Blamey
The distinguished career of Sir Thomas Blamey (1884-1951) spanned two world wars, being Australia’s highest appointed army officer, and included a period as Victorian Chief Commissioner of Police. Although not without controversy, he is considered by some to be Australia’s greatest general. From the historic landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, to chief-of-staff to Sir John Monash in France in 1918, Blamey’s awards included the D.S.O., and Croix de Guerre, appointed C.M.G. in 1918 and C.B. in 1919.
At the start of the Second World War Blamey was promoted to Lieutenant General. By 1941 he was Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces in the Middle-East, when Ivor Hele painted his portrait, now in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. Promoted to General, in 1942 Blamey became Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Military Forces, and, under US General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of the Allied Land Forces South West Pacific Area. Appointed K.C.B. in 1941 and G.B.E. in 1943, he received the Greek Military Cross, the United States’ Distinguished Service Cross, and the Netherlands’ Grand Cross of the Order of Oranje-Nassau.
President of the Naval and Military Club from 1946 to 1949, his promotion to Field Marshall was followed by grave illness. He received his baton in hospital in September 1950, and died the following May. In 2001, as guest of honour at a function at the Naval and Military Club, William Dargie recalled painting this three quarter-length portrait with Blamey propped up in bed. Dressed in his Field-Marshall’s uniform, complete with decorations and blue service stripes, his baton, however, was placed upside-down, as it remains to this day. In 1969 Dargie painted a posthumous portrait of Blamey with baton the right way around. This later portrait, and a 1927 portrait painted by Bernhard Hall, is in the collection of the Australian War Memorial.
Official war artist and eight times winner of the Archibald prize, Dargie’s list of portraits of the famous is impressive if not a little formidable. From the iconic 1954 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II to the great Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira, his portraits cover his era like the proverbial ‘Who’s Who’. Of his Archibald winners, two were of military men – in 1942, Corporal Jim Gordon, VC, and for 1945, Lt-General Sir Edmund Herring, who served under Blamey in New Guinea. A bronze statue of Blamey by Raymond Ewers stands near Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance; and in Canberra Department of Defence buildings are grouped around Sir Thomas Blamey Square.
David Thomas