of New South Wales Wynne Prize numerous times and is twice winner of the Mosman Art Prize. This book covers Hansell’s work from 1982 to the present day. It has an introduction by Lou Klepac who selected the works, an essay by Carol Roberts, and recollections and notes by the artist.

Sickert drawings 2022 by Lou Klepac  OUT NOW

After an important apprenticeship with Whistler, Sickert changed his allegiance to Degas and adopted his method of painting from drawings. Drawing became the activity by which Sickert extracted what he called the visual facts enabling him to paint from drawings in the studio.

Sickert investigated the visible world, making innumerable notes on any scrap of paper; he also made detailed drawings as studies for his paintings. It is these drawings which are the subject of this book – drawings that are directly connected to some of his most important paintings, some of which are also reproduced.

The text is in two parts, The Artist’s Progress through the eyes of his contemporaries and The Painter’s Eye, which examines Sickert’s lifelong quest to find the best way to use oil paint and how drawings were made as blueprints for the paintings. As Sickert has written widely about drawing, the book contains a series of relevant passages from his critical writings.

Hardcover  |  228 pages |  290 x 280 mm 

The Untold Story of William Sham  OUT NOW

Sue Walker tells the story of her magazine editor grandfather against the larger backdrop of Australian history and cultural growth. William Shum was a pioneer in Australian magazines, as founding editor of (The) New Idea in 1902, and then Australian Home Beautiful in 1926.
As founding editor of New Idea and then Australian Home Beautiful (roles he held for over four decades from 1902-1946), William Shum had an extraordinary influence on people’s lives through the crucial years when modern Australia was being formed. His impact on the homes, gardens and lives of people from all walks of life was immense, yet he remains an unknown figure.
Shum led his readers through a time of great change. He encouraged people to break with traditional thinking about their homes and gardens and be open to ideas more appropriate to a new country. Australia, as we know it today, was taking shape, and Australian Home Beautiful led the way.
Beautifully illustrated, with rich visual support for the text, the book contains many of Home Beautiful’s memorable hand painted covers, in addition to some of Shum’s wonderfully spontaneous photographs of family life in the early decades of the 20th century.

Murray Walker  OUT NOW

Murray Walker recycles, copies, steals and reclaims that which came before him to create a new reality, one which distinctly bears his hallmark, but retains traces of earlier makers. As an artist, he is a boundary rider, one who embraces street art, graffiti and folk crafts, yet remains an old-fashioned maker of beautifully crafted pictures that are anchored in the conventions of the old masters.