> Skip to content
  • Published: 1 August 2012
  • ISBN: 9781742748887
  • Imprint: Random House Australia
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 560

The Heart Garden

Sunday Reid and Heide




A captivating biography of Sunday Reed, the woman behind Australian modernist art.

Born into one of Melbourne's most prominent establishment families, Sunday Baillieu was expected to become a society princess. But this passionate individualist turned her back on upper-class privilege and created a life wholly her own. With her husband, John Reed, Sunday established Heide - a home and the focal point for the development of Australian modernism. In 1935, Sunday and John bought Heide, a modest weatherboard house in rural Heidelberg. Until their deaths in the early eighties, the Reeds lived there and cultivated Australia's most significant circle of artists, including Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, John Perceval, Joy Hester and Charles Blackman. In the words of Albert Tucker, Sunday was 'the magnetic force that drew us together, the eye...' While Sunday was a muse to several generations of Australian artists, Sidney Nolan reamined her lifelong obsession. Gifted, charismatic and visionary, Nolan was mesmerised by Sunday - and she by him. They were lovers for several tempestuous years. But Sunday was more than Nolan's muse. Award-winning biographer Janine Burke argues that she was crucial to his artistic development - preparing his painting materials, inspiring subject matter and perhaps guiding his hand while he painted the Ned Kelly series, executed on Heide's dining room table. Sunday was a demanding and intense woman, known as much for her irascibility as for her generosity. In this compelling biography, Burke draws a rich portrait of this comlex and brilliant woman who fuelled the fire of Australian modernism, and was at its heart.

  • Published: 1 August 2012
  • ISBN: 9781742748887
  • Imprint: Random House Australia
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 560

About the author

Janine Burke

Janine Burke is an art historian, curator and novelist. In 1977, she was the inaugural art history lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts. She published Australian Women Artists: 1840-1940 (1980) and won the 1987 Victorian Premier’s literary award for Second Sight. Her books on the Heide Circle include Joy Hester (1983) and The Heart Garden: Sunday Reed and Heide (2004). She wrote The Gods of Freud: Sigmund Freud's Art Collection (2006) and curated Freud and Eros: Love, Lust and Longing for the Freud Museum London (2014). More recently, Burke has focused on nature. After writing Nest: The Art of Birds (2012), she curated an exhibition of nests at McClelland Sculpture Park+Gallery. In 2016, she curated Human/Animal/Artist: Art Inspired by Animals there. She is Honorary Senior Fellow, Centre of Visual Arts, University of Melbourne.

Also by Janine Burke

See all

Praise for The Heart Garden

‘...evokes with subtlety and depth the influence that one woman can have on the artists and art of her beloved country.’ The Age