Judy Cassab: A Portrait

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J U D Y

a portrait

C A S S A B

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J U D Y

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a portrait B R E N D A

N I A L L

a sue hines book ALLEN

&

UNWIN

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The author has made every attempt to locate and contact the holders of copyright to material in this book. Any further information should be sent to the publisher. First published in 2005 Copyright © Brenda Niall 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. A Sue Hines Book Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Niall, Brenda. Judy Cassab: a portrait. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 1 74114 474 4. 1. Cassab, Judy, 1920 – . 2. Portrait painters – Australia – Biography. I. Title. 759.994 Text design by Sandra Nobes Typesetting by Tou-Can Design Index by Frances O’Neill Printed in Australia by Griffin Press 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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C O N T E N T S

Author’s Note

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Map

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CHAPTER ONE

The Lost Childhood

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CHAPTER TWO

Lovers and Friends

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In Hiding

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Under Siege

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Displaced Persons

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CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE

The Offshore Island

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Brave New World

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Finding the Centre

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CHAPTER NINE

Deserts and Palaces

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The Studio Door

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Public Self

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CHAPTER TWELVE

The Private Self

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Echoes and Hauntings

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Masks and Mirrors

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The Last Witness

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CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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APPENDIX I

APPENDIX II

APPENDIX III

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Afterword

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Selected Solo Shows

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Prizes and Distinctions

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Representations

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Acknowledgements

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Illustration Credits

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Index

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A U T H O R ’ S

N O T E

Because the central figure in this story appears first in today’s Sydney, I have from the beginning called her by the name she has chosen to use since coming to Australia in 1951. In Hungary, where by convention the surname precedes the given name, she was Kaszab Judit. For consistency and ease of reference for an Englishspeaking readership, I have used ‘Judy Cassab’ throughout, with two exceptions. Readers will sometimes find the informal ‘Juci’, when family members are quoted, or ‘Jucókám’, which corresponds with ‘my Judy’ and was often used by her husband. Other Hungarian names appear in the form generally used in their lifetime. Judy’s uncles, formally known as Gyula and István, appear in their everyday usage as Gyuszi and Pista. The English counterparts of their names, Julius and Stephen, are irrelevant, because they were never named in that way. Judy Cassab’s husband, Kämpfner János (informally Jancsi), presents a slightly different problem. On arrival in Australia he used ‘John’ for official purposes, but to friends and acquaintances as well as to his wife and family, he was always Jancsi (which in Australian pronunciation became ‘Yonchi’). Accordingly I have used ‘John Kämpfner’ only when quoting.

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There are further complexities in naming the town in which Judy grew up. She invariably calls it by its Hungarian name, Beregszász. But within the period 1920 –1938, after the subCarpathian region was taken from Hungary to become part of the Czechoslovak Republic, its official name was Berehovo. After 1945, when the region was annexed by the Soviet Union, it became (in the Cyrillic form) Beregovo and it retains that name today as part of the Ukraine. Similarly, the Hungarian town of Munkács, where the Kämpfners lived after their marriage, was Mukˇcaevo under Czechoslovak rule and Mukachevo under the USSR. Rather than change the names with each reversal of history I have used the Hungarian forms throughout. It is worth noting also that sub-Carpathia, as seen from inside Hungary, from the west, became trans-Carpathia, as seen from the east, from beyond the mountains, and thus was made to represent the view from Moscow or Kiev.The map (pages x–xi), which shows the geographical vulnerability of the region, may help readers to interpret its history.

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Chapter One T H E

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A huge wind blew us all around the world, Judy Cassab says. To

Venezuela and Chile, to New York and Los Angeles, to Paris and London and Tel Aviv; and to Sydney where Judy herself has lived for half a century: all the friends of her Hungarian childhood are dispersed. Their numbers dwindle year by year, but they are still a community, joined by memories. ‘If the phone rings and it’s someone from Beregszász, and I don’t even know the name, I say “come to lunch”’. And every Friday night many of them light candles, as Judy does, to remember the fallen leaves: the dead of Beregzsász. In this small town on the slopes of the Carpathian mountains she grew up in her grandmother’s house: a cherished and gifted child, with all the world before her. The Beregszász remembered by its scattered survivors no longer exists. Judy took in that knowledge in March 1945, when

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she returned from war-shattered Budapest, hoping that somehow her own family—mother, grandmother, stepfather, uncle—might have come back from Auschwitz. They had not returned and she never knew just when or how they died. In Budapest where she had lived in hiding, separated from her husband, both of them hunted down because they were Jews, she had endured near starvation, slept in cellars while Allied bombs fell, seen houses topple and bodies strewn casually in the streets. She had seen the Germans leave, killing and destroying as they retreated, while the incoming Russians, the liberators, in drunken rampages stole and raped. But for her, the worst of all was to go home to Beregszász and find it intact but emptied of all the life that gave it meaning: That was the most horrible of all experiences because after the burning houses and the broken windows and the dead bodies in Budapest, we found a town which was completely intact. Every house was as beautiful as I remembered, every pavement and blade of grass, but not a living soul of the Jews was visible. No one [had come] back at that time and I went to see my grandmother’s house. The windows and doors were taken out. There was horse manure on the parquet floor. The firestoves were shattered in the corners, the chandeliers were hanging on trees in the garden. Not a matchstick, not a piece of furniture was inside. Slowly people began to trickle in [from the camps].They brought news that they had seen my mother, my grandmother, told that they had to go to the left, that meant the gas chambers. But I didn’t want to believe it yet.

Later, she had to believe it. After that first return she never went back to Beregszász. She revisited Vienna, where she was born in 1920, and Prague, where she was an art student in 1938 when Hitler’s troops marched in. She has been back many times to Budapest, where she lived under false papers during 1944, where she was reunited with

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her husband, where her two sons were born. And in Budapest, in 2003, she was an internationally acclaimed painter, honoured with an exhibition at the Vasarely Múzeum. Beregszász is her lost Atlantis: for her there is nothing to revisit. The sub-Carpathian region was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945 and became part of the Ukraine when the USSR was dismantled in 1991. These political changes cut it off from other remnants of the Austro-Hungarian empire to which it once belonged, so that it was inaccessible for many years. Yet for Judy Cassab these changes and barriers were not what kept her from going home. Quite simply, that most important home, which she describes as the source of her being, does not exist. Although Beregszász holds her best and most powerful memories, it was not Judy’s birthplace, and she did not make her home there until she was twelve. Born in Vienna on 15 August 1920 to Hungarian parents Imre and Ilona Kaszab (in Hungarian usage Kaszab Imre, Kaszab Ilona), she was named Judit and known in the family as Juci. Imre belonged to a rich and influential Jewish family, well known for generosity in public causes. The Jewish Hospital in Budapest, the Kaszab Klinik, was one of their endowments. Imre, however, did not fit the family model of success. With good looks, charm and wit, as well as a talent for writing light verse, he would have liked a career in the arts. ‘He should have been a cabaret song writer—something like that.’ He served with the German forces in the First World War, and soon afterwards married 18-year-old Ilona Kont, daughter of a prosperous Jewish family in Beregszász. Ilona, or Ilus, as she was known, brought a large dowry, with which (probably also with Kaszab family backing) Imre set himself up in Vienna as an importer of foreign cars. He rented elegant showrooms in which sleek and stylish Bugattis and Lagondas waited for rich buyers. But he was never a businessman; and in the shaky postwar economy of Vienna the enterprise was doomed. The only child of the marriage, Judy experienced enough of

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her father’s affluent days to remember Persian carpets in the Vienna apartment, winter holidays in the snow at Reichenau, and her father’s shining Bugatti waiting at the railway station among humbler cars when she and her mother came back from visits to Beregszász. She had singing and piano lessons from the age of five; and the Fräulein who doubled the role of nanny and first teacher guaranteed that she would speak perfect German before she went to school. Her love of music came from both parents; and among her most enduring memories was that of her mother, singing Schubert lieder. ‘She had the most beautiful voice—and it was trained—and she could have been a professional singer, but there was never a thought of a career’. A great-aunt, according to family tradition, had been a promising student of Franz Liszt, but for her too it was assumed that a woman’s musical talent could be expressed only at home. By the time Judy was nine her father’s expansive days in Vienna were over. In the postwar decade of high unemployment and political instability Vienna had retained its seductive charm. The Opera House, the coffee houses, the leisured women in their furs and jewels, the well-dressed children in the parks attended by neat and watchful nannies, all spoke of luxury and pleasure. But with the Austrian currency devaluing at a terrifying rate and a world depression looming, importing luxury cars was a high risk, compounded by Imre Kaszab’s love of fine living and his vagueness about basic business routine. His debts mounted, his wife’s dowry was swallowed up, and in 1929 he was close to bankruptcy. He took his wife and child back to Budapest, where they lived for about three years in one room in a boarding house. Judy has few memories of this period, nor does her Viennese childhood exist for her except in the most fragmentary way. Even the holidays in the snow, she thinks, might have been brought to mind for her through seeing photographs at a later time. For her, life began when her parents separated and she went home with her mother to Beregszász.

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To retain so few memories of the early years of life is unusual. Could Judy have experienced such unhappiness during the insecure period in Budapest as to block it out of her mind, along with the earlier years? Between the world of the Bugatti and the Persian rugs in Vienna and the shabby boarding house in Budapest, there is surely an abyss for a sensitive child.Three meals a day were supplied, so there can have been little for Ilus to do, beyond the care of her daughter. Ilus always suffered from depression, and this must have had its effect on Judy as well as on the marriage. Judy speaks gently of her mother, saying only that she ‘was not a fighter’, not equipped by disposition or training to stay with her husband and struggle in poverty. Only once in Judy’s diaries is there a discordant note. Pressed by her sons to reach back into her childhood, Judy ‘slowly recalled that my grandmother was always silent although she had an objectionable family around her’: My mother who left my father with whom my life would have been a struggle, and came home with me into the lukewarm bath. She had boyfriends, she slept till noon, and both of us must have been a drain [on the grandmother]. Gyuszi and Pista [Judy’s uncles] were hostile brothers, Gyuszi grabbing everything while Pista was vulnerable and defenceless.

The devastating image of the lukewarm bath suggests that Ilus made the wrong decision. Struggle would have been better, it seems, for both mother and daughter. But elsewhere Judy vehemently denied having lost anything in going to Beregszász. Imre was ‘a pal’ rather than a father, charming and affectionate, but not a source of strength. The separation was managed with the least possible friction; going home to Ilus’s mother was presented as a temporary measure. The divorce came later, and was not done in anger. Imre’s relationship with his former wife remained friendly, and when he

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came to Beregszász to see his daughter, as he did once or twice a year, he stayed in the grandmother’s house.When it was known that he had a girlfriend (the beautiful Lili whom he later married) Ilus spoke of ‘that woman’ as though she was no more than a temporary annoyance. A photograph of a teenage Judy was taken, in which she stands arm in arm with both parents, as if the family group were still intact. In 1930s Beregszász, separation was rare, as was divorce. When she started school Judy felt some awkwardness about her situation. She was defensive about her father, and in compensation she would boast about him. Proud of his good looks and charm, she made the best of his occupation: ‘He was trying to make some kind of washing powder to be used in cinemas, so I said he was an inventor’. This was her own idea: an acceptable version to give to her friends at school. At home she heard no criticism of Imre, but ‘I knew enough to know that it was not he who took responsibility’, Judy said. Not to speak of friction, not to express disapproval, was the family style. So far as Judy knew, her grandmother ‘never said a word’ of disappointment at the failure of her daughter’s marriage. It is hard to believe that it was not discussed between adult members of the household, but no one made Judy feel that she was a burden, or that her father had let them all down. She herself insisted that she did not miss her father because at Beregszász she had her two uncles, her mother’s brothers, to fill the fatherly role. ‘I never missed [my father] because I never had him’. After the insecurity and the cramped conditions of the Budapest lodgings, the house at Beregszász, with its solid comfort and its large, beautiful garden, was a paradise. A six-roomed house on the main street, with terraces at back and front, it placed the Konts as one of the best-established of the well-to-do families in the town. Its undisputed and absolute ruler was Judy’s widowed

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grandmother, Berta Kont. Dressed in black, with high-buttoned black boots and a checked woollen shawl, her grey hair worn in an uncompromising bun, she seemed always to be tranquil and confident. ‘You knew she was the boss’, but she never spoke sharply. And yet the household over which she presided had its share of unhappiness and frustration.When Ilus Kaszab came home with her young daughter, she was returning to a household group which had scarcely changed since she left it to marry. Her two brothers, Gyuszi and Pista, were still there, unmarried, and her younger sister Ami, divorced after a short-lived childless marriage, had also come home. The brothers, who both worked in the family brick factory, ‘were wonderful to me, but not to each other’, Judy said. The sisters, Ilus and Ami, got on well with one another, but not so well with their mother. Her unspoken disappointment about their failed marriages made a barrier. At the time Judy had no conscious awareness of underlying discontents. As an only child, and for many years the only grandchild and only niece, she felt the warmth of unqualified love (‘everyone was adoring me’) and knew that her talents gave pleasure. Her mother called her a ‘Sonnenkind’—a child of sunshine—because of her buoyant disposition; and it is easy to imagine that for the whole household Judy carried a burden in being its main source of hope and happiness: the only one who could lift the spirits of them all. Thinking in later years about her mother’s daily routine, Judy was horrified. Ilus would sleep till ten in the morning, or even till midday, but emerge still tired. She would have breakfast in her dressing-gown before getting ready for a stroll on the Corso—the main street of the town—where other well-dressed young women would also be taking the air. Ilus was not especially interested in being fashionable (‘she had good clothes in the wardrobe which she did not wear’) but it was something to do. Home to family lunch, then a siesta, when she would sleep or read, then out again to play cards.

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Home for dinner, and then she would go out again, this time to one of the coffee-houses, where she would spend the evening. The grandmother directed the servants; a nanny looked after Judy. There was nothing that Ilus needed to do. Privately educated, with a year at finishing school in Switzerland, she had been prepared only for marriage, with tuition in music and languages seen as assets in making the right choice. Her beautiful voice, perfectly suited to sing lieder by Schubert and Schumann, was an ornament for Beregszász society. Judy was always an enchanted listener, but as she now remembers her mother’s high intelligence and exceptional musical ability it seems like unimaginable waste and boredom. As the only child in a household of five adults Judy could have been lonely. But she was included in everything, and she thrived on the talk of books and ideas, music and theatre. Her grandmother was ‘a simple soul’, who kept strict accounts, knew how every penny was spent, and whose passion for order was seen every night when she covered the furniture in dust sheets, even though there was no dust. Frugal in small ways, she kept a hospitable house and one of her rituals was to put out little heaps of coins for the beggars of the district who did their rounds each week. The management of the Kont brick factory, founded by her husband, was left to her sons, but with both of them living at home, its ups and downs would have been known to the whole group. When an overdraft was needed it was Ilus who went to see the bank manager; she was always at her best in a crisis and she was very charming. Gyuszi, who was the senior partner, was restless. A frustrated intellectual, he travelled often, thought about the state of the world, and worked on a book which he called ‘Pan Europa’ in which he advocated a federation of European states—something like today’s European Union. At midday they all came together for family dinner: Gyuszi and Pista, Ilus and Ami, Judy and her grandmother. Over a solid meal of soup, roast meat, salad and a cake, they talked

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about all kinds of things: about music, about plays they had seen, concerts and opera, the books they were reading. All except the grandmother read widely, and Judy took to books as a matter of course. Her first favourite was Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ story of a little boy, heir of a titled English family, who was lost in the jungle and learned all the skills of the animal world. She was in love with Tarzan, ‘though I knew he wasn’t real’. Although Beregszász was a small town, and geographically a little off the map, it was culturally rich, and the Kont family took advantage of everything it offered. There was a concert hall for music and a playhouse where companies from Budapest regularly performed plays, opera and operetta. Every Saturday, after midday dinner, Judy would sit beside Gyuszi Kont to listen to the weekly program of music broadcast from Budapest radio. She heard recordings from the foremost pianists and violinists of the day, and the famous voices of Caruso and Galli-Curci. Judy’s aunt Ami made a late bid for a career. Like Ilus she had been educated at home, with no thought of university entrance. At the age of twenty-five, with her brief marriage behind her, Ami decided that she would study medicine. Claiming a quiet space in her mother’s house, she worked hard and passed matriculation. Just as the way was clear for her to go to medical school in Prague, Ami developed meningitis. It may be that when she recovered the impulse had spent itself, or that the prospect of a second marriage took precedence. At any rate Ami married and left Beregszász for Egypt where her daughter Maya was born in 1934. For Gyuszi and Pista, lingering in their mother’s house had its difficulties; they would not defy her by making an unsuitable marriage and their affairs had to be discreet. In a family photograph of the Kont household the dark-eyed sisters Ilus and Ami link arms affectionately with 14-year-old Judy, while Pista, well dressed, handsome, slightly balding, stands close to the young women, his hands resting on

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Ami’s shoulders. On the other side, a little apart, is Gyuszi, short and bulky, his head too large for his body, his jacket too tightly buttoned; and his stance suggesting a refusal to be grouped. Seated at the centre, Berta Kont embodies the tranquil authority under which her sons and daughters lived into middle age. Yet the family group in which Judy grew up was not static: the grandmother was its still centre but the others came and went. After her marriage, so long as travel was possible, Ami brought her husband and child home from Egypt for an annual holiday. Gyuszi bought a car (with a cushion in the driver’s seat to make him look taller) and was often in Budapest where he was thought to have girlfriends and where eventually he met his future wife. He visited Israel (then Palestine) and for some British royal occasion (perhaps the coronation of George VI in 1937) he took a flat in London and rented space at the windows that overlooked the route of the ceremonial procession. From holidays in France and Italy Ilus brought back stories of Paris as the centre of the world of art, and her postcards from the Uffizi and the Pitti galleries were Judy’s first glimpses of great paintings. These were the more important because Beregszász had no gallery, and the only paintings on the walls of the Kont house were bought from a travelling salesman. Judy soon recognised them as kitsch, though she would not then have known the word. When Judy and Ilus came to live at Beregszász there were adjustments to be made which went beyond their being enfolded in the Kont household.The years in Vienna had made Judy as fluent in German as in Hungarian, her mother tongue, but she had to learn Czech before entering high school. Although the language of instruction was Hungarian, Czech was a compulsory subject and Judy needed three months’ coaching to catch up.This was one small consequence of the huge political upheavals which followed the First World War. The defeated Austro-Hungarian empire was stripped of its territories. For all its palatial buildings the Vienna of

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Judy’s early years was no longer an imperial centre. When the victorious allies redrew the map of Europe in the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, Hungary was one of the losers. The newly established Czechoslovak Republic was given Hungary’s sub-Carpathian region, which included Beregszász. The change in nationhood was not the first nor the last for Beregszász, which from 1920 went under a new name, Berehovo. It is rightly described as a mapmaker’s nightmare. One story sums it up: A man from Berehovo arrives at the gates of heaven. ‘Before you can enter’, says the guardian angel, ‘you have to tell us the story of your life’. ‘Well’, the man replies, ‘I was born in the AustroHungarian Empire to decent and God-fearing parents, received my education in Czechoslovakia and started to work as an apprentice in Hungary. For a time I also worked in Germany, but I raised my own family and did most of my life’s work in the Soviet Union’. The angel was impressed. ‘You certainly travelled and moved about a great deal.’ ‘Oh, no’, the man protested. ‘I never left Berehovo.’

The story did not end there. After the breakup of the Soviet Union the region became the trans-Carpathian Province of the Ukraine, and Beregszász (Berehovo to the Czechs, Beregovo to the Russians) had to accept another political system. From the viewpoint of the Konts and other Jewish families the twenty years of Czechoslovak rule was a happy time. Raising the Hungarian national flag was forbidden, as was the singing of the national anthem. But, Judy said, ‘you could stand in the town centre if you wanted to, and make a speech attacking [President] Masaryk, and nothing would happen. It was as free as the Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park’. In Beregszász (as the Konts continued to call the newly named town) the imposition of the Czech language was more notional than real.

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Apart from a few newly arrived officials nobody spoke it. The law courts and town hall administration continued as before, in Hungarian; so did the elementary schools. Having to learn Czech in high school seemed to Judy no more onerous than compulsory French. She knew that on the other side of the newly drawn border with Hungary anti-Semitic laws were beginning to bite. But at home in Beregszász there seemed no contradiction between being Hungarian and Jewish under the liberal Czechoslovak regime. Looking back, Judy Cassab and others from Beregszász spoke of the Czechoslovak years with unqualified praise. Yet for many it was a shock to be no longer part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. To be summarily handed over to the new order was an offence to Hungarian pride. Those who had grown up during the long reign of Emperor Franz Joseph were accustomed to seeing his whitewhiskered grandfatherly image on the walls of houses and shops, an emblem of stability, a unifying presence. Nationalist tensions simmered in the region to which Beregszász belonged, even though the town itself seemed tranquil. The sub-Carpathian region was home not only to Hungarians or Magyars, but to Ukrainians of the Russian Orthodox faith, German Catholics from Swabia and from the Austrian Tyrol, and itinerant Gypsies who camped on the outskirts of villages and did casual seasonal work. There were Romanians and Turks, remnants of earlier migrations. In Beregszász, where you could buy Turkish ice-cream, and where the finest vegetables were grown by Bulgarians, the largest single group was made up of the descendants of Jews who had come in a long sequence of migrations, dating back to the fourteenth century. And for the Jews of sub-Carpathia, the change from Hungarian to Czechoslovak rule was a temporary bulwark against anti-Semitism. Although the Austro-Hungarian Empire had given its Jewish population full citizenship in 1867, anti-Semitism did not vanish and during the 1920s it would surface everywhere.

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The Czechoslovak Republic under the liberal President Tomáˇs Masaryk guaranteed the civil and religious rights of Jews which elsewhere were being extinguished. If the Jews of Beregszász had still been ruled from Budapest in 1922 they would have been subject to a new law, known as the numerus clausus, which set a quota on Jews who sought university enrolment. Worse was to follow. But for the Kont family, sure of their place in Beregszász for several generations, it was possible to ignore the danger signs and flourish under the Czechoslovak regime without losing the cultural links with Budapest. Their new capital, Prague, was much farther away. Jews could study there if they wished, as Judy would do in 1938. But in 1932, when she entered high school in Beregszász, she had no thought of limitation. She saw the town at its happiest and most prosperous, after more than half a century in which her family and other Jews had contributed to the general good while enjoying full personal, economic, legal and social rights. Her younger contemporary Hugo Gryn (later Rabbi Gryn) remembered Beregszász between the wars as a busy, thriving community: ‘a beehive on a balmy summer day’. Since the late nineteenth century Jews had been leaders in the town. There had been Jewish judges, doctors, mayors, city and district engineers. Prosperity came with the establishment of three large brick factories, two flour mills and a modern saw mill. As well as the main railway which linked the town with Budapest and other European towns and cities there was a narrow-gauge line which brought timber from the mountains. There was widespread poverty in the neighbouring villages, where it was common for men on their way to work and children going to school to carry their shoes so as to make the leather last longer. Yet the town itself showed its wellbeing in many ways. Three big churches, Catholic, Protestant and Russian Orthodox, had gleaming spires and well-kept gardens while the Great Synagogue in the town centre, set in a large courtyard, was magnificent inside and outside.

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There was a modern, well-equipped hospital, a good library, and a bookshop which stocked all the latest works as well as the classics. Market days were busy, the produce stalls piled high. Yet on market days the groups of poorly dressed labourers waiting in the hope of being chosen for casual work in the town gave evidence that Beregszász was an island of prosperity in a region where many struggled to survive. On market day, too, on the same cart which carried the corn and potatoes, peasants with sickness in the family would place a mattress on which the sick one could be taken to the doctor. Looking from her window, Judy would see these mattressladen carts outside the house opposite, where their family doctor and friend Sanyi Mandel, ‘a wonderful man, a dedicated healer’, would give these patients whatever help he could. As owners of one of the town’s three brick factories, the Konts were important employers of labour. They also owned one of the many vineyards which flourished in the region, sunny and sheltered by the mountains. Well educated and travelled, the Konts had no reason to feel insecure, nor to be especially conscious of being Jewish. Like many other families assimilated over time, they felt alien from the wearers of kaftans with their sidelocks and fringes and strict observances. The fact that a Kont paternal grandfather had been a rabbi was a source of pride, but his most obvious legacy was a respect for learning. The family could not be said to be part of a minority, because in a town of 20 000 there were about 8000 Jews. As well as its Great Synagogue, the town had six other synagogues and many prayer houses. But the Konts belonged only marginally to the faith. Judy’s grandmother went to the synagogue once a year: the others did not go at all. They fasted for Yom Kippur, but they kept Christmas as a holiday. Judy always had her own Christmas tree, complete with silver bells and angels as well as presents, just like those in the houses of her Christian schoolfriends. Her father, a self-declared atheist, had not wanted her to be brought up Jewish; it

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was only because her mother insisted on it that she had any knowledge of the faith. Even so, it was minimal. ‘How I ever became religious is a mystery.’ She believed in a supreme being and she found strength in a lifelong habit of prayer, but doctrines meant little or nothing. She was unaware of the anti-Semitism which would later tear all their lives apart. All she remembered was the level of casually accepted prejudice revealed by a Catholic schoolfriend who asked her home to visit, and afterwards reported her mother’s verdict: ‘She’s Jewish but she’s a very nice girl’. In beliefs and attitudes the Kont family was typical of the assimilated Austro-Hungarian Jewish middle class. Unlike Polish and Russian Jews who did not achieve full emancipation until the mid-twentieth century, the Austro-Hungarian Jews had been part of the mainstream culture for generations. Religious orthodoxy in sub-Carpathia was practised more widely among the poor and the recently arrived groups (such as those from Galicia) than among the established families like the Konts. Judy’s sense of difference had nothing to do with being Jewish. When she said of her childhood, ‘I never quite belonged’, she was thinking of other distinctions. In Budapest she had been Viennese; and in Beregszász, where everyone had had Czechoslovak citizenship since 1920, she was still Hungarian in 1932: a newly arrived Kaszab from Budapest. Added to that was the awareness that living in her grandmother’s house, with her father only an occasional visitor, set her apart. When she entered high school her natural talents were reinforced by the wish, or perhaps the need, to excel because of that difference. At home she was sure of applause. At school her desire to please went along with a bedrock certainty. From the age of twelve she knew that she would be a painter, and her confidence was not shaken when she was given low marks by the drawing teacher. ‘I thought to myself, the idiot. Doesn’t he know I’m going to be Michelangelo?’

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Although the vocation in art came first and never wavered, Judy did not limit herself. Growing up in a house full of music, she played the piano exceptionally well, and she had a good singing voice. Quick, fluent in speaking and writing, good at languages, she was a natural performer, chosen to play leading roles in school plays and to recite poems in school concerts. She composed music, including a piece which the school orchestra played at the graduation ceremony for her matriculation class. Apart from games, which she disliked, there was nothing in which she did not excel. She made strong friendships, some of which lasted a lifetime, but she also felt the envy of some of her classmates. There was a time when some of the girls turned against her. One of them, a clever girl, said that Judy ‘hid behind her talents’. And Judy thought, desolately, that ‘perhaps there is no real me’. The Beregszász high school was co-educational and open to Christians (most of them Catholics) and Jews alike. The standard of teaching, which Judy remembered as very good and sometimes inspired, reflected the thriving cultural climate of the community— far higher than might have been expected in a small town. Judy’s reading, probably more the product of home than school, was mainstream European. She read Goethe in German. She read Shakespeare, Balzac and Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Gorki and Chekhov, Ibsen and Strindberg, all in ‘wonderful Hungarian translations’. In music, her taste was for the Romantics: Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Bartók and Kodály. She also loved her mother’s favourites: Chopin, Grieg, Schumann. Having started by reading Tarzan with a torch under the bedclothes, she soon joined the adults of the family in their talk of books. Growing up fast in her reading, Judy at sixteen was still a child in some ways. She had a puritanical upbringing so far as pretty clothes and young people’s entertainment was concerned. She still wore white socks, though she longed for silk stockings. She seldom

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went to the cinema, which her grandmother saw as a lower-class diversion. It was where the cook and the maid went on Sundays when they had the afternoon off. With no boyfriends, no dances or parties, Judy was the jeune fille who would suddenly emerge when she left school as a marriageable young woman. Not many of the girls in her class at school would think, as Judy did, that a career was possible, yet a career as a painter was what she wanted. She drew or painted every day, and in her night prayers she always said: ‘Please, God, let me be a painter’. The family gave no special encouragement, but as her seriousness and her talent became apparent in her teenage years her mother began to talk of sending her to Paris to study art when she left school. In one of his rare letters of advice her father pointed out that she was trying to excel in too many ways, in singing, acting and musical composition as well as her school work. If she wanted to be a painter she must stop spreading her energies. ‘You are a locomotive’, he wrote, ‘and a locomotive runs only on one track’. Judy was twelve when she did her first portrait: a very assured charcoal drawing of her grandmother which survived several displacements and hangs in Judy’s Sydney apartment today. The round childish signature, Kaszab Judit, is the only sign of immaturity, and it still surprises Judy that she could have done so well at such an early age. It captures the grandmother’s strength, and the quality of stillness which makes her look both benign and formidable. Visitors to the Kont house admired it, and it became known in the town that Judy had an extraordinary gift for creating a likeness.Two pencil studies of the interior of the Beregszász house (The Dining Room and The Salon, both dated 1934) are appealing apprentice pieces which now have a special value as affectionate commemorations of time and place. More ambitious is a 1936 portrait in oils titled Uncle Jacob. Its subject, Jacob Katz, was a well-known figure in Beregszász, an

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ardent Hungarian patriot whose three sons served with distinction in the First World War. His high standing in the community did not save Jacob Katz who, at the age of eighty-six, was taken to Auschwitz and gassed. Judy’s painting of Katz in his late seventies, commissioned by his son Elek, was much treasured by his family who took great risks to safeguard it. Immediately after the war it was salvaged from the river in Beregszász, where looters had thrown it away as worthless. In June 1945 Jacob Katz’s daughter Rózsi Mandel hid the unframed portrait under her clothing when she crawled across the frontier to Hungary, just as the sub-Carpathian region came under Soviet rule. Her daughter Marianna smuggled the portrait out of Hungary in the late 1960s and sent it from Vienna to her uncle Elek in London. It is now held by a family member in New York. Although its survival against such odds is due mainly to the family’s wish to honour Jacob Katz’s memory, it gives evidence of 16-year-old Judy’s intuitive response to an old man’s benign wisdom and humour. In all her high school years, painting and drawing every day, Judy put portraits first. Untaught except for routine drawing-classes at school, and basking in praise for her likenesses, she did not diversify as she might have done in a more critical atmosphere. Surprisingly, she did not attempt landscape painting. Yet this was not because she had no feeling for the landscape. It may have been because she had another outlet for her creativity: the writing of a diary which she would keep as a daily ritual for the rest of her life. It began at the same time as her portrait painting, when she was twelve and newly settled in Beregszász. Her mother gave her the first diary, which was bound in blue velvet with a gold lock and key. Irresistible to an imaginative child as a safe place for secrets it became much more than that. She used the diary to comment on the day’s events and express her own delights and puzzles and disappointments. It helped to make her thoughtful, and to some degree introspective. In

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writing about other people she may have sharpened the perceptiveness which made her portraits uncannily mature. She wrote about whatever she saw in the town: the cobbled streets, the lilac trees, the river where the schoolchildren swam, and the old buildings whose names, as a 12-year-old newcomer, she sometimes had to ask. Although she had been to Beregszász for summer holidays, it was not until she lived there that she saw the seasons change as she had never seen them in Vienna or Budapest. Living in a country town meant a much sharper awareness of spring and autumn, not as sources of vague poetic musing, but as part of everyday life, related to sowing and reaping and the market stalls she passed every day on her walk to school. She wrote about her grandmother’s garden, where all the fruits ripened in sequence, cherries and apricots, pears and peaches, apples last of all. She could have painted the long green lines of the vineyards, or a neighbour’s children picking raspberries on summer days. She was astonished, years later, to think that she had never painted these landscapes. But then, she thought, perhaps it all went into the diary. The diary was a much needed private space in a houseful of adults. When she was about fifteen Judy found another source of companionship. The maid in the Kont house, Mária Koperdák, was just the same age and the two girls became friends. Mária, who came from a Catholic peasant family, was pretty, intelligent and hungry for knowledge. She could read and write but her formal education was over. Judy soon formed the habit of sharing her books with Mária, and as she studied for her matriculation Mária went along with her, learning as much as she could. Judy did not then think about the difference in their situations. Many years later she remembered with shame the fact that, in a kind of laundry apartheid, Mária and the cook slept in striped sheets while the family had plain white linen. At the time it seemed just the way things were. Nor did she question it when Mária confided that she

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and Judy’s uncle, Pista Kont, had become lovers. It was understood that he could not marry her—at least not in his mother’s lifetime— and his mother was then still strong and decisive in her middle sixties, in control of her adult sons and the brick factory where Pista worked. Judy kept Mária’s secret. Probably it went into her diary, but her privacy was always respected there. Perhaps Judy was the only one who knew the situation, yet it would be in keeping with her grandmother’s habit of mind to know and to keep silent. Perhaps they all knew. At any rate the affair between Mária and Pista went on throughout Judy’s matriculation year, with no future. Passive and vulnerable, Pista would never defy his mother. Six years of painting confirmed Judy’s certainty that she would be an artist. Paris was the place to study, and as she sat for her final exams in the Beregszász high school she felt quite certain of seeing the great galleries of the world, starting with the Louvre. Perhaps the adults in the family, hearing the news of Hitler’s rise to power in the preceding years, felt less sure, but nothing was said. Probably Paris would have been delayed a year or two on the grounds of age. In the early summer of 1938, not long before her eighteenth birthday, the family hesitated about letting Judy go with a debating team from Beregszász to the town of Kassa, a few hours away by train. Her mother and grandmother thought she was too young. ‘I got my way’, Judy said. She took the train to Kassa and fell in love.

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it the time for a young artist to plan a future, especially if she happened to be Jewish. When Judy took the train from Beregszász to Kassa for a debate about literature she would have felt some of the political uncertainties of the time. Her birthplace, Vienna, was already under Nazi rule. With the Anschluss of March 1938 Austria had become a province of the Third Reich, and every Austrian Jew was living in fear. Jews were declared unfit to hold any kind of public office; their houses were looted, their shop windows smashed; and even to walk in the streets was to risk arrest, public humiliation or savage beatings. In 1938 Judy’s father was living in Budapest but he would have been well aware, through his Viennese connections, of the growing terror. In the Kont family, Uncle Gyuszi was politically astute and well informed. Having thought

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and written about the possibility of a ‘Pan Europa’, in which nationalist and racial enmities would be resolved, he could not have closed his eyes to Hitler’s campaign. Many Jews who could leave Austria had already done so; others were anxiously reaching out to friends or family connections in Britain, the United States, any country that would take in refugees. It was still possible to think that it might be different for the Czechs and Hungarians but that was a very frail hope by mid-1938. But Judy went to Kassa, full of confidence, eager to speak about books and ideas, enjoying the public occasion. What Judy said in the debate was less important than the life and vigour with which she expressed herself. Young and attractive, with optimism and sincerity in every cadence of her charming voice, she was bound to make an impression. She did not know that the audience included one of the most powerful men in the district: 36-year-old János (Jancsi) Kämpfner, nor that he turned to his neighbour and said: ‘Who is that girl? I am going to marry her’. Feri Strauss, an architect who was a family friend of the Konts, introduced Jancsi to Judy, and later she travelled home in the train with the man whom she described in her diary as a simpatisch uncle. Yet even when she wrote the words she knew that the meeting meant more than that. A few hours in the train was long enough to fall in love. Three weeks later Jancsi proposed. Even then, much in love, and dazzled by what had happened to her, she made her conditions clear: ‘Yes, I love you, and I will marry you—but you must always let me be an artist’. There were mixed feelings in the Kont family when Jancsi asked permission to marry Judy. Not only was she very young but he was twice her age. Her mother, grandmother and uncles, however, were impressed by the strength of Judy’s attachment and her obvious happiness. Was her father consulted? He too would have had to agree with the conclave at Beregszász that it was a

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brilliant match from the worldly point of view; and if Judy was really in love, then Imre Kaszab, always a romantic, would not stand in the way. Jancsi Kämpfner was well known to the Kont family. He belonged to Judy’s mother’s circle of friends, and it is possible that he had already seen the younger Judy, in her white socks and schoolgirl dresses, before her emergence into the adult world in Kassa. It might have weighed with her family in those uncertain days that Jancsi’s age was not necessarily against him. Rich and influential, with powerful friends, he could be trusted to look after Judy. If her ambition to be an artist remained strong, Jancsi could help her, as a younger man of lesser fortune could not. And Jancsi had unhesitatingly given Judy his promise that he would always support her in her chosen career. As for the gap in age, Jancsi acknowledged freely that it might count against him. ‘He was very sweet. He said “Look, I know I am much older than you but I can promise you twelve good years”.’ He made her laugh by pointing out that he would never again be double her age: thirty-six to eighteen was a formidable ratio, but it would shift year by year in his favour. For Judy the question of age meant nothing; she would have married him at once. He was wise enough to give her time. After she had a year of freedom as an art student, then they would marry. So Judy, rather unwillingly, agreed to defer perfect happiness and go to Prague. None of them knew that this beautiful city, still the capital of the Czechoslovak Republic, had only a few months of freedom left. Closer to home than Paris where she had hoped to study, it seemed safe, and it would be easy for Jancsi to visit her there. From the moment Judy accepted his proposal, Jancsi took charge of her career. He was not an artist but he had a strong appreciation of the arts; and he was sure that with him she could develop her talents. She would never need to be a hausfrau. His own remarkable career had made him confident.

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Jancsi, born in 1902, came from a background much less privileged than Judy’s. His parents, both Jewish, were from peasant families with no education. They had a grocer’s shop in the small Hungarian town of Losonc. In Jancsi’s earliest memories his father was always ill, nearly always in bed. The family lived in one room behind the shop, in which the mother worked. As a very young child Jancsi would get up in the dark and go at 4 a.m. to the market to help his mother with the wheelbarrow load of potatoes and other goods. He was eight when his father died from tuberculosis; and for a year he went every day to the synagogue to say Kaddish for his father. That was the end of his Jewish observance: without a father to instruct him he grew up with little knowledge or commitment to the faith. He was ten when his mother took her two young sons to live in Budapest. Again, they had one room, in which they cooked and slept, behind the shop in which they sold fruit and vegetables. Jancsi’s mother had no ambitions beyond the day on which her sons could leave school and help her financially; and Jancsi did not tell her that he wanted to matriculate. He was quick and clever as well as hard-working, and he made his own way. At fourteen he left school but worked secretly at Latin and Greek for his matriculation, passed with ease, and set his mind on a university degree. For a Jewish student in the 1920s, Prague was hospitable as Budapest was not. Jancsi completed his degree in chemical engineering at Prague’s German University, supporting himself by working on a Hungarian language newspaper, tutoring other students and doing farm work in the vacations. At twenty-four when he had his own business, and was doing well in making farm machinery, his great opportunity came. On a visit to Munkács, a town in the sub-Carpathian district near Beregszász, he was invited to spend two months restructuring part of the estate of the Count Schönborn, one of the great landholders of the region. His plan so

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impressed the Count’s advisers that he was appointed manager of the whole estate, in charge of vineyards and a brewery, farmlands and hotels, with a large staff and a salary to match. As the chief executive and soon the close friend and adviser of Count Schönborn, Jancsi at twenty-six wielded a great deal of power and influence. He gave employment, decided on contracts, dispensed charity, planned developments on behalf of the Count, a playboy who hardly knew what he possessed. Born in 1906, Georg Erwin Karl Peter, Count von SchönbornBuchheim, inherited vast properties. His family had been princely rulers within the Holy Roman Empire and during the reign of the Hapsburg imperial house it retained almost royal status. The title of Count, or Graf, might not signify much in a system in which titles proliferated but the house of Schönborn-Buchheim was different. Its special privileges, retained throughout the nineteenth century and lost in 1919, included exemption from taxes and military service and the right to dispense justice at the local level. The Count Schönborn, whose title was prefixed by Erlaucht (Most Illustrious Highness) owned a 300-room palace near Vienna, so big that no one lived in it. It housed the family’s art collection, which included paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and El Greco. In Hungary his lands were so extensive that people said that it would take a fast train two hours to travel across them. Literally true or not, it suggests the status of the man whom Jancsi Kämpfner represented to the community. Georg von Schönborn and Jancsi Kämpfner, the aristocrat and the self-made man from peasant origins, were contrasts in almost every way. Jancsi was short and dark, witty and quick with words, an intellectual and a problem-solver, with an optimistic temperament. The Count, who was a blond giant, six feet five inches (195 cm), strikingly handsome (‘the most beautiful man I ever saw’, Judy said) had never used his natural intelligence. Bored with his life,

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indifferent to his possessions, often depressed, he would come to Beregvár, his castle near Munkács, for a few days, then disappear to Vienna or New York on a whim. One day he drove to Jancsi’s estate office and said impulsively: ‘Come to Paris with me’. Jancsi, who had never seen Paris, got into the open Bugatti and the two young men set off to cross Europe together, talking companionably as they went. In Paris, however, with equal suddenness, the Count dropped Jancsi at the Place de la Concorde, where without a word of French he was left to his own resources. Politically, the men were at a distance. Jancsi had been drawn to the Communist Party during his student days in Prague; he thought of himself as a man of the left, and his disillusionment with Communism would be delayed for many years. The Count could be roused to sympathy and kindness to the poor, but he was not a reformer. Over the years the two men strengthened their unlikely friendship. The Count went the rounds of his vineyards and forests with Jancsi, and for the first time really looked at them. ‘He learned to love what he had’, Jancsi said, and the estate prospered as the Count was induced to spend more time and money on it. The Count’s physical strength and his unexpected moments of perception were summed up in one of Jancsi’s stories. One day when they were out walking they found themselves high above a mountain stream with only a wooden plank to cross the chasm. Jancsi made the crossing one way, but faced with the ordeal of returning he stood still, dizzy and afraid. The Count carried Jancsi on his back to safety, saying, ‘You have carried me over abysses’. And on Jancsi’s ninetieth birthday in Sydney, he was astonished to have a letter from the widowed Countess Kristina von Schönborn, telling him that, when the end of Soviet rule opened up the subCarpathian region, she was returning there to do what she could for the people on the former Schönborn estate according to the prewar plans made by Jancsi and the Count.

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Through his friendship with Count Schönborn Jancsi learned a great deal about the world of privilege. He learned not to be overawed by the rich, nor to take the deference of the less powerful at its face value. He became accustomed to dealing with rich and poor, but was probably most comfortable in the pub, or playing cards with friends. At first he spent lavishly, gambled and drank a good deal. Then he began to spend more purposefully. A large and beautiful house on the Count’s estate, in the village of Podhering, went with the job. Jancsi moved in there, but he also built a block of flats in the main street of Munkács, with shops on the ground floor. One of the flats was for his own use so that he could come and go from Podhering as he pleased. In Munkács and nearby he became known as an eligible bachelor; and in the first ten years of his career on the Schönborn estate he was rumoured to have had affairs with a number of beautiful women (‘some actresses’, he said, ‘but never with married women’). His circle of friends, in Budapest as well as Munkács, was intellectual and artistic rather than social. It included the film director Frici Bán, his actress wife Kati Timár and the architect Feri Strauss. Some of Jancsi’s money went to private charities. He supported a number of university students who were struggling as he had been. He found a job for his brother Sándor in the brewery, helped his mother to buy a house in her home town of Losonc, and eventually brought her to live with him at Podhering. Powerful and worldly, yet funny and kind and loving: no wonder Jancsi conquered Judy.When she left for Prague to have her year of freedom as an art student she felt anything but free. ‘By sending me away he really chained me. I pined and longed for him and after my lessons I had a regular cry.’ She acknowledged the beauty of Prague without really feeling it. Enrolled at the Academy of Art, she was bored by what she described as arid academic training in drawing from plaster casts. For a young woman who had

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grown up in a town without an art gallery, Prague’s National Gallery should have been a revelation: It is a gallery rich in Bohemian medieval paintings and sculpture; the Dutch and Flemish section contains work by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (Haymaking), Peter Rubens, Adriaen van Ostade, Jan Steen, Rembrandt and Frans Hals. There are extensive holdings of German paintings by Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Hans Baldung-Grien and Albrecht Altdorfer. There are Italian paintings by Bernardo Daddi, Orcagna, Bronzino, Francesco Guardi and Canaletto. Amongst more modern works are paintings by Georges Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent Van Gogh, Camille Pissarro, Edvard Munch, Oskar Kokoschka, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso.

All these paintings Judy could have seen in 1938, and she did see a great many. But their impact came later; at the time she saw through a haze of homesickness. She shared a room with Ilu Mermelstein (later Kertész), a friend from Beregszász, lived frugally, cooking on a gas ring in the corridor, and working dutifully but without joy. Living on a small allowance given to her by her Uncle Gyuszi, Judy could not afford concerts or opera tickets. She and Ilu made the useful discovery that they could eat well by going to the basement of one of the best hotels, and dining where the chauffeurs of the rich had their main meal. It was not exquisitely served as in the dining room, but it came from the same kitchen. Bread was free, so ‘we stuffed ourselves with bread and gravy’. And several times during Judy’s Prague exile, Jancsi made the long trip to see her, and took her out to dine in splendid style. Perhaps conscious of Jancsi’s reputation as a man about town, Judy’s mother had said: ‘I don’t expect you to come back a virgin—and remember you can always tell me everything’. Judy who knew nothing about sex (‘no one

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told me anything, ever’) would have been happy to anticipate their wedding night, if Jancsi had asked her, but he kept his word that she would have her year of freedom. The days in Prague went slowly by, punctuated by bad news. On 30 September 1938 the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met Hitler in Munich. He returned to Britain waving his famous, futile scrap of paper, signed by Hitler, and announced ‘I bring you peace in our time’. In return for certain concessions, Hitler promised that his territorial demands in Europe would go no further. These concessions were presented as minor adjustments to the map, by which the Sudeten Germans and their lands, given to the Czechoslovak Republic in 1920, would be restored. Chamberlain, who saw the issue as ‘a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing’, made little of the inevitable consequences. The Munich Agreement of September 1938 amounted to a sellout of the Czechoslovak Republic. In Beregszász, as in the rest of the sub-Carpathian region which had lived under the liberal Czech regime for twenty years, life changed overnight. Once again the region was Hungarian, ruled from Budapest by Admiral Horthy’s semi-Fascist government, which in the end was sure to line up with Hitler. For some in Beregszász it was a day of pride, whose darker implications were not yet understood. On a grey November morning in 1938 the Czechoslovak flag was lowered, and an enormous Hungarian flag was raised above the court house. Shopkeepers were busy changing the prices of their goods from crowns to pengos. A sign, ‘Welcome to the Liberating Heroes’, was erected at a railway crossing. A brass band played the ‘Rákóczy March’ over and over, while a small Gypsy group led the crowd in Hungarian folk songs. For some, and especially for the Jews of Beregszász, it was a day of ill omen; for others it was a folk festival, a magnificent spectacle. Hugo Gryn, a schoolboy from a Jewish family,

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responded to the panoply, but wept when he knew what it meant: It was a cold, misty day. At eleven o’clock on the dot the sound of more distant bands began to be heard, and soon we could see on the grey horizon the leader of that stately parade, which had come to ‘liberate’ us. He was a high-ranking officer, riding on a beautiful stallion, wearing a steel helmet and with one hand holding his unsheathed sword against his shoulder. When he reached the platform he stopped. Behind him, the military band also stopped playing. One of the men who stood on the edge of the platform said some emotional words of welcome. Bouquets of flowers were thrown from the crowd. The General Brigadier replied quietly, with his sword sweeping in the direction of the town. As he moved off, the shouts of the townspeople all but drowned out the sound of the bands. Behind them came columns of soldiers, some on horses, some on the backs of lorries. Then came a line of horse-drawn cannons, more soldiers with rifles slung across their backs, riding slowly on motor cycles equipped with sidecars. More horses were pulling large cooking vats on wheels and finally, hundreds of foot-soldiers, with their officers riding alongside, waving at the tireless, yelling crowd.

For the Kont family the effects were not immediately disastrous, although it was clear that the anti-Jewish laws which had been in operation in Hungary would come to Beregszász. The brick factory had to put up with a new level of bureaucracy. Citizenship documents were needed for every form of commercial activity, and these were available only to those who could prove continuing residency in Greater Hungary since 1850. But in the early stages of Hungarian repossession, concessions were made, especially to those who could pay for them. There were strategies, such as

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taking non-Jewish partners, which enabled businesses to carry on. In education, too, the Jews faced new obstacles. A talented Beregszász student, Hugo Gryn was contemptuously rebuffed when he spoke of his ambitions: ‘Does a Jew child like you really expect to gain admittance to a university?’ By winning a place in the top 3 per cent of matriculating students Jews could qualify for university entrance but would find themselves ‘token Jews’ in a blatantly anti-Semitic institution. It could be said that Judy was lucky in having matriculated in the last year of Czech rule and to be studying in Prague rather than Budapest. Yet it made very little difference; it was only a matter of months before Hitler completed his dismemberment of the Czechoslovak Republic. On 15 March 1939 Judy looked out of the window of her fourth-floor room in Prague to see a long line of German tanks rolling in. ‘I knew enough of what had happened in Vienna on Kristallnacht to know that I had to get home.’ But this was now a journey from one country to another, not the formalityfree travel to the capital city she had made a few months earlier. Prague had become part of a German Protectorate and she needed an exit visa to go home. She talked to her room-mate Ilu Mermelstein who was making plans to go to London. Judy telephoned Jancsi to ask whether they should do the same, but he would not leave his mother, nor his responsibilities to Count Schönborn. ‘OK, I am coming home’, she said. It was in Prague that Judy first realised how much she had been sheltered from any open manifestation of anti-Semitism. Standing all day in a queue at the German Embassy, which was now handling exit visas, she had almost reached the counter to have her papers stamped when she heard an announcement from the loudspeaker: ‘All Jews to the back’. Without thinking, she obeyed, though she realised afterwards that she should not have done so. She did not look Jewish and there was nothing in her papers to give

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her away. She went back next day and the day after, and eventually got her permit by disregarding the instructions which would have left her forever losing her place. It took her two more days to get home. The trains were running on unpredictable timetables, crowded with anxious passengers clutching their possessions, soldiers everywhere. Home again in Beregszász in March 1939, there was now no reason to delay the marriage of Judit Kaszab and János Kämpfner, which took place a few weeks later, on 30 April. It was a war wedding in all but name. Judy did not wear white; there was no religious ceremony, and there were no guests. It was performed by a notary in one of the offices in the Schönborn brewery at Podhering. One of the two witnesses was the Count, who was a little uneasy about being there. He asked Judy and Jancsi not to mention his presence, nor to show anyone a photograph in which he appeared with the bride and groom. ‘You know, now that I am a German citizen...’, he said, leaving them to finish his sentence. The first Hungarian wedding in the district since the end of Czechoslovak rule, it took place to the sound of cannon fire, not far away, where the Hungarian forces were contending with sporadic Czech resistance. Jancsi and Judy drove back to Beregszász for a large party of family and friends at a luncheon which gave the sense of celebration which had been missing from the civil ceremony. Their five-day honeymoon in Budapest was happy and as carefree as it was possible to be in that time of tension. So Judy, not yet nineteen, moved into a beautiful house with vaulted ceilings and an air of grandeur. She had never learned cooking or housekeeping, and she did not need to do so. Keeping his promise that she would be free to paint and draw, Jancsi arranged for Mária Koperdák, the maid from the Kont house, to come and work for them.This eased any loneliness Judy might have felt when Jancsi’s work took him away from home. As her close

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friend and confidante, Mária was a link between Judy’s childhood and her new life. Judy drew or painted every day; and when she began studies of the nude, the beautiful Mária was her model. They still kept the secret of Mária’s relationship with Judy’s uncle Pista Kont, who came to the Kämpfner house nearly every night to be with Mária. Jancsi must have known all about it but nothing was said. Judy’s happiness in these early days of marriage was qualified by the presence of Jancsi’s mother, Gisella Kämpfner. Unchanged by affluence, she still wore a black shawl over her head, peasant style. She was the same age as Judy’s grandmother but more combative. She was proud of her brilliant son and thought he could have done better than to marry a very young girl with no dowry, absurd ambitions, and no idea of running a household. Although the house was big enough for her to have her own separate rooms, Gisella did not keep to them. She would come to the kitchen to see what meals were being prepared for her son, and she did not disguise her displeasure when she saw how little Judy had to do with household matters. She must have been shocked to know that Judy spent hours making nude sketches of Mária. One day she snatched the brush from Judy’s hand and ordered her back to the kitchen. Because Jancsi loved his mother and wanted her to have the pleasures of his success he did not concede that it was a mistake to have her living with them. Equally firm was his determination not to make Judy a hausfrau. Jancsi’s commitment to Judy’s career involved much more than the indulgences of time and space at home. He wanted to learn about painting; and because her own knowledge of the great art of the past was then quite limited, they were able to learn together. They often drove to Budapest, where they would visit the Museum of Fine Arts and go to the small galleries for exhibitions by contemporary painters. Among the treasures of the Museum were

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works by Tintoretto and Crivelli, El Greco, Velázquez, Zurbarán and Goya. Judy’s gaze lingered on Raphael’s Esterházy Madonna; and she was impressed, as she had been in Prague, by Dürer, Cranach, Altdorfer and Brueghel. Memling and Cuyp, Manet and Monet and Pissarro, Puvis de Chavannes and Arnold Bocklin were added to the litany of great names. It was not until Judy came to live in Australia, where the state galleries had nothing to compare with Budapest’s riches, that she realised how much she had stored up in memory from excursions with Jancsi. In Budapest, too, they visited Judy’s father who was living with his future wife Lili Kenéz, rent free, in a one-room flat on the fifth floor of an apartment building owned by ‘the rich Kaszabs’. This family benevolence kept Imre Kaszab afloat, but he was earning almost nothing. One day Judy and Jancsi, on their way to buy a little car for Judy, found Imre and Lili, each with a bowl of water, engaged in soaking the corners of envelopes to remove the stamps, which they could later sell. ‘Of course, if I had a shop, I would do better’, Imre said ‘because children would come in’.This plan, so far removed from the splendid showroom for the Bugattis and Alfa Romeos of Imre’s early years, went to Jancsi’s heart. ‘We came down the stairs and Jancsi was walking slower and slower and when we got to the second floor he stopped and said: “Juci, could you really sit in that car?”’ Judy felt ashamed that she was not the one to think of it first. The money for the car was in Jancsi’s pocket. He went back up the stairs, put the envelope on the table and said, ‘Here it is, Imre, for your shop’. And so Imre opened his shop in an arcade near the apartment building and, with Lili working beside him, made a modest success in selling stamps which lasted to the end of his life. The fun of buying Judy’s car was deferred but not for long. Soon she had a little white sports car in which she drove from Podhering to Munkács, only three kilometres away, or to Beregszász, to spend a day with her mother and grandmother.

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There was one lasting source of dispute in Judy’s marriage. Jancsi was everything she could have wished for as husband and lover, and she knew that he put her first in all the world. Yet he did not easily give up one of his bachelor habits. He liked to gamble; and during his ten years in the district he had become part of a card-playing group which sometimes kept up the game till dawn. When he failed to come home one night Judy was anxious and upset. When she realised that gambling was a habit she was distraught. It was not so much the fear that he would lose too much money; it was resentment at being left alone. Perhaps too there was a link with the separation anxieties of her childhood which many years later she described to one of her sons. Suppressing her anger made it worse. Brought up in the quiet house at Beregszász, where feelings of anger or unhappiness were repressed, it was hard for Judy to be angry with anyone, and almost impossible to reproach Jancsi. She developed nervous symptoms: palpitations and a painful rash which did not yield to medical treatment. Her mother, who perhaps had suffered in some similar way, made her own diagnosis and suggested that Judy talk to a psychiatrist. She did so, and as soon as she understood the connection between her symptoms and her unspoken rage, she was able to talk to Jancsi about it. Almost at once she recovered. Although the gambling habit continued as a minor and sometimes major cause of dispute, Jancsi kept his promise not to stay out all night. Except for the crisis over Jancsi’s gambling nights, the first year of marriage was tranquil and companionable. While Jancsi learned about painting with Judy, she in turn was learning about his job and the Count’s estate. He used often to take her on long drives around the countryside, calling in at the pubs which sold beer from the Podhering brewery. ‘The pub keepers were all his friends’, Judy said. They would share jokes with him; he knew the names of their

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children; and if there was illness or misfortune he would help. Judy’s painter’s eye took in the landscape and the faces of pub keepers and peasants. She noticed the way they lived: the neat houses of Germans on one side of the road, and the poorer state of the Ukrainians’ on the other. If they saw anyone on the road who needed a lift Jancsi would stop and open the door, as he did one day for an elderly Jew in a kaftan who clutched a large goose under his arm. Jancsi was known for his friendliness, as was the Count Schönborn; he too would give a lift to anyone. It sounds idyllic: Judy and Jancsi driving around the friendly neighbourhood, Judy at home chatting with Mária in kitchen or studio, the Count Schönborn dropping in unannounced for lunch, Judy at his castle painting a portrait of 3-year-old Elisabeth von Schönborn. It is hard to believe that Europe was in turmoil. Yet for about a year after their marriage, the daily life of Judy and Jancsi did not change, even though Hitler’s rage to reshape the map of Europe was unappeased. Germany’s invasion of Poland proved the worthlessness of the Munich Agreement. The entry of Britain and France into war against Hitler in August 1939 was the only hopeful sign, but for Hungary the Nazi–Soviet Pact of 1940 was an overwhelming blow. Hungary was caught between the two great powers; it had no means of defending itself against Hitler or Stalin. So long as the two dictators agreed to be friends and share Poland between them, the Hungarian government under Admiral Horthy could only keep quiet and hope not to provoke trouble. Judy and Jancsi, the middle-class artist and the self-made businessman from peasant origins, had to span a gap in age and class, but they were alike in high intelligence, and a generous view of what they owed to the world and other people.Their Jewishness, marginal though it was in terms of doctrine, also united them.They knew that being Jewish excluded them from some areas of life, limiting their social and legal freedom, and that it could also limit

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their friendships, but by the end of 1939 very little had happened to make them personally insecure. So there they are, the unlikely quartet, joined by ties of affection. The two young women, Judy and Mária, are mistress and maid, artist and peasant. But they are the same age, nineteen in 1939, and they have grown up together. Mária hopes one day to marry Judy’s uncle Pista, but she knows that in his mother’s lifetime that is impossible. The barrier is one of class, not race. Berta Kont, matriarch and owner of the brick factory in which Pista works, could not allow an alliance between her son and one of her servants. So they wait, and Judy encourages Mária to hope. The two men, Jancsi and the Count, are almost the same age. Jancsi is the stronger: more intelligent than the Count, with a broader understanding. The Count has learned to depend on Jancsi; and as his deputy, Jancsi has gained confidence through the exercise of authority. Yet defined by the facts of birth and background the aristocrat and the Jew are worlds apart. The Count has hundreds of years of privilege to make him feel that he can do as he pleases; after all, his family had never deferred to the Hapsburg imperial house. He may even feel, as late as 1939, that Hitler’s rise to power is just a brief disruption of the social order. We do not know what his Countess thinks; she is often off stage, in Vienna with their children, and she may be more of a realist than her husband. Jancsi has not forgotten his struggling younger self, at eight years old, getting up in the dark to help his mother with the wheelbarrow load of potatoes. Yet he knows his value to the Count, and he believes in the friendship they have established, based on mutual liking and plain speaking. Perhaps both men place too much trust in the power of the Count’s great possessions. So the quartet might be imagined in 1939, at the big house in Podhering, standing together as though rehearsing an opera or operetta, with Mária Koperdák at one end of the chorus line

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and the Count at the other. Two Catholics and two Jews: two who belong to the traditional order and two outsiders. They do not know their parts in the play; they do not know that this is not Lehár’s music, nor Mozart’s. When the curtain goes up it will be a tragedy in which they will have to perform. None of them could have predicted in what ways the ties of love and friendship will be tested.

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Chapter Three I N

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In Britain they called it ‘the phoney war’: the period of uneasy

waiting which followed Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939. It ended in June 1940, when German tanks rolled through the Netherlands and Belgium and went on to capture Paris. For those who watched and waited in Hungary, the pause in troop movements was more frightening than phoney. News from Poland, as from the other German-occupied territories, confirmed what was already known about the brutality of the Nazis. Hungary was surrounded by territory under the direct control of Hitler or his then ally Stalin. It suited Hitler to leave Hungary alone. With its economy undisturbed, it was a useful source of oil, wheat, textiles and chemicals for the Third Reich. And although its government was considered soft on Jews, it would easily yield to Nazi pressure, as it did in 1938 and 1939 with new laws restricting the rights of

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Jews to hold property and engage in commercial and industrial activity. The ‘Second Jewish Law’, passed in 1939, made its racial basis clear. Conversion no longer counted; and some 100 000 professing Christians of Jewish origins were defined as Jews with the rest. Anti-Semitism within Hungary was easy to ignite, and it took on new energy when fed by fear and by Hitler’s propaganda. At Podhering in the last months of 1939, Judy and Jancsi could not feel secure, even though life went on much as before. One measure of their uneasiness was their decision not to have children: one day of course, but not yet. Judy was only nineteen; there was plenty of time. As a high-ranking employee of Count Schönborn, Jancsi’s situation was unusual: would it make him more, or less, vulnerable as the anti-Jewish laws tightened? The Anschluss of 1938, which ended Austrian independence, had made the Count answerable to the Third Reich. To have been present at the Kämpfner wedding in April 1939 was a risk; and to say ‘don’t talk about it’ suggests a certain optimism on the Count’s part. Judy and Jancsi would keep their promise, but could he trust the notary? Besides, the Count was a highly visible presence wherever he went: unmistakable because of his exceptional height, his good looks and his expensive car. He would stand out in a crowded city street. How could he expect invisibility in a Hungarian village? The brewery, where the wedding took place, employed dozens of workers, any one of whom could pass on gossip about its Director, his young bride and their distinguished guest. In Vienna, where the Count had his main residence, it would have been illegal for him to employ Jancsi. In Vienna, too, it would be illegal for Mária Koperdák to work in a Jewish house. Yet, as Judy and Jancsi believed for as long as they could, Hungary was different. The laws were not as stringent as in the Third Reich, and they were not consistently enforced. The Count’s easy confidence, based on hundreds of years of family privilege, would have been

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reinforced by the belief that in Hungary he could still do as he pleased. But Hitler did not defer to aristocrats; and the Count was duly summoned to register for military service. In October 1939 he was sent to Baden, near Vienna, to begin training for the Luftwaffe; he would get his pilot’s certificate in June 1942. For Jancsi, the bad news came early in 1940. A letter from the Count explaining that he could no longer employ a Jew as manager of his Hungarian estate brought Jancsi’s brilliant career to an end. Whether their friendship would survive was uncertain but it was clear that the Count was doing his best. When a new director was brought in from Austria, Jancsi was asked to stay on and give support and advice in return for a retainer, which would be unofficially paid by the Count. Financially it was not too bad, even without the retainer. Jancsi had used his twelve years as Director to build up solid assets. Rents from the block of flats and shops he had built in Munkács would maintain the Kämpfners comfortably enough, though not in the same style as at Podhering. They packed their furniture and other possessions and moved into one of the Munkács flats, where they lived for about a year. Judy painted and kept her diary each day as always; they came and went to Beregszász and Budapest; they saw their friends; they were happy in one another’s company. If the dismissal rankled, Jancsi was realist enough to admit that the Count was trapped, like so many in 1940s Europe. From 1936, when Hitler began his campaign of annexation, until 1941, everything had gone his way. He had Alsace-Lorraine and the Danzig territory. German troops had occupied Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and Northern France, including Paris. Hitler controlled, as ‘sub-states’, the General Government of Poland, and the Protectorates of Bohemia and Moravia.The governments in Rome, Vichy France, Bratislava, Budapest, Zagreb, Helsinki and Sofia were allies or at least compliant. Only Britain was still fighting; and because this was a contest fought in the air the German land forces

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looked invincible.Then Hitler astonished allies and enemies alike by bringing on Operation Barbarossa—the invasion of Russia—which began on 22 June 1941. Stalin was unprepared for this sudden reversal: the two dictators had split Poland between them and the alliance had seemed to suit them both. At first the odds favoured Germany’s disciplined, wellequipped war machine. Stalin, taken by surprise, had appalling casualties in the first weeks. But he had huge human resources and the will to fight on, no matter how many Russian lives were lost. Germany counted on a short campaign. ‘Doesn’t Hitler know any history?’ Jancsi asked, thinking of Napoleon and the famous retreat from Moscow in which the Grande Armée had perished miserably, defeated by the Russian winter. Hitler did indeed know his history: the trouble was that he was sure he was stronger than Napoleon. Hungary entered the war as Germany’s ally, and the lives of the Kämpfners changed again. As a Jew, Jancsi was not eligible for military service; that was an honour reserved for Gentiles. Instead, in the summer of 1941 he was conscripted to serve in a forced labour unit under the command of the Hungarian Army. Judy’s first response was that it could have been worse; in the labour unit, she believed, he would be safer than in the army. ‘None of us knew then how they would be treated.’ She did not think that she and Jancsi could be separated for more than a few months. They knew that writing to one another would be almost impossible. So, before saying goodbye, they chose a star to look at every night and promised that as they looked each of them would be thinking of the other. ‘It sounds corny, but Jancsi said it saved his life.’ For the second time in the two years of their marriage Judy and Jancsi had to leave their home. The flat in Munkács was closed and their furniture stored. Jancsi, dressed in drab working clothes, with a Hungarian military cap and his yellow armband, left for an unknown destination in Poland, and Judy went home to Beregszász. It was

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what most young women did when war took their husbands away; and she did not at first think of doing anything else. It was not quite the Beregszász of her childhood. The older family members, who had for so long clustered around the grandmother, had regrouped themselves. Not long before Judy’s wedding her mother had remarried. Her new husband, Sándor Ságh, was a Beregszász dentist, a few years younger than Ilus. It was a love match, and Judy was happy for her mother, but it made another change in the pattern of family life in her grandmother’s house. Aunt Ami, still living in Cairo, could not make her usual visit because of the war; and Uncle Gyuszi, increasingly dissatisfied with working in the factory, was spending much of his time in Budapest with Manyi Guttman, the young woman he would later marry. Uncle Pista was still living at home, still devoted to Mária Koperdák but unable to defy his mother and marry her. He did, however, ease Mária’s situation. When Judy and Jancsi left Munkács, Mária had nowhere to go. Pista bought her a house in Beregszász and their affair continued. Just after the first Christmas of their separation, a message came to Judy from Jancsi. His labour unit was being moved from Poland to support the German advance on Kiev in the Soviet Union, and he would be on a transport train which was due to pass through Beregszász within a few days; there was a chance that they could meet. Judy’s friend Ilus, whose husband Pista Geiger was in the same unit, went with Judy to watch and wait at the railway station: It was January and it was cold and Ilus and I didn’t know what time the train was coming. We waited maybe twenty-four hours in the cold and the train came in at 3 a.m. It stood for only two or three minutes and Ilus and I were racing in the dark yelling their names and when we got there, arms came down and pulled us into the wagon and the train went on. Jancsi and I and Ilus and Pista were huddled under blankets in a corner and everybody else

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was tactfully looking away. There were the two candles burning there. I remember it [like] a still life with the candles and marmalade on a big square box. Before we got to the border we had to jump. Can you imagine how I jumped! I was so afraid. But there was no other way.

At dawn the two young women made their way through the snow to the nearest railway station to return to Beregszász. They were elated by the meeting, but even in the shadows of the candlelit wagon they had seen the physical signs of the hardships the men endured. Jancsi made it clear that the ordeal would not soon be over. He told Judy: ‘If this has to happen to us, make something good come out of it. Go to Budapest and study painting’. It was the best possible advice. Living in Beregszász, she was fretting every hour for Jancsi, and there was not enough to occupy her mind or use her energies. And, although her dedication to painting was as strong as ever, she needed more discipline and the stimulus of other artists if her work was to mature. Apart from the brief period in Prague she was still untaught. In Budapest, early in 1942, Judy resumed the student life. Sharing a room with a fellow student Ági Izsák (later the celebrated Israeli sculptor Ági Yoeli) she took lessons from a brilliant artist and teacher Aurél Bernáth. Under his influence she moved away from portraiture, in which she had too much facility, to attempt still life and landscape in which she had no experience. ‘He broke my bad habits’, Judy said, remembering how crushed she had been to hear him describe one of her portraits as kitsch. On her first day in Bernáth’s class she was praised for her charcoal drawing of an old woman’s hands. Bernáth asked to see what she had done in oils, and confidently Judy brought in a portrait of a pretty blonde woman wearing a fox fur round her bare shoulders. ‘Bernáth was speechless. Then he said, “It’s awful”, and I crashed to the cellar.’ But she was

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resilient, and she had the inestimable gift of being able to accept criticism and profit from it. Bernáth’s remedy was for Judy to give up portraiture for a time, to try pastels, which she had never used, and to draw without even a single glance at the paper. She astonished herself by the loops and curves she achieved. ‘It’s your subconscious’, Bernáth said. Bernáth’s teaching was the light in a dark year for Judy. She worried ceaselessly about Jancsi. Was he cold, hungry, sick, missing her as she was missing him? He might be dead; there was no certainty that she would hear. Then came what seemed like a reprieve. Jancsci’s unit was working on the Hungarian border, not far from Munkács, when an epidemic of typhus broke out, and those who had the infection were to be left behind. When Judy heard that Jancsi was among the sick she hurried to see him in the primitive shelter that served as hospital. Lying beside him on the straw, with other sick men a few feet away, she was happier than she had been for months, until Jancsi told her that he had faked a high temperature.The men were tested; and for lack of an official courier Judy was allowed take the specimens to the Budapest hospital. Next day she went to collect the results. Cheerfully, a doctor told her she need not worry: her husband was not infected. She burst into tears. By now Judy knew the role of the forced labour units. There were good periods for Jancsi, working in the forest, cutting timber: this, he said later, was quite pleasant. At best it was heavy work for a man of forty. The unit was poorly fed, and there were risky assignments like marching ahead of the German army in order to cross bridges on which the Russians might have set mines.The Jews were expendable. Out of one hundred and twenty men in Jancsi’s unit, no more than twenty were alive at the end of the war. Many experienced brutal beatings; most came close to starvation; all suffered from the Russian winter. It was worst for the Orthodox Jews who tried to keep the dietary laws and observe their hours of

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prayer. Exhausted and even more severely malnourished than the rest, they were the least likely to survive. ...the work started 5.30–6 a.m., and these very religious ones already at 3 or 4 in the morning were with the prayer shawls and had their prayer before the work began. They didn’t eat meat because it was not kosher for them. They ate mainly bread with marmalade.

The unit was under the command of a few Hungarian army officers and some guards. This did not mean good treatment (‘if they did not like us they beat us’, Jancsi said) but it was better than being under the direct control of the Germans. The forced labour units were there to ease the way for the invading armies, and although they did not have to fight the Russians they witnessed such horrors as the killing of all the people in a Russian village. Things were done that Jancsi never wanted to talk about. No wonder Judy wept when Jancsi was found not to have typhus. Typhus or no typhus, there was a good case for having Jancsi released from forced labour. After his fortieth birthday in November 1942 he was no longer fit for hard physical labour. Judy did all she could to get him back. Having discovered that there was a new policy which allowed skilled workers to be brought back from labour camp if they could be shown to be indispensable on the homefront, she ‘nagged and begged’ the Dreher-Hagenmacher Brewery in Budapest to ask for him. He was well known to them as director of Count Schönborn’s brewery, and so the request went forward. Judy then persuaded Korláth, a member of the Hungarian parliament, to give his support. It was not until April 1944, after nearly three years forced labour, that Jancsi came back to Budapest. By then, it was impossible for Dreher’s to employ a Jew, but the reprieve almost certainly saved his life. Typhus killed some; others

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were taken prisoner by the Russians and died from starvation or brutal treatment in the last grim months of 1944. At the time of Jancsi’s return the tide of war was turning against Germany. This only made the Hungarians’ predicament worse. Admiral Horthy, Regent of Hungary, had tried to keep his distance from Hitler, and when a German defeat became the most likely outcome he was anxious to make a separate peace with the Allies. His government had reduced the rights of the Jews in Hungary in a series of harsh anti-Semitic laws, but it had also refused to co-operate in the mass deportations which its German allies wanted. The Hungarian Premier Miklós Kállay, appointed by Horthy, had even tolerated the small and weak Liberal and Socialist parties in parliament. Hitler lost patience: he sent for Horthy, and after a humiliating meeting the Hungarian leader was detained at Klessheim until a replacement for Kállay was found. Döme Sztójay, the Hungarian Minister in Berlin, was chosen to carry out Hitler’s policies: German troops occupied Budapest, and ‘the inevitable Eichmann’ was sent to exterminate the Jews in rural areas before finishing his grisly task in the capital city. From April 1944 until the end of May, Judy and Jancsi were together, living in one room in a boarding house.The art school had closed and Judy’s easel stood in a corner, unused for the first time since she was twelve years old.The happiness of having Jancsi home was displaced by fear. Judy was alert now to every rumour and in all the coffee-houses where she met her friends she heard stories of deportation. There was much talk about papers; the right papers might or might not save you, but without them you were lost.There was talk too about a new regulation which gave baptised Jews the right to wear a white armband instead of the yellow one which Jancsi had worn in the labour camp. Those who converted—so the rumour said—would have better treatment and would not be sent outside Hungary. Judy came home with the story, suggesting to

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Jancsi that they both have themselves baptised as Catholics. He was outraged: ‘Am I a rat, to do such a thing?’ Judy said no more, but she did not give up the idea. She had heard of a priest who, for a substantial fee, would baptise Jews and ask no questions.There was no hope of getting Jancsi to the font, so she persuaded a non-Jewish friend to pose as her husband. Telling Jancsi that she was going to visit her great-aunt, some distance from Budapest, she set out with her ally to find the Catholic church she had heard about. The priest asked perfunctory questions. Judy had a moment of panic when she and her supposed husband were asked their names. ‘János Kämpfner’came out with a slight but perceptible hesitation. A substantial fee of three thousand pengos was paid; the profession of faith was made; the baptismal water was poured and the papers were signed.The newly made Catholics went back to the boarding house to confess to Jancsi. Judy, clutching the magical papers, expected Jancsi to be angry, but at first he was astonished at her effrontery, and then ‘we all three burst out laughing’. The imposture had its comic side, which Jancsi could not resist. But if he had been sent back to forced labour, as Judy feared, he would have felt ashamed to separate himself from other Jews. He did not share their beliefs but he had a sense of fellowship with the Orthodox Jews in his unit, frail heroes with their prayer shawls, starving rather than eating non-kosher food. Judy too was always a little uncomfortable about her baptism. Fighting for her life and Jancsi’s, she felt the right to use any strategy which did not endanger others. She owed nothing to the greedy priest who took her money. She was not denying her own religious beliefs, because she had none. And yet, sixty years later, she felt a certain embarrassment in telling the story: ‘I’m not sure I want to own up to this’, she said. Soon after the baptismal journey, there was terrifying news from Beregszász. Judy had been home for Christmas 1943 when, despite all the restrictions that ground down the rights of the Jews,

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the family was not directly threatened. Yet it was not the sunny place of Judy’s childhood. Racial hatred had always been there, unseen or not fully understood by the Kont family. When the end came, however, it was Eichmann’s campaign, efficient to the last detail, that destroyed the Jews of Beregszász. During the last week of April 1944 every Jewish family heard the knock on the door. An SS representative came in, accompanied by two policemen and two civilians. First came the order to give up certain items: jewellery, firearms, cameras, field glasses, microscopes, foreign currency, local currency over 100 pengos. Pictures were taken from the walls, carpets were rolled up. Then came the order to pack food and clothing (no more than 25 kilos) and wait for the lorry which would take the family to a local depot. They had fifteen minutes to get ready, then they must stand outside the house holding their bundles. The lorry that carried Judy’s family on that first morning took a road they knew well. It was the road taken every day by the Kont uncles on their way to work in their brick factory. There was a special irony for the Konts in discovering that the brick factory was the place chosen to be the Beregszász ghetto. A barbed wire fence had been erected to enclose the premises. The sheds where the bricks were dried gave basic shelter, and although it did not immediately occur to the prisoners, the railway tracks which used to take the bricks away would be an easy means of transporting truckloads of people to the final destination. All the Jews of Beregszász were there, as were many from the neighbouring villages. One estimate of numbers was 10 000. Some of the Jews were in the brick factory only for days. For others it was a few weeks before it was their turn to be shut inside the cattle trucks and taken away. At first people asked: ‘Could the wagons be for us?’ Fourteen-year-old Hugo Gryn, searching for an explanation, climbed into one of the empty wagons.There was light enough inside for him to read a pencilled message: ‘Three days

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without water, God almighty help’. And on the side of the wagon he found a slip of paper with a list of places: Auschwitz, Cracow, Presov, Kassa, Csap. They all knew Csap, in the Carpathian region, and Kassa a few miles on. Cracow, of course, was in Poland. No one had ever heard of Auschwitz. ‘Sounds German all right, but why on earth would we have to go through Poland?’ All of them took it for granted that they would be part of a labour force, and most thought they had a chance of survival. Some killed themselves in the brick factory. Others who attempted escape were shot. Most were taken to that unknown destination, Auschwitz. Rumours about the Beregszász brick factory reached Judy and Jancsi, who at once packed suitcases, ready to take the train and see what could be done. A friend warned them to stay away: there were police waiting at the railway station, picking up Jews as they came in. Judy’s friend Ági Izsák, who went home against advice, was arrested and taken to the brick factory ghetto; later she was sent to Auschwitz with the rest of her family. In a desperate rescue attempt Jancsi bribed a Gestapo officer to drive to Beregszász and bring the family to Budapest. This strategy failed. Having kept Jancsi’s money for himself, the officer went to the brick factory and on the pretext of rescuing the family members, took their last pengo and left them to their fate. A few days before all of them were taken away, Judy’s mother managed to send a letter to Budapest: ‘Don’t worry, little one. Believe me I shall do everything in my power to stay alive, and I am trying to be calm and cool’. The last cattle trucks left Beregszász for Auschwitz in the middle of May 1944, taking Judy’s grandmother, Berta Kont, her mother Ilus, and her stepfather Sanyi Ságh. Taken at the same time were Jancsi’s mother Gisella, who was alone in Munkács, his brother Sándor, Sándor’s wife Erzsi and their two young children. Pista Kont had already been sent away: no one knew where. In Budapest, Judy and Jancsi felt the silence that had enfolded Beregszász and

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Munkács: it was impossible to imagine these two home towns so bereft. Nearly half of the townspeople were gone. The others, whose credentials had been checked, behaved according to their natures: some were quiet and frightened, others rejoiced at the departure of the Jews. Some stole from the houses of their former neighbours, taking whatever was left by the Germans. Mária Koperdák, servant to the family, lover of Pista Kont, friend to Judy, went to the empty houses of Berta Kont and Ilus Ságh, to save what she could before the looters took the last of the Konts’ property. She took family photographs, clothing, silver, linen and china, and other small personal possessions and kept them in her own house, hoping they would be claimed one day. Then she put together the official papers in which her own claim to citizenship was approved. As a Catholic from a peasant family long settled in the district, Mária felt safe. She would not be asked again to prove herself. Having witnessed the tragedy at the brick factory, she worried about Judy: how long would it be before Budapest would be purged of its Jews? So in an unprompted act of friendship she took the train to Budapest, found Judy in her boarding house and persuaded her to take the papers and be ‘Mária Koperdák’ until the danger was over. The two young women were the same age; Judy did not look Jewish; she knew Mária’s family history and if challenged would be able to answer any questions. So Mária argued until Judy agreed to the masquerade. When Mária arrived in Budapest with her extraordinary gift, Jancsi and Judy were both wearing the yellow star which defined them publicly as Jews. Jancsi’s closest friend, Feri Strauss, who had introduced him to Judy on that distant day in Kassa, was dead. ‘He took a small pair of scissors, neatly and carefully unpicked the yellow star from his sleeve, put it down on the desk, and shot himself.’ While he grieved for Feri, Jancsi was too active and resourceful to think of going the same way. Mária’s plan fitted in

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with his belief that the only hope for the Jews was to disperse and evade, not to huddle together. It was dangerous for Judy to pose as Mária; and dangerous too for Mária who might be killed if Judy were to be caught and the imposture found out. But the greatest peril, Jancsi believed, was to do nothing. He told Judy to take off the yellow star and find herself a job as Mária Koperdák before it was too late. So it was quickly decided: Judy took up her new identity, applied for a factory job and moved into a rented room in a working-class suburb where she was unlikely to be recognised: As I put my suitcase down I realised that there is no separate room and I have to sleep in the same one as the landlady and her 21 year old son. They asked questions. I answered, guilty and frightened. I lay in the dark, listening to the beat of my heart and the alarm clock. Around morning, still palpitating and awake, I thought I am not going to stand this, not even for a day. I felt I am being watched on the street. I combed my hair back, put dark glasses on and stood ready to jump [off] the tram.

Jancsi, meanwhile, went to live in a ‘Jewish house’: one of those designated on the outside by a huge yellow star. Judy could visit him there but when by chance they passed in the street they could not give any sign of recognition. Her life for the next nine months was lonely, drab and boring, with panic never far away. And because there was no place for painting in the story of Mária Koperdák she was deprived of her main source of solace. It was hard for her to find privacy to write her diary, and unsafe to have a volume which might be discovered and read. Sheets of toilet paper were more easily hidden: writing on these flimsy pages gave Judy a sense of reality. The act of writing was an affirmation of existence. The worst of the factory work for Judy was its monotony. She began by making lampshades, for which her story of being a

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dressmaker qualified her. Soon the wartime emergency made lampshades a luxury and she went to a chemical plant where she handled digitalis, keeping a shawl over her mouth and nose so as not to inhale poisonous particles. Drying ampoules for eight hours a day with small repetitive hand movements, she tried to keep her thoughts busy by silently reciting every poem she had ever known or taking herself through the plot of every novel. When it became too hard to bear she would go to the toilet and beat her head against the wall, just to prove she was still herself. After a few weeks Judy became more confident in her role as Mária Koperdák. She learned her way around the streets of the Jozsefváros, made friends with her landlady, mended the caretaker’s socks. Sometimes she went into a Catholic church to pray, not because this was what Mária might have done, but because she felt the need of prayer, and whether it was in a church or a synagogue made no difference to her.There was a kind of fellowship in a place where others brought their pain and asked for God’s help. Sometimes she almost envied Jancsi in his cramped, over-crowded room in the Jewish house. He and his companions kept up one another’s spirits: they laughed and joked and played gin rummy; and so long as they were inside the house they did not need to pretend. It was dangerous for Judy to visit Jancsi in the Jewish house but impossible to stay away: she needed to know that he was alive. His dangers were greater than hers, as were the restrictions on his daily life. Jews were allowed on the streets only between midday and 5 p.m.; they could not walk in the parks or sit on benches in public places, or listen to radios. It was hard for them to find food, and when they did venture into the streets they could never feel safe from being caught and beaten by an anti-Semitic thug to whom the temper of the times gave licence for any random cruelty. And above all this was the uncertainty as to when the Eichmann plan, which had cleared the provinces of Jews, would be put into operation in Budapest.

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‘Mária’ became Judy on the visits to the Jewish house. She could be Judy too when she visited her uncle Gyuszi who was living in Budapest under the protection of his Christian girlfriend Manyi Guttmann. ‘The saddest part of the day’, Judy wrote in her diary, ‘is to leave Manyi’s flat after dinner, coffee, cigarette, light and warmth, and go down the dark stairs alone’. She felt isolation as well as terror when Allied bombings increased to a nightly ordeal which often meant four hours in the cellar. Others in the cellar were praying for the bombing to stop, but for Judy they were a sign of hope. When the all clear was sounded she would go on the roof with the others, and look at the night sky, red with flames from burning buildings, and pray for the day other Hungarians dreaded: the day when the Russians would reach Budapest. I cry often nowadays, with or without tears. As it’s getting colder and I wear a pullover, the thought nags in me that Anyu [mother] might not have one. And Grandmother whom one can’t visualise without her checked scarf. And all the others.They only had what they had on when they were taken away. I make my body work the eight hours and try to dig out of the papers where the Allies are. Refugees pour into Budapest from Transylvania by the thousands. They come in carriages and on trucks. I’m terrified about feeling no pity for them. Not in comparison.

Letters came from the real Mária Koperdák, telling Judy what was happening in the town. Mária did not know where the Beregszász Jews had been taken but, like Judy, she was hopeful. Because Judy’s mother, stepfather and her uncle Pista were all in their early forties, it was reasonable to think of them doing forced labour, as Jancsi had done, and surviving. The grandmother’s age would limit her chances: would she be useful enough to be kept alive? In one of her letters, responding to Judy’s gratitude for the gift of her identity,

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Mária showed her sensitivity to the reversal of their roles: ‘You must not think that now it is you who needs me’. Fears that the imposture would be discovered faded in October 1944 when the Russians occupied Beregszász. If Judy were to be arrested, the Budapest authorities would not be able to reach Mária. And from that time until the end of the war there were no more letters between Mária and Judy who were now in opposing war zones. In the last months of 1944 the fate of the Budapest Jews hung on the outcome of a tussle between Hitler’s zealous executioner, Eichmann, and Horthy, the Regent of Hungary. Horthy’s antiJewish policy had never been as virulent as Eichmann would have liked. With a German defeat seeming almost certain, Horthy became anxious to follow the example of Romania and make a separate peace with the Allies. International protests about the treatment of the Jews made their impression. The prospect of being tried as war criminals was a powerful deterrent. Horthy sacked his pro-Nazi Prime Minister Döme Sztójay and appointed a more moderate government which demanded that the management of Jewish affairs be restored to the Hungarian authorities and that Eichmann’s operations should cease. An indignant Eichmann appealed in vain to Berlin: Hitler’s deputy Himmler ruled that there were more serious matters than the Hungarian Jewish question. It was important to keep Horthy as an ally against the Russians. The Jews could wait. While the sickening seesaw of government policy went up and down, the Jews waited, hopeful at first that the worst was over. As she went to the factory each morning on the tram, Judy read in her newspaper about German victories but when she visited Gyuszi at Manyi’s flat hopes quickened again as they listened illicitly to BBC Radio, which told a different story. The Allies had taken Rome on 4 June 1944; and two days later the D-Day landing in Normandy took place. Paris was liberated in August; Brussels and Antwerp in

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September; Athens and Belgrade in October. At the beginning of October Russian troops crossed the Hungarian frontier and occupied the sub-Carpathian region, which included Beregszász and Munkács. If ever Horthy was to extricate Hungary from the German alliance, and save Budapest as well as himself, he had to move fast. He sent a secret mission to Moscow, informing the Russian government that he was ready to make peace. It would have been prudent to bring in large numbers of Hungarian troops to safeguard Budapest while a treaty was worked out. Horthy did not take this precaution and the Nazis, who had their spies in Horthy’s headquarters at Buda Castle, made their own preparations. On Sunday morning 15 October 1944, in a radio broadcast to the Hungarian people, Horthy announced that the war was over. Judy heard the news on the street as she made her way to the Jewish house. She saw a stranger embracing Jancsi and tearing the yellow star from his coat. They shouted something she could not hear. Jancsi, his eyes brimming with tears, ran to her with the wonderful news: ‘We surrendered. The war is over’. They had a day of hope and joy with Manyi and Gyuszi, drinking and kissing and listening to Hungarian songs on the radio, trying to guess whether the Russians would come next day or the day after. Then, towards evening, all rejoicing stopped. The radio suddenly started playing German marches. As the little group in Manyi’s flat soon heard, a Nazi group had occupied the radio station, shot the announcer and commandeered the microphone. There had been a coup; Horthy’s son was taken hostage; Horthy himself was a captive of the Germans; and the Hungarian Nazi (Arrow Cross) leader Ferenc Szálasi assumed power. Germany’s will was not yet exhausted and Budapest was to feel its strength during the coming winter of 1944–45. The Budapest Jews who, like Jancsi, had torn off the yellow star on that happy Sunday morning, were now in mortal danger.

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Jancsi refused to stay in the precarious haven of Manyi’s flat. Fearing atrocities in the Jewish house, he went back to look after the landlady and her child. Judy and Gyuszi followed, urging him to change his mind. They all knew that attacks on the Jewish houses would happen within hours or days at most. Jancsi agreed to come back to Manyi’s flat but only if he could bring the mother and child too. ‘All right, the child can sleep in the bathtub’, Gyuszi settled matters. Back at Manyi’s they found another woman and child who had taken refuge there. That night they all slept on the floor. Next day Jancsi stayed inside the flat while Judy took the tram to work, almost as if it were a normal Monday morning: On the tram, looking out the window, I felt icy terror. Along Rákóczy-út the Jews were herded like cattle, carrying bundles on their backs. Some old people sat on carts, their feet dangling down the side. They looked like grandparents who used to be put carefully from bed to easychair and now they rattled over the cobblestones with fright in their eyes... In the factory I was packing Dextrose in pink tissue paper. The mechanical movements were soothing now. I looked at the park through the window and saw swirling smoke.The others saw it too and guessed what it may be. Eventually the delivery boy went out to explore. From far away one could hear machine gun fire. The delivery boy came back and announced that the smoke came from bodies being burned. What bodies? Jewish bodies. Didn’t we hear that they were machine-gunning them in Telekitér? Well done, they lived it up anyway, lately, in the Jewish houses, it was villainous.

The factory forewoman had a softer heart than most. She too went to see what was happening and returned in distress at the sight of a child’s foot sticking out from the heap of burning bodies.

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Hearing all this, Judy was sick with fear for Jancsi. That night she went to get help from Gabi Izsák, the brother of her sculptor friend Ági, from Beregszász. Gabi, who posed as a Nazi, was active in the Budapest underground, and Judy was already helping him in forging identity papers. She also stole medicines from the factory, hiding them in her bra, and passing them on for Gabi to keep for fugitives in need. ‘Bring Jancsi here’, Gabi said. But how to get him there from Manyi’s flat? Jancsi could not run the risk of being seen in daylight; and with Budapest under martial law no one was allowed on the streets after 5 p.m. Judy had to find an escort, even though there was a high risk in doing so. She sent a message to a Hungarian army officer who was sympathetic to the Jews. Putting his own life in peril, he agreed to help. Darkness fell early on that October day so there was time to walk arm in arm with Jancsi in the gathering dusk, safeguarded by the major’s army uniform. But at Gabi Izsák’s flat they found twenty-three Jews already hiding in a darkened room. Jancsi pressed Judy’s arm and repeated over and over: ‘Let’s get out of here, let’s get out of here’. It was ten minutes to five, and the army officer was still with them. Jancsi refused to endanger Judy by going to the room she rented as ‘Mária Koperdák’. So it was back to Manyi’s flat, with nothing gained, nothing settled. The major escorted them, his revolver in his hand, ready for the gangs of Arrow Cross thugs who roamed the streets. Judy endured another day at work.That evening Jancsi told her that he had decided to go into the ghetto. ‘Much rather than this furtive existence, this trembling uncertainty.’ She was appalled. ‘If you go, I go too’, she said. The ghetto, which occupied several blocks in the central business district, now held some tens of thousands of Jews, supposedly waiting to be deported, but much more likely to be killed. It was guarded by armed members of the Hungarian Arrow Cross party and German SS troops, with some of

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the city police force. Judy and Jancsi were still arguing when the doorbell rang in Manyi’s flat. Film director Frici Bán and his actress wife Kati Timár, two of Jancsi’s closest friends, had been searching for him. ‘Thank God we found you, and now you are coming with us.’ Jancsi resisted: ‘You are mad; you will be killed for hiding a Jew.’ ‘For God’s sake’, said Kati, getting impatient with such trifles, ‘what are friends for?’ So Jancsi went with them to spend the next three months in their flat in Zugló, ready to hide in a wardrobe whenever the doorbell rang, never to step outside, even for a breath of air. Compared with the many thousands of Jews in Budapest whom no one helped, Judy and Jancsi were fortunate. Mária Koperdák with her gift of identity papers; Manyi opening the door of her little flat; the major breaking the rules to walk with two Jews; Frici and Kati with their unhesitating offer of shelter; all these were Christians and all willingly risked their lives.Thinking of them helped Judy to keep sane when she heard anti-Semitic talk at the factory. ‘It serves them right to live in the ghetto, may they fry in their own fat, perish together with their children.’ She had never heard such venom in her sheltered Beregszász years, never thought it existed. Now, walking every day inside hostile territory, like an undercover agent, she discovered the casual cruelty of ordinary people. She had to keep silent, retreat to the lavatory to cry, pray and beat her head on the wall. Somehow she maintained a semblance of indifference at the factory workbench while such talk went on. While Judy flinched inwardly, Mária Koperdák went on with her work. In the last days before Christmas 1944, the factory was idle because of power cuts. Judy took the tram to Zugló to spend the holiday with Jancsi and his protectors. The snow-covered streets were crowded. Although many had left the city, more had come into it, refugees carrying their bundles, just ahead of the advancing Russian army. She saw the buildings shattered by the Allied

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bombers which now came over nearly every night. Artillery fire could be heard in the distance as the Russians attacked German and Hungarian troops. Arrow Cross men were on every street corner, watching for stray Jews. A few protected houses flew the flags of neutral foreign powers. Sweden’s envoy, Raoul Wallenberg, rescued thousands of Jews in the last desperate months of 1944, and kept them safe under the Swedish flag until they could be sent out of the country. These were signs of hope; and from hearing BBC broadcasts at Manyi’s flat Judy was sure that Germany was losing the war. But before any surrender took place there would be many more deaths. Some Nazi supporters would try to make terms with the future but others knew they had nothing to lose in killing the last Jews. Those who were not murdered starved in the ghetto. By late December Budapest witnessed unimaginable daily horrors. In narrow Kazinczy street enfeebled men, drooping their heads, were pushing a wheelbarrow. On the rattling contraption naked human bodies as yellow as wax were jolted along and a stiff arm with black patches was dangling and knocking against the spokes of the wheel. They stopped in front of the Kazinczy baths and awkwardly turned into the lattice gate. In the courtyard of the baths behind the weatherbeaten facade bodies were piled up, frozen stiff like pieces of wood.

For months Judy had suffered from night terrors, shaking and sobbing, as the tensions of being Mária Koperdák by day were released. And yet as she walked through the devastated city streets, to take the tram to Zugló, she felt sure that she would not be killed: ‘I felt invincible. I knew I would survive’. When she arrived, she helped Kati to make a Christmas crib, with sand and straw and cutout painted figures, to put in front of the tree. Beside the crib they placed two yellow candles. Then Judy made comic sketches of the

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group: Kati’s mother (a singer, like Mistinguette in style), her sister, also a singer, her 15-year-old nephew, and Csura the maid in men’s clothes, fur cap and boots. She drew Frici as the mad hatter at an Alice in Wonderland tea-party; and Kati seated, reading, while sparks flew from her hair. The evening was happy; they had a good dinner, with wine and black coffee. ‘We tried very hard not to think of other Christmases. I don’t hope but I don’t mourn either.’ On the day after Christmas she had to get back to work. Because of Russian bombardment, the trams had stopped running, and Judy began the long walk back to the lodgings where she would become Mária Koperdák again. On the way she was offered a lift by a polite young man wearing a leather jacket. Once inside the car she saw the swastika on his sleeve. He joked that if they were stopped by police he could say that he was taking her in for questioning. When they were stopped at a street barricade her driver and the policeman exchanged the Nazi salute: ‘Long live Szálasi’. Judy could not have been safer than in the Nazi car, nor could she have felt more alone.

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Chapter Four U N D E R

S I E G E

Nothing could be worse than this, the people of Budapest said in

the last days of 1944.The siege of their city was the cruellest part of the war. Bombs in the morning, bombs in the evening: the Americans by day, the British by night, while German and Hungarian troops fought off the Russians. Daily raids from Russian bombers supported the advancing Russian troops which by Christmas Eve 1944 had encircled the city. The siege of Budapest, which lasted for one hundred days, spared no one. Thirty-five thousand civilians were killed, and the elegant city on the Danube was reduced to rubble. Not even in Stalingrad, which endured a longer time of siege, was there greater human suffering. In Budapest, everyone was trapped. Jews and Gentiles, refugees, deserters from the Hungarian army, SS men: whatever their allegiance in these last months of the war, they had fear, pain and starvation in common.

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‘We became subterranean creatures’, Judy said. She did not go back to the room where she had lived as Mária Koperdák. Electricity, gas and water supplies failed in the first few days of 1945 and the factory was closed. For three weeks her home was the cellar below the large block of flats where her uncle Gyuszi had been sheltered by his lover Manyi Guttman. In the first few days, between air raids, they were able to go up to the flat to wash and cook.Then the apartment block was hit, its windows shattered. They took the bare necessities to the cellar, and arranged them as best they could in the small space they shared with the other tenants. There were eight babies, and all through the night one or other of them was crying. Judy’s diary pictured the scene: The interior looks like this. Manyi’s bed, around it two tanks with water. A radio which doesn’t work, four sandbags, a waterjug, a basket with dried bread, books and teapots. All round are hooks with winter coats...We started to ration food. Each meal consisted of one piece of dried bread with bacon. No more cooking. One evening the doctor made some pies on his spirit cooker and as it was the last of his flour everybody received a piece and a glass of wine. The opera singer sang an aria. One can hardly move from all the stretchers. Lately I share mine with another girl. We took the latrine from the coal cellar into the lift shaft. Washing became a luxury of the past. No fresh underwear.

Longing for clean clothes was replaced by dreams of food as hunger grew. Judy was at first repelled by the sight of women with kitchen knives cutting flesh from horses which had been shot in the fighting. Later, horseflesh would be a feast for her too. The house next door was hit and its upper floors were burning. The group in the cellar fetched water and climbed the stairs to quench the flames,

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stumbling in the dark, wheezing in the smoky air. After that the cellar seemed a haven, its darkness a comfort. Outside were bodies half concealed by snowfall. Bare feet, from which someone had stolen the boots, protruded grotesquely. Judy caught her breath to see the greenish pallor of the faces of the living, and knew that she looked no better. She tried not to think of Jancsi. Bombs would be falling on the block of flats in Zugló where he was hidden by his friends; and as a fugitive Jew he could not go down with them from his third floor hiding place to the comparative safety of the shelter. There was no way for her to know if he was still alive. The group in the cellar lived between hope and fear. They might starve to death before the Russians came. They might be killed or maimed in the bombing, or crushed under a collapsing wall. There were terrifying stories of Nazi efforts to kill the last Jews. One way was to shackle three of them together, make them march to the bank of the Danube, shoot the one in the middle and throw the dead and the living into the freezing water. At last, very early one morning, the first Russian came into the cellar where Judy and her group had spent more than three weeks. He was looking for German soldiers and weapons; he was calm and polite. Other Russians followed, less restrained, looking for plunder; they took all the watches and torches. The third wave was drunken and wanton. Then came two Jews from the ghetto, walking skeletons: hardly recognisable as living beings. They were given food, which they had to be restrained from eating too fast. A little later Jancsi came into the cellar. Judy leaned against him to stop herself from fainting. ‘We clasped each other. It was unreal, unbelievable, to fill my eyes with the sight of him.’ Eleven days earlier Zugló had been liberated and Jancsi came out of his hiding place. As the Russians moved towards the centre of the city, Jancsi followed, intent on reaching Judy before the inevitable looting and raping began. He planned to take her, Manyi and Gyuszi back to

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Zugló, which was safe because the looting had already taken place, and the troops had moved on. So they set off, the four of them, through the ruins of Budapest: The walk through the city was an unforgettable, agonising experience. Houses were still burning on both sides of the street; the skyline punctured with telegraph poles whose broken wires criss-crossed the snowy ground and had to be stepped over. We stepped over fallen bricks and dead bodies and the living among them [with] surrealistic objects they have stolen like dolls, toys, gramophones and sewing machines.

Judy could not remember how many hours it took to walk the twenty kilometres to Zugló. In the safety of the flat where Jancsi had been hidden for three months she felt dazed, unsure of her own reality. She longed for home but was afraid to think about her mother and grandmother. Beregszász was already under Soviet control. There was no news of its deported Jews. There were no trains; it was not possible yet to go and see if they had returned. Ten in one room in Kati’s flat, because they could not heat more than one, the group lived on whatever the men could steal, and were all constantly hungry. Jancsi and Gyuszi, and Csura the maid, went out scavenging every day. They tore the wood from fences to heat the stove, and brought back precious buckets of water so that each of them could wash every third day. When it seemed safe, they moved back to the city where there was a better chance of finding food. Relief kitchens had been set up and coupons issued: they queued each day for a dish of beans. Judy and Jancsi moved into a devastated apartment block where they improvised a home base in what had been a lawyer’s office. They slept on the lawyer’s desk, took down the heavy velvet curtains to use as blankets, and

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burned the legal documents in the stove for a little illusory warmth. Outside they could still hear sounds of shooting and exploding mines. All this time Judy the artist was still submerged. As the winter ended there was a sudden resurgence of her creativity. It came about in one of the random reversals of fortune that these strange times produced. Among the new men in power in Budapest was Béla Illés, a writer who had grown up in Beregszász and had been at school with Gyuszi Kont. Illés joined the Communist Party in the 1920s and left Beregszász. Returning as a high-ranking officer in the Russian forces more than twenty years later, Illés rescued his 84-year-old mother from the ghetto and installed her in a flat in Budapest, where he gave her all the comforts that his new position of power could command. On the way to Budapest he had revisited his home town. There, on the walls of several houses, he saw portraits Judy had painted before the war, and so was reminded of the Kont family he had known in very different times. In Budapest he looked for Judy in order to commission a portrait of his mother. This was the final luxury to dignify her old age after much suffering and deprivation—and it was Judy’s biggest commission. Never again would she earn so much for a painting. It was a fortune in food: two kilos of bacon, a bag of potatoes, two eggs, two apples and a loaf of bread. Judy shared it with her friends. Awestruck at such riches, they wanted to give something in return. Perhaps she would take half an onion as a small exchange? To Judy, the commission brought even more than the food: Since I’m painting the old mother of Béla Illés I feel more alive. After the first sitting, the first for a year, I looked at the eyes in the portrait and our eyes lock. Mine and the painted ones. And I thought, never again will I let this happen, this parting from paint and brush. They felt like lost childhood toys—found again.

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Jancsi, too, was beckoned back to something like his former life.The Dreher Brewery, which had brought him home from the labour camp, was resuming operations and he was offered the directorship. This was a splendid chance to rebuild his career in one of the best jobs of its kind in Europe. Yet he hesitated. The search for the lost family members—his and Judy’s—had to come first. On 25 March 1945, a little more than a year after the German occupation of Budapest, military operations had ended and the trains were running again. It took the Kämpfners two days and two nights to reach Munkács, in carriages so closely packed that it was impossible to move, let alone to reach the one lavatory. They had brought a tin of food for the journey, and when they had eaten the contents Judy wrapped a blanket round herself and used the empty tin to urinate. At Miskolc the train was halted while passengers were checked for lice. Transferred to a cattle truck, they spent the second day and night with this grim reminder of the trucks that had taken their families away. At last they reached Munkács, the town which held happy memories of their first year of marriage. Those memories were pushed aside. This was a hollow place: The well-known streets, the unharmed houses, every stone and blade of grass screamed in our ears: ‘Nothing happened. Nothing changed.’ I simply didn’t believe that the soul of the town is missing; not one of our friends lives in these houses. This is stage decor, a Potemkin village, and nothing I see is true.

That night the Kämpfners met the first of the few returning survivors of Auschwitz, and for the first time learned the truth about the gas chambers, the mass exterminations. No one had news of Judy’s family, or Jancsi’s. It was the same next day in Beregszász: behind the facade, nothing. Judy went to her grandmother’s house—it was emptiness.There had been looting and minor damage

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but the walls remained, the roof was sound. Inside the house the parquet floor was strewn with horse manure; in the garden the chandeliers hung grotesquely from the trees. Yet it was not like bombed-out Budapest, with its yawning gaps between burnt-out buildings, its littered snow-shrouded streets, its burden of halffrozen corpses. This was silent, spectral, a place from which even death had been taken away. At Mária Koperdák’s house there were reminders of the family which pierced the heart. Judy had some time alone there, having climbed in through the window in Mária’s absence. Within the room, gazing at her with all the sadness she herself brought to the encounter, were photographs of her mother and grandmother, a younger Judy, the uncles.Then Mária arrived, eager to show Judy the possessions she had safeguarded: silver and linen, a stamp collection, bicycles, the precious photographs. But ‘I wasn’t interested in belongings—if only they would come back’.What hurt most was to touch her mother’s clothes. Ilus’s perfume lingered on them, with the smell of her favourite cigarettes. Judy left the possessions with Mária, and went back to Munkács with Jancsi. Munkács, too, was haunted. While Jancsi went around the town, talking to the survivors, devising means to help them, Judy sat on a bench in the promenade: I half close my eyes and think that Feri is coming out from his office any minute to have a cognac with us before dinner. Gizi hurries home about this time from the market to cook for Dr Spiegel.Tusi certainly wears her silver fox, she likes to parade it in the spring. Zoltán Molnár, the brother of the surgeon, will bow flamboyantly as is his habit when he steps from that door opposite me—God Almighty, they are all dead.

Jancsi tormented himself that his mother had died alone; he ought to have been with her in the cattle truck. His brother Sándor was

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dead too, as was Sándor’s 6-year-old son. There were two survivors in the Kämpfner family: Sándor’s wife Erzsi and daughter Irén. Judy did not quite give up hope that her mother might have survived. In her imagination she pictured Ilus, sometimes miraculously returned, more often going to her death. She might have saved herself, Judy thought: she was young enough to have been kept alive for the labour force. But Ilus would have refused to let go of the grandmother’s hand, and so they went together to the gas chamber. That was how it must have been, Judy told herself. Perhaps it was so. Yet the dream of a daughter holding her mother’s hand to the end surely reflects Judy’s own passionate rejection of a lonely death for Ilus. It is what Judy would have done for Ilus, if only she had been there. When the Kämpfners returned to Budapest after seeing the two ghostly towns, they had physically recovered from the ordeals of the siege, and the city had a semblance of normal life. Gyuszi and Manyi opened an espresso bar on Madách Square whose freshly painted sign, ‘Black and White’ defied the surrounding ruins. It was a place for people to meet and talk, seek news of lost family members, tell one another where food might be bought, sigh at the impossibly high price of meat. There were other threads to pick up. Judy went to see her former teacher, Aurél Bernáth, and found him depressed and idle. There was nowhere to work and nothing to paint with, he said. It was over. He could not give her any advice. What would happen to art and artists he did not know. Jancsi was haunted by the survivors, the walking skeletons he had seen in Beregszász and Munkács. Nothing was being done for them: the Russians would let them die. So he refused the dazzling offer from the Dreher Brewery and set to work. A friend, Vozáry, lent him four gold Napoleons as a start. Jancsi travelled to Bucharest, where the International Red Cross had headquarters. He argued his case and somehow (‘I don’t know what powers of

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persuasion he had’) he was given one million Swiss francs for relief work. Back in Budapest, he went with Judy to seek help from Béla Illés, and was warned not to take Swiss currency into Soviet territory: he would certainly be killed or at least imprisoned. ‘I have been a prisoner for three years’, Jancsi said, ‘and didn’t know why. If I become one now, at least I will know it happened for a cause’. Jancsi changed the francs into pengos, and having stuffed the notes into two potato sacks, hired a taxi whose driver, a Beregszász man, wanted to go home. The needs of the survivors brought out all Jancsi’s abilities. He was a brilliant organiser, with a sharp eye for detail; he left nothing to chance. Even in his most affluent days as Count Schönborn’s manager, he was always out of bed at 4 a.m. to see the trucks leave the brewery. Eloquent and charming, he could usually persuade other people to do what he wanted: and if persuasion was not enough, he had authority of voice and manner. Resolving to get food to thousands of starving Jews he drew on all his reserves of passion. Perhaps, too, there was a release of anger. He had been forced into a passive role during the war years. His young wife Judy had rescued him, first from forced labour, and then from the ghetto. Then his friends Frici and Kati hid him for the last terrible months. Immense risks had been taken to keep him alive. Now he could act, and risk his own life for the ghostly revenants from Auschwitz. Half a century later, he told his sons about the journey by night across the Russian border with potato sacks stuffed full of the devalued Hungarian currency. His cargo was so bulky that the back seat of the taxi had to be taken out to make room for it all. Just a taxi full of money. We went through the Russian line at night. When I think about it I don’t know myself how I had the courage. I mean, I’m not a coward but I’m not terribly courageous. So, with good luck, we came through. It was a whole

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night’s drive from Budapest. We crossed the border during the night. In Munkács people helped me and from this 50,000 dollars we established these soup kitchens.We bribed the Minister for the Ukraine with ten per cent.

Jancsi took a huge risk. In those first weeks after the German defeat, fighting, looting, robbery and murder were commonplace. There were deserters and stragglers from the German and Hungarian armies, bandits, criminals, hungry and desperate refugees. To be on the roads at night between Budapest and Munkács was madness. Even without their cargo of money, two unarmed men in a taxi were an invitation to attack. Bomb damage on the roads meant perilous travelling, slow at best. The taxi driver had to negotiate craters made by high explosives and hope not to hit a land mine. Added to all this was the probability—some would have said the certainty—of being stopped and searched by Russian or Ukrainian patrols.What could Jancsi have said in his own defence? The truth— that the sacks of money would be used to set up soup kitchens for the returning deportees—would not have kept him out of gaol. Most likely he would have been shot and the money stolen. Jancsi’s mission took him away from Budapest for two months. During this time he set up seventy soup kitchens in an area radiating outwards from his base in Munkács. This was his home country, where in better times, as Count Schönborn’s deputy, he had been on friendly terms with pub keepers and peasants. Here, too, he had taken Judy on his rounds, making sure that everything on the estate was in good order. Now these once fertile fields were bare, untended during the war years, when so many were sent to serve the war machine or to die in Auschwitz. Jancsi drove through a countryside which was peopled by slowly-moving skeletons, and haunted by those who had not returned. He came just in time, not only because of the urgency of getting food to the starving, but

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because Soviet rule had not yet been finally established. A certain disorder still prevailed, in which Jancsi’s effrontery won through. In the summer of 1945, a few weeks after Jancsi finished his work, the frontier closed. Electric fences, barbed wire, armed border guards, sealed off the sub-Carpathian region, which from this time would be known as the trans-Carpathian region, representing the view from Moscow. It was announced that by the unanimous free choice of its inhabitants, voting in a plebiscite, the region had become part of the Soviet Union. Beregszász and Munkács, which had been Hungarian, Czech, and Hungarian again, all within the space of twenty years, had to accept Soviet rule as a province of the Ukraine. The bleak humour of cynics who said, ‘If we have another liberation we’ll be finished’, was proved right. The Kämpfners’ future had to be in Budapest, since no possibility remained of going home. Hearing that all property in Beregszász had been confiscated, Judy felt indifferent; it wasn’t home any more. And, in Jancsi’s absence, she had found that she was pregnant. ‘I want it. I want it’, she wrote in her diary; ‘Jancsi doesn’t know yet. How I’m longing to tell him’. Her joyful acceptance of the pregnancy alternated with days of desolation. When a rumour that her mother had survived proved false, she endured ‘a breakdown worse than any before. I wanted to drink myself into a stupor’. By the end of the summer of 1945 she had lost all hope: ‘[My] second birthday without Anyu, my dear mother and as this is her day rather than mine I am thinking of her with indescribable longing and grief ’. Judy’s child was to be born at the end of 1945. She had conceived just after she and Jancsi had gone home to Beregszász and Munkács to find nothing and no one. This was a pattern common among those who lost their families. Consciously or not, they started to repair the loss with a new life. Jancsi returned unexpectedly from Munkács and Judy’s world filled with light. The

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offer of a job with the Dreher Brewery was still open and he decided to accept it. They found a one-roomed flat which felt luxurious, even though it had no heating, no hot water, no glass in the windows. Aware of the needs of the child she was carrying, Judy spent many hours each day queueing for food. Lard and sugar were hard to find. A sighting of potatoes was a small miracle. Judy’s happiness in the new life she and Jancsi had created was mingled with painful longing to be a child again, to be back at Beregszász. Attacks of nausea and dizziness prompted memories of how she had been cosseted in minor illnesses: her grandmother bringing in a tray with lemon tea, toasted white bread with lean Prague ham, her mother pushing the radio on a trolley to her bedside. And I couldn’t know then what it means to have a family—Gyuszi said just the other day—the island of life is gone where one could always return for love and help. We lost a whole world, we unfortunates, for which nothing can compensate. I can’t rest, dear God. I still pray for the miracle to happen.The few who survived, poor souls, they go back to their empty houses and they wander between borders. The saddest wandering history ever produced.

Comfort came in an unexpected way. Jancsi’s new job with the brewery involved travel from Budapest to Vienna, Bucharest and Prague, selling hops, buying cocoa. In Vienna he met the Count Schönborn whom he had not seen since 1940. It was impossible to resume the friendship as though nothing had happened. ‘If they had been hunting aristocrats I would have behaved differently’, Jancsi said. The Count was equally direct: ‘I know and I am sorry’. One December day, soon after this interchange, the brewery truck arrived at the Kämpfners’ flat, delivering two large suitcases. Inside were baby clothes, nappies and towels: everything Judy needed. She had been scouring the shops in Budapest, worried that the baby was due

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in a few weeks time, and she had nothing. Moreover she and Jancsi were using blankets and pillows borrowed from a friend who wanted them back. The suitcases from Vienna were followed two days later by another delivery—three big cases that held pillows, eiderdowns, blankets and sheets with the embroidered monogram KI. Gazing at this magical gift, Judy realised what it was. The initials KI could stand for Kämpfner Judit, but all these sheets and blankets had been embroidered for Kaszab Ilus at the time of her marriage; and the baby clothes were for Judy’s own birth in Vienna in 1920. It was as if her mother knew Judy’s need and had sent the gift for the grandchild she would never see. Judy wept all night, but was comforted by this manifestation of her mother’s care. Later Jancsi told her what had happened. At the time of her parents’ move to Budapest in 1929 some of their possessions were left behind in Vienna. Later the house they owned was confiscated by the Nazis. Somehow it came to Count Schönborn’s attention that the Kaszab household goods were still in store, and he removed them for safety to the cellars of his palace in the Renngasse. How and when this was done Judy never asked. She did not really want a rational explanation, and the details remain mysterious. Count Schönborn’s wartime record ends with his being seconded for duty in the defence of Vienna. It may be that he happened to see the Kaszab name in some official list of Nazi expropriations and acted accordingly for the sake of an old friendship. The Count could not have known that Jancsi would survive and reappear in something like his prewar identity as a brewery manager, but from this time he did what he could for the Kämpfners. Honour was satisfied by his acceptance of Jancsi’s reproach, and the friendship was resumed. In fact, as they all knew, there was not much the Count could have done to help in the war years. Paradoxically, Mária Koperdák’s gift to Judy of her Aryan peasant identity was something the riches of the Schönborns could

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not match. The Count lost a great deal in the fortunes of war. All his Hungarian lands, his castle, Beregvár, the Podhering brewery and vineyards, were swallowed up in the Soviet occupation; he would never see them again. But at the end of the war he retained more than enough; his family was intact and he had his freedom. By contrast, none of them, not the Count, nor the Kämpfners, would ever see Mária Koperdák again. When the new borders closed on Beregszász Mária was cut off from them all; she faced a hard life as a Soviet citizen in a region which never recovered its prewar prosperity. As soon as it was possible to do so the Kämpfners sent her money and parcels of food and clothes. Mária married and had children, for whom Judy sent baby clothes to Beregszász, honouring the debt and the friendship, and remembering her own need before the birth of her first child. And one day in the distant future, when Beregszász had once again changed its rulers, becoming part of a self-governing Ukraine, the Kämpfners’ son Peter would travel the same road his father had taken in 1945, from Budapest to Beregszász, in order to see Mária and thank her for the saving gift of her papers. The Kämpfners had welcomed the Russians as liberators, and at first the Communist influence on the postwar Hungarian government did not worry them. Most of their friends were leftwing, artists, writers and actors who hoped for a more equitable regime, and were not sufficiently wary of the political manoeuvres by which one tyranny would be replaced by another. For a few months at least their own lives seemed full of promise. Their first son, János Kämpfner, was born in Budapest on New Year’s Eve 1945. Judy’s happiness in her child (‘the greatest wonder in the world’) was absolute, as was Jancsi’s. Seven years on from their marriage, they had a family and a future. Jancsi had a well-paid job; Judy was painting again.The war damage, political and personal, was not forgotten, but there was reason to hope. Yet this was the time when Judy mourned her mother most fiercely. ‘Perhaps it never cut

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so deep that she is not, that she can never see my child’. It was the time, too, when she and Jancsi had to think about their Jewish heritage: what did they want for their son? Within months of his birth they were talking about migrating for the child’s sake: ‘Such a soft, delicate, innocent life. We mustn’t stay in this country’. Jancsi had no real satisfaction in his work, nor could he identify himself with the future of the country. As the new regime turned from Fascist to Communist he was wary of another ideological straitjacket.When friends told him that the evil of the war years was in the regime, not the people, he did not believe them. Yet he could not be happy as a bystander, without a constructive part to play in public affairs. So he drifted, sustained by his love for Judy and his son, but deeply discontented with his own role in the world. In March 1947 Judy’s father Imre Kaszab became gravely ill and was discharged from hospital to die at home. Sitting at his bedside, Judy dipped her hands in cold water and gently stroked his head and neck and swollen feet. She felt at first ‘more guilt than sorrow’— guilt that she could not feel as a daughter should. Perhaps because he never took responsibility for her as a child, the relationship did not deepen as she grew up. In the war years Imre was in Budapest and she had visited him often during her ‘Mária Koperdák’ period, but when danger came most acutely it was her uncle Gyuszi to whom she turned for protection. Yet as her father lay dying, she knew that there was something in the ‘blood link’ after all. Then came the shock of hearing that Imre’s last wish was to be buried in the Jewish cemetery. Judy could not believe it. He had never to her knowledge identified himself as a Jew. As a young man, some time before his marriage, he had chosen to convert to Christianity, as many assimilated Jews did for reasons of convenience, but he was an atheist, never a believer. And yet in one of his last moments of consciousness he said to Judy: ‘How I envy your mother!’ So Auschwitz cast its long shadow on Imre Kaszab after all.

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Imre’s death left Judy in deep despair. There was a stronger sense of loss than she had expected; and these last days showed her aspects of her father she did not understand. Almost as strange as his wish to be buried with his own people was Imre’s wish to die alone. His wife Lili slept beside him every night and he was never without a watcher by the bedside, until he said to Lili, ‘Dear heart, set me free, let me die’. Lili answered: ‘I let you, darling’. She left the room and when she returned he was dead. Neither as a daughter nor as a mother could Judy escape the question of Jewish identity. In October 1945, seven months pregnant, she had faced the contradictions which she would never quite resolve: I don’t wish [the child] to be Jewish. To carry the curse, the plague and torment of his race. And I don’t wish it to be christian, not feeling any sympathy towards a doctrine in the name of which all our loved ones were butchered. We decided to leave it be a heathen, we can inject—I hope—a belief in God in it, which is strong and unshaken in us without churches and religious practice. Although what if when six years old, other children will punish it for being different? ... What’s more it’s not only the problem of the child but our own ... I don’t really want the yellow star—symbolically—to be on my passport and identification any more ... I saw too many men being stripped under doorways and killed because they have been circumcised. And yet I don’t belong elsewhere.

After her father’s death, which was followed by the birth of her second child Péter in September 1947, Judy was again forced to confront the question of her Jewish heritage. How much did it mean? She and Jancsi knew little or nothing of the tradition. Even if they wanted their sons to be Jewish they could not instruct them.

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Christian belief was out of the question, but it might be a safeguard to become nominal members of the church. They still had the papers which certified Jancsi and herself as baptised Catholics. A fraud, of course, but when the life of the new family was at stake it was a legitimate strategy. They did not hate individual Christians; how could they? They owed their lives to Mária Koperdák, Manyi Guttman, Kati Timár and Frici Bán, all of whom had risked being murdered for hiding them. In the end, when they took the pragmatic decision to have their sons baptised and not circumcised, it was fear that drove them. Where to belong, where to live: these questions were put aside, but they would not go away. Meanwhile, in the first postwar years, there was time and space for painting and domestic happiness. Feeling stifled in the city, Judy rented rooms at Szentendre, an artists’ colony on the banks of the Danube. With a housekeeper to do the domestic work she was set free for the double pleasures of painting and motherhood. Judy’s sociable being expanded in the company of artists. It was open house every day at Szentendre. Established artists freely gave their time to novices like Judy. She borrowed books on Matisse, Picasso, Rouault; she watched and listened and learned. The companionship of this intellectually lively, friendly place was what she had been missing. And every weekend, when Jancsi joined her, her happiness was complete: Jancsi came out last night. We walked in the dark with only the highway curving lighter and the trees whispered and the Danube flows, swollen, encircling their trunks.There is fragrance in the air and the moment should be captured.

Back in Budapest, after long summer days at Szentendre, Judy enjoyed the stimulus of fellow painters. In the company of Béla Czóbel, who painted her portrait at Szentendre, and János Kmetty,

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from whom she took lessons in Budapest, she began to feel at home with the ideas of mainstream European art. Learning from Kmetty, and having paid help, stretched the Kämpfner budget; but Jancsi was determined that Judy would find her way into the world of art, as he had promised before their marriage. Czóbel, just back from a visit to Paris, talked about Matisse and Braque, filling gaps in Judy’s awareness. She went to lectures by her former teacher Aurél Bernáth and was happy to be remembered and greeted as a professional. Her work grew stronger with strict daily discipline, regular long hours at the easel, and many more hours in which she thought and breathed painting. As well as the portraits in which she was most at home, she became confident in still life, nudes and watercolours. Jancsi thought her best chance of excellence would come through portraiture. Where five hundred painters could equal her in still life, he said, perhaps only two had her gift for the portrait. At a time when abstract art was supreme, this was unfashionable advice, but it matched Judy’s own feeling that ‘if I arrive at the abstract one day it must happen without prompting’. Soon, however, politics invaded the art world and the new orthodoxy demanded socialist realism. Abstract art was declared decadent. Judy’s teacher Kmetty was one of those whose work was disrupted. As a committed Communist he was expected to renounce the form to which, as an artist, he was equally committed. The conflict depressed him so deeply that he scarcely had the will to live. His desolate state, and the hypcrisy of those who were trimming their sails to the winds of Communism, prompted Judy to an uncharacteristic outburst of anger: All those who a year ago still preached about the abstract being the only salvation, turned full circle, and talk and practise socialist realism which in their interpretation means that one should paint exclusively iron workers or miners looking heroic. To me anyone

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is a spineless fake who grew up in the then existing order, and now out of opportunism tries to depict factories—of which he doesn’t know a thing. Besides I think when Van Gogh painted his poor pair of shoes with the tongue of the shoe hanging out as if in mortal agony that was more revolutionary. Finogenov paints generals with red stripes and medals and preaches against Renoir, Cézanne and Gauguin. It’s as if violins, flutes and harps would be lacking in an orchestra and only drums and trumpets allowed.

There were no trumpets or drums in Judy’s paintings. Just as her diaries return again and again to her happiness in motherhood, so too it gave new intimacy to her art. Soon after the birth of Péter, on 5 September 1947, she painted both her sons. First János (‘and it’s good’), then ‘Péterke in his pram before the window, blue afternoon light outside and the yellow of the lamplight inside’. Péter in the Garden (1948) is a gentle meditation on childhood and the natural world. Judy exhibited Mother and Child at the Ernst Museum in February 1949, but with this work, her other studies of children and her portraits, she felt that she belonged nowhere: not with the abstractionists who were losing the critical wars, and even less with the new propagandists. It did not shake her confidence as an artist but it foretold that the happy fellowship of Szentendre was ending. The politics of the time pressed even harder on Jancsi than on Judy. Never afraid to say what he thought, he openly opposed the Communists’ expropriation of property. In March 1948, businesses which employed more than one hundred people were taken over by the state. Owners who arrived at work were turned away. If there was money in the till, or a car in the garage, bad luck. They owned nothing. Jancsi said that he could see no difference between this policy and the dispossession of the Jews under the Fascists. Such indiscretions were noted. Jancsi was not allowed to go unaccompanied on buying trips outside Hungary. A party official

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was assigned to travel with him and report on return everything that Jancsi did or said. It was only a matter of time before his usefulness to the trade would be outweighed by his unsound political opinions. In case he might think of defecting on one of his trips to Switzerland or Holland, Judy was refused permission to go with him. As they began to plan their exile Judy felt the restraining charm of Szentendre. She wanted to fix it in her mind, ‘to preserve it as I preserve the fresh summer taste of peaches and strawberries’. With Biedermeier furniture and a marble-topped sideboard below a coloured photograph of Emperor Franz Joseph, their rooms evoked prewar Hungary, the vanished past. The present was Budapest: planning, politics and passports. Immediately after the war the Kämpfners had been given a choice of citizenship. They chose to be Czechoslovak rather than Hungarian, because of the inter-war years when they had lived freely under the Masaryk republic. That decision served them well; in 1949 it would not have been possible for them to get Hungarian passports. While friends had to swim the Danube or take their chance with barbed wire and police dogs at the border, the Kämpfners were given official permission to leave. The final push came in July 1949. At four o’clock one morning they were awakened by the knock on the door which opponents of the Communist regime had learned to dread, as had the Jews and antiFascists in earlier years. The timing was for intimidation. Two men wearing Communist armbands told Jancsi to report for questioning four hours later. At party headquarters he was asked about his business trips to western countries. What people did he talk to? What information did he have about expatriate Hungarians? ‘Listen’, Jancsi said angrily, ‘I am selling malt, I don’t sell people’. Reporting later for work at the brewery, he was told that he no longer had a job; and he knew that he would not find another one.

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Within a few weeks the Kämpfners left Budapest with their two children. They were allowed to take some possessions including their piano and a small number of Judy’s paintings. Their books were checked by an official at the state library who blew open every page for hidden dollars. As Czechoslovak subjects they left Hungary for Vienna; and on arrival there they threw away the passports which would bind them to another Communist regime. In Vienna, Judy’s birthplace, they became displaced persons, awaiting permission to start a new life in another country, yet to be found, which would open its gates for them.

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C h a p t e r F i ve D I S P L A C E D

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Vienna in 1949 was a place of charm and squalor, physical and

moral. Bomb damage had not obliterated its beauty. It was a city of bad memories and bad consciences, rage and grief and hope. Wild flowers grew in the crevices of ruined buildings, and in the street cafés people laughed and chatted. It was still a divided city, in which the four armies of occupation—British, French, Russian and American—co-existed mistrustfully with the Viennese and with one another. Crime flourished, as did the black market. The sewers beneath the city, exposed in all their sinister darkness in the film version of Graham Greene’s The Third Man, expressed postwar Vienna as potently as the geraniums in window boxes or the reappearance of Sachertorte with whipped cream. While the Viennese reclaimed their city they were forced to share shelter and food with the many thousands of refugees who had no place to go and no

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means of earning a living. These displaced people had to create a future out of nothing. If they sank into passivity they would be lost. The welfare systems set up by the occupying forces could not ward off starvation and disease among the very old and those who had lost the will to survive. It took energy and persistence to queue for food. And because, for most refugees, Vienna was no more than a staging post, the weary business of filling in forms and applying for foreign visas had to be done. Hardest of all was the uncertainty. They might wait years for a visa and never get one. Some waited in the camps set up for ‘displaced persons’. Others, who had resources of their own, lived a more normal life. But they too suffered from the waiting and the knowledge that their assets might not last long enough. And for all the Jews who had survived the Hitler years, there were ghosts that would never leave them. Having left Hungary with the official permission granted by their Czechoslovak passports, the Kämpfners had money to keep them for some months outside the DP camps; and they had been allowed to bring some possessions. Nor were they isolated in Vienna. Gyuszi and Manyi Kont, who had married after the end of the war and were already living in Vienna, came to the railway station to welcome them, as did Ernst Rassl, director of Count Schönborn’s Austrian estates. Although housing was desperately hard to get, the Count instantly conjured up a landlady, formerly his cook, who rented them two rooms in her house in the Naglergasse, a cobbled street in the inner city. The house was dark and narrow, with a winding staircase, but their rooms took on a friendly atmosphere, with the children’s toys and Judy’s painting gear and her own characteristic blend of turpentine and cologne. Jancsi hired a nanny so that Judy could start painting again; and the Schönborn connection brought him well paid brewery work. Judy was invigorated by daily painting sessions at the Kunsthistorisches Museum where she was given the exceptional privilege of copying

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the great Brueghel Peasant Dance. It took her five hours a day for six weeks and taught her more than years of study. The friendly staff members brought her an easel, studio table and stepladder; and when she took a break from the task they invited her to watch the restorers at work on a Dutch landscape painting. Every day she had a sense of excitement: The autumn is lovely; it’s a pleasure to step through the door every morning. There are green shutters on the houses in our street, and black marble shop-signs with gold lettering. There is ‘Toni Herzerl, Baker’ or ‘Kuhfuss Stueberl’. The paintbox hanging over my shoulder, Jancsi takes me to the bus stop on the Graben, buys me chocolate for the road. I set off for the Ring, walk under the chestnut trees. Lucas Kranach seems to greet me as I step into the Museum.When I come home, at noon, the tile stove is warm, the table set, Péter in bed, János is ‘helping’ [the nanny] in the kitchen.

That was the happy side of life in Vienna, when Judy communed with the great painters of the past and returned to domestic serenity. The dark side could not be ignored. There were friends who made their escape from Budapest: ‘They fell in the door, filthy, in rags, undernourished but free’. There was tragic news of others: shot escaping over the wire, drowned swimming the Danube. The Kämpfners visited the Rothschild Centre for displaced people, where dispirited groups of Polish, Czech and Hungarian refugees gathered to read and re-read letters from overseas, and talked about their chances of a new home. It was the same in the espresso bars. Was it best to apply for Chile or Venezuela? Was Israel the only safe haven for Jews? Jancsi’s niece Irénke, who had survived Auschwitz, wrote from Israel to say that the life there would be hard for the Kämpfners: she thought Jancsi at forty-seven was too old. They

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could not hope for Britain or the United States where the quotas were full and waiting lists impossibly long.They did not want to live in any country in which there was gross economic or social inequality. That ruled out Latin America. Canada and Australia, by default, went to the top of the Kämpfners’ list. The fact that neither Judy nor Jancsi spoke English was a minor point; they could learn the language and Jancsi’s confidence in his own managerial skills was unshaken. He was sure he could make a new life, even if it had to be in unknown and distant Australia. Vienna itself seemed tainted. Judy mused on the contradictions of her uncle Gyuszi Kont: a hero during the siege of Budapest, he now thought only of money. Schemes for smuggling diamonds out of Hungary failed. Arriving almost penniless in Vienna he found shady company, selling jewellery on the black market while his young wife Manyi worked as a cleaner. In Budapest he had given freely, sharing the last of his food when food meant life or death. Was the Gyuszi who now grudged Manyi a few schillings the same man who ran into a burning building to rescue the children? And Manyi, brave and beautiful, who had risked her life month after month by hiding Jews in her Budapest flat, how could she now quarrel and complain about petty inconveniences? When Gyuszi was gaoled for his black-market activities, Jancsi bailed him out and Judy reflected that her feeling for this ‘Tartuffe character’, her friend from childhood, her refuge and rescuer, was like a daughter’s unconditional love—the love she had never been able to give to Imre Kaszab. The past was never far from mind. Four-year-old János probed the wounds when he asked Judy about her mother. ‘She died’, I answered as naturally as one talks about going on a journey. ‘And your Apu [father]?’ ‘He died too.’ ‘And Apuci’s mami?’ ‘She died’. ‘And his Apu?’ ‘He died too.’ As I kept

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answering his questions the wind of the tragedy blew through my whole being. ‘Tell me, mami,’ János said, ‘who did not die in your family?’

Judy’s Vienna diaries reflect uncertainty and overwhelming sadness. Late in 1949, a few months after leaving Budapest, she was dismayed to find herself pregnant. Although she had welcomed her first two children in far harder circumstances, it now seemed beyond her strength to take another child into the unknown future. She chose to have an abortion but ‘woke up in hospital, terribly depressed’. Perhaps as a result of the abortion, perhaps as a complication of mumps, which she caught from the children, she was later found to have an inflammation of the ovaries which required further treatment in hospital. Except for the excitement of copying the Brueghel, Vienna had brought little but sadness and ill health.When Judy looked in the mirror she hardly recognised the reflected image. A thin, pale woman with premature lines around the eyes, and lank, lustreless, uncombed hair stared back at her. Jancsi was worried; he did not want to leave her in Vienna while he went on brewery business to Germany and Switzerland. He thought she might recover her spirits if she went to the mountains where, with Helga, the new nanny who became a friend, she could breathe pure mountain air and play with the children in the snow. It was the right decision. Vienna was haunted by the past, as Budapest had been, and feverish with striving, anxious human lives. At Reichenau, south-west of Vienna, near Semmering, there was peace and silence and pure expanses of white snow against the limitless sky. No fences, no borders, no crowds. ‘It’s a joy to watch the children speeding down the hill in the sleigh’, Judy wrote. ‘They jump off and roll in the powdery, glittering snow.’ Judy and her children were joined by Manyi and her young son, ‘little Gyuszi’. They all flourished in the outdoor setting, riding the sleigh all

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afternoon and playing till evening.Well known in the 1930s as a spa as well as a ski resort, Reichenau was just beginning to open itself to tourists again after the disruptions of war. Judy, who had done very little painting in Vienna, found her energies returning. She painted domestic scenes: Manyi knitting beside her sleeping child; Helga playing with János and Péter. It was too cold to paint out of doors but the scene composed itself for her, ready for her brush. As she described it in her diary, it was an epiphany: The valley and the peak of the Rax are standing in sharp light. The rocks on the other side are like a background of Persian miniatures, pinkish-grey, and the black dwarf pines hug one another. I stand before the spectacle and paint with my eyes.

Her happiness seemed complete when Jancsi returned from his travels at the end of February 1950. But one evening when the Kämpfners were urged to join in a village celebration, the mood turned sour. Judy was ready to enjoy the champagne and cheerfulness, but she felt Jancsi’s resistance: he did not want to join in the dancing. Later, he was silent and brooding. After hours of tears and pleading from Judy through the night, he told her what was wrong. It was the village people, and the spectacle of Judy dancing with them. She should not have joined their party. He saw them as Nazis; they were the killers of his people and hers. She had laughed and flirted with Nazis. As he spoke Jancsi’s rage grew, and Judy, who felt unfairly accused, collapsed in angry tears. When Jancsi became calm again and wanted to mend the quarrel Judy could not speak ‘because of the damned crying’. Yet it needed to be settled between them because Jancsi had to leave at dawn for another foreign journey. She took pencil and paper, wrote down her thoughts, saying that her mistake (if she had done wrong) was not so bad as his failure in love and understanding. And she went on crying ‘like

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a watertap with faulty plumbing’ until Jancsi thawed, hugged and kissed her and next morning told the awestruck children that ‘mami had a headache’ and that was why her eyes were red. This was not the first nor the last quarrel in which Judy’s instinctive gaiety and love of music and dancing stirred Jancsi’s anger. In Reichenau his anger was fuelled by the emotions of war, the killings at Auschwitz and his own helplessness during the months in hiding in Budapest. To watch his young wife dancing with the local chemist, dazzling him with her charm and vitality, was a reminder of the age gap in the marriage. Jancsi said many times that he knew he might have to pay a price for having married a young girl; and it seems likely that sexual jealousy played a part in the quarrel at Reichenau. Judy’s diary of the period shows that there was no lessening in their love for one another. There were black moods to endure, and sometimes to resent, but their reconciliations were joyful.The words she had written before leaving Budapest were still true: Sometimes I’m frightened how Jancsi fills my whole being. Perhaps it’s unsound to build all I am on one man. Often as we sit reading in the light of the lamp, I glance up at him and want to cry, I love him that much. He doesn’t sleep well at night. When I hear him sigh after a nightmare I take him in my arms and he dozes off in a few minutes. He tells me my nearness is so soothing it dissolves the cramps in his soul.

The Kämpfners were back in Vienna when they heard that their case was being considered by the Australian authorities. It had taken nine months to reach this point, and they were told that it might be another six months before entry permission would be given. Where should they wait? Unlike most displaced persons of the time they had a choice. Not only was Jancsi’s brewery consultancy work well

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paid, they had an unexpected windfall. Their claim to be recompensed for Judy’s father’s house in Vienna (confiscated by the Nazis) was accepted. It was not the full value but in their situation it was a small fortune. Rather than facing another grey season in Vienna, they moved to Salzburg. Travelling on the Red Cross bus to Salzburg, Judy felt a mixture of guilt and thankfulness. Most of the busload of refugees were dumped at a huge, dismal camp outside the city, where they had number tags instead of names. The Kämpfners found rooms in one of the city’s exquisite fourteenth-century streets, quiet and timeless, below snowcapped mountains. Here, as at Reichenau, Judy found peace in contemplating the pure whiteness of an untouched landscape. Yet Salzburg woke up at festival time and in May 1950, when the Kämpfners arrived, it was preparing itself for the first real tourist season since the war. Looking for something cheaper and quieter, Judy took a train to the country, got off at the little village of St Gilgen on the Wolfgangsee (the lakeside region close to Salzburg) and rented rooms for the family. The countryside around St Gilgen and its neighbouring village St Wolfgang is picture-postcard perfect. St Wolfgang is remembered for its White Horse Inn of musical comedy fame, and the surrounding landscape is the one which The Sound of Music brought to cinemas around the world. In 1950 the village was quiet and friendly: a good place for the Kämpfner children to breathe country air. Judy could not have foreseen that a summer at St Gilgen, far from galleries and other artists, would open the way to the painter’s career she had always wanted. Her first commission was a comic diversion: the sort of invitation which Judy’s friendliness often prompted. The village hairdresser, who asked her to repaint the wooden mannequin for the shop window, delivered a bald and grinning yellow monster to the Kämpfners’ boarding house. Judy expelled it to the balcony, there to frighten the villagers until she could give it a new face and clothing.

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A second invitation at St Gilgen had momentous consequences. Among the other guests at the boarding house was the Sekers family whose members Judy identified as quintessentially English in their manners and their expensive, understated made-in-England clothes. Her grasp of accents was not yet sure enough to detect a Hungarian accent in their cut-glass English voices. Having heard the Kämpfners speaking to one another in Hungarian, rather than the German they used in the village, Miki Sekers and his wife Ági, on holidays with their children, revealed their shared origin. Sekers who left Hungary for England in 1937 was now an immensely successful designer and manufacturer of silk and cotton fabrics, as well as a patron of the arts. In the summer of 1951, as the Festival of Britain transformed London’s drab wartime style, all the young girls who could afford them would be wearing Sekers polished cotton dresses in bright colours. For the wealthy and well dressed there were Sekers silk scarves from Harrods and softly draped silk evening dresses in rich colours. Miki Sekers employed the best designers. Individuality and a sense of the moment made his fabrics stand out in the postwar fashion scene. They brought much needed export earnings to Britain; and their success in turn put Miki Sekers in touch with the rich and powerful. Hungarian charm did the rest. Sekers knew everyone in political and artistic circles in London and could open many doors. In the first season of the Rosehill Theatre, which he established in a converted barn on his West Cumberland property, performers included Yehudi and Hephzibah Menuhin, Claudio Arrau, Peggy Ashcroft, Bernard Miles and Emlyn Williams. Some said Sekers had become more English than the English, but his commitment to fellow Hungarians remained strong. Sekers brought the Tatra Quartet from Budapest for its first performance in England; and he was mentor to the Hungarian-born textile designer John Káldor. He was knighted in 1965 for his services to the arts in Britain but his reach was international.

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Who knows what doors would have been opened for Judy if the Sekers and the Kämpfners had not come together in St Gilgen? The friendship, which began with the pleasure of the shared language, grew because of shared tastes in art and music. Miki Sekers had more tickets for the Salzburg Festival than he and his wife had time to use. He gave the Kämpfners tickets for Don Giovanni, and for a recital by Yehudi Menuhin. All through the war years Judy had been hungry for music but, while she and Jancsi were trying to save for emigration, the Salzburg Festival would have been an impossible extravagance. Sekers watched Judy painting out of doors during the long summer days. He saw portraits and sketches of her children. It was a short step for him to ask her to paint the Sekers children: a commission she accepted with delight, as a way to return his kindness. Pressed to name a fee, she was modest. ‘Ridiculous’, said Miki Sekers, doubling it, but still complaining that it was far too low a figure. The portraits were pleasing likenesses, but even in her wish to please her new friends Judy did not descend into mere prettiness. So, when they went back to England, Miki Sekers was happy to show them off and tell his friends about the gifted young Hungarian artist he had discovered. Judy’s diary entries show how much the new friendship meant. ‘They left a gaping gap behind them, we loved them so much.’ For the Sekers, too, the friendship had special meaning, and it is easy to see the appeal of the Kämpfner family group. Jancsi, who came to St Gilgen for short interludes in his travels to Berlin and Frankfurt, was at his best with fellow Hungarians who understood his untranslatable wit and word play. Judy made her impression in any language. As a dedicated artist, as a pretty and vital young woman, and as a devoted wife and mother she was hard to resist. For an observer, part of her appeal came from her evident delight in her two enchanting little boys. János at five asked

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astonishing questions. He treated adults as his equals and could be disconcerting as well as funny. St Gilgen villagers exclaimed at Péter’s good looks, his dark eyes and white-blond hair. Judy saw him as the more responsive and intuitive of the two and János as the more direct and challenging. Her pride in them both lights up the pages of her diaries. Throughout the months of waiting in Salzburg and St Gilgen Judy was painting and drawing with new confidence. Portraits and landscapes, Salzburg’s streets, old houses and churches, all rolled from a paintbrush which seemed like an extension of the self. ‘I almost watch from outside me’, she wrote. Her portraits were ‘getting good’ but she was not complacent. It was not enough to be a craftsman. She wanted to be an artist and to have a fully professional career. She longed for a studio with proper lighting and a big table where she could leave her painting gear from day to day. The rented rooms in Salzburg were cramped and poorly lit. If Judy posed her sitter where the light was strongest she had not enough space to move back and look from a distance. And she had always to tidy up after each session because the one table served for the family’s meals and her work. Only a few paintings survive from this period. Living in rented rooms, with no space to unpack all their belongings, unsure of her future home, Judy could keep only a very small proportion of her work. Portraits of friends and village children were given to the sitters. Many of the landscapes and still lifes were also given away. Once, when Judy expressed her sense of waste in this random dispersal, Jancsi told her firmly that possession and permanence were not the point. ‘You have to keep swimming’. She chose twenty-one paintings to take to Australia. These included gentle, intimate studies of her children, such as Péter in the Garden (1948) and her portrait of her father and stepmother, My Father and Lili (1946). The latter shows the influence of her Budapest teacher,

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Aurél Bernáth, while Péter in the Garden and Still Life with Window (1950) have affinities with Vuillard and Bonnard. Her Still Life, begun in 1946, but not completed to Judy’s satisfaction until 1951, was singled out by Sydney critic Elwyn Lynn as the most ‘daringly composed’ of her early work: [Still Life] was a painting that kept making demands on her. It is full of felicitous touches and palpable paint; it is luscious and opulent, but no objects, except the fruit, are complete: vase, bottle, book, bowl and the table on which they are placed are all cut off, confined by edges and compressed to create a fusion of luxury with restless impetus. This is increased by the two diagonals produced by the book and the label on the bottle continuing the curve of the table. It is both complete in itself and a detail of a still life... One of the problems [of such modernist work] is to obtain coherence within a work that wants to challenge confinement and the sense of obvious completeness, symmetry and balance.

Two 1950 paintings, Salzburg and St Gilgen, were also chosen to take to Australia. No doubt they had representative value as reminders of time and place, but they also show how Judy was learning to use intensity of colour to give mystery and weight. The Salzburg houses, pressed close by mountain slopes, are not overwhelmed. Intimacy and majesty co-exist subtly, without resolution. The red roofs of St Gilgen bring a similar startling depth and richness to the vista of buildings against the quiet horizon of the lake. Her diaries of this period suggest a growing confidence, and a passion to learn and to see more. Living in Austria with no sense of permanence, Judy had none of the interaction with other painters which she had valued in Szentendre. It was a relief not to be caught up in the cultural war-games of the social realists in Budapest, but the isolation of St Gilgen would not content her for long.

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When word came from the Australian authorities in January 1951 that the Kämpfners’ visas had been provisionally approved, Judy felt that she could not leave Europe without seeing Paris.To be a painter and not to have seen the Louvre was a serious deprivation. As a 12-year-old in Beregszász she had dreamed of being an art student in Paris. Now with at least six months more to wait in Europe, there was time to compensate a little. Jancsi encouraged her to make the trip: with Helga the nanny to help, he would look after the children. Because of the complexities of French bureaucracy Judy had to go to Paris via Brussels, using a German transit visa, and in Brussels pick up a French visa. As various officials reminded her, she was still a Displaced Person. At last, on a bleak winter day, she was on a train from Salzburg, travelling west: Miraculous thing, to go through a border in Europe, five years after the war. The landscape in Germany was desolate everywhere the train travelled through. One can still see where the houses were bombed to the ground in a surreal landscape of lonely chimneys. Suddenly this stops and so does the sound of German speech. The houses turn to red Flemish oblongs and people speak French.

After a day in Brussels Judy was given her French visa. On to Paris and a grubby third-floor hotel room where a naked electric light bulb, hanging like a lidless eye, evoked a ‘Baudelairean’ mood. Next day, walking by the Seine, her spirits rose; here was the real Paris. Then the Louvre and the other galleries; day after day for three weeks, interrupted only by hours of queueing to have her visa extended. She had her first sustained encounter with the great Impressionists. She made notes and sketches. ‘I gobble up gallery after gallery.’ Years later, when Judy was translating her diaries into English, she left the Paris entries in the original, embarrassed by their naiveté. ‘Let them rest in Hungarian’, she decided.

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Back in Salzburg the shining images gleaned in Paris competed with thoughts of luggage and travel plans as a departure date for Australia came closer. Then an unexpected, irresistible invitation came from Miki Sekers in London. Judy’s portraits of his children had been much admired. He could get her more commissions, which in turn would make useful contacts in Australia. If she and Jancsi would come to London he could arrange visas for them. So, leaving the children with Helga, who by now was one of the family, the Kämpfners flew to London. In early July 1951 the Festival of Britain was in full swing. This was London’s first postwar celebration: hotels were booked out and theatre tickets long since committed to throngs of American tourists. Miki Sekers was equal to the occasion. Somehow he had found a large studio with a skylight which doubled as accommodation for the Kämpfners and a painting space for Judy. More important, he had made a series of appointments with sitters carefully chosen, not only for their status in Britain, but for the impression they would make in Australian circles. Tickets for Covent Garden, a weekend at the Sekers’ country house, and an offer to pay the Kämpfners’ fares to Sydney, completed the bounty. Declining the offer of free travel, Judy and Jancsi were heartened just the same: ‘it’s another kind thing one never forgets’. In choosing sitters for Judy, Miki Sekers went straight to the top. Her portraits of the Gaitskell children established a lasting friendship with their parents. Hugh Gaitskell was confidently expected to be Britain’s next Labour Prime Minister, as he might have been if his health had not unexpectedly failed. As Chancellor of the Exchequer to Prime Minister Attlee in the first postwar Labour Government, Gaitskell showed outstanding abilities. An intellectual with a background in economics, he was personable, eloquent and popular with middle-of-the-road, anti-socialist Labour voters. His political stance coincided more or less with that of the

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Kämpfners whose experience in postwar Hungary had made them wary of state control. If they had been made aware in 1951 of Gaitskell’s ideological clashes with Aneurin Bevan, they would have sympathised with their new friend. Before they left London, Judy was invited to come back and to paint Gaitskell himself and his wife Dora, which she did in 1958. In 1973, on the tenth anniversary of Gaitskell’s death, the Cassab portrait was given by his widow to the National Portrait Gallery in London. Copies were made for his two daughters whom Judy had painted as little girls in 1951. Another strategically chosen sitter was Valerie Profumo. Better known as the film star, Valerie Hobson, she was then at the height of her career. She had played opposite John Mills as Estella in David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946); and, as the glacial beauty Edith in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), she co-starred with Alec Guinness. Her 1951 film, The Card, another Guinness comedy, was released just before the Cassab portrait was completed. British cinema in the early 1950s had immense popular appeal; and Valerie Hobson’s film star fame was augmented by her marriage to the Conservative politician, John Profumo, for whom a great career also seemed likely. Profumo’s fall from grace in a 1960s sex and security scandal, and Gaitskell’s early death, should not obscure the fact that Miki Sekers had made Judy Cassab a name to remember among the rich and famous in London. As well as Valerie Profumo, she painted Meriel Forbes, wife of Sir Ralph Richardson whose towering presence in British theatre overshadowed Forbes’ successes on stage and screen. More important, for a woman painter who did not want to be typecast in a ‘women and children’ range, Judy painted the chairman of Sekers Silk, Lord Wilmot. This portfolio of celebrities would be her guarantee in Australia, where British upper-class life was faithfully recorded and its fashions followed. All she needed was a royal family commission and this too would come her way. Miki Sekers’ final gift was an introduction to

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Charles Lloyd Jones, whose family owned Sydney’s main department store, David Jones. The Kämpfners combined Judy’s London visit with a business trip to Amsterdam for Jancsi who hoped to set up an agency in Sydney for importing Dutch beer. While he conferred with his brewery associates, Judy took a long, sad, satisfying look at the Rembrandts, and ‘almost burst into tears before Van Gogh’s pink budding tree kissed by a butterfly. I feel this is goodbye to Europe’. At this stage both Kämpfners had reason to expect success in Sydney; not at once, of course, but after applying themselves to new conditions and working hard. Jancsi’s postwar experience as a consultant for major European breweries, following his years with Count Schönborn, had made him a well-known and respected figure in Vienna, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. Australians, as he must have known, were inclined to brew their own rather than to import. In 1951 they had not yet discovered the pleasures of wine; and imported beer would have seemed an extravagant notion, inimical to the culture of the local pub. Yet it was reasonable to hope that a man of Jancsi’s entrepreneurial skills could make his way as an importing agent, consultant, or perhaps a founder of a new brewery. Forty-nine at the time of leaving for Australia, Jancsi had energy and experience which the New World could surely profit from. He did not reckon sufficiently on his need for language skills in monolingual Australia, where Hungarian and Czech would be useless and German not much better. As they made their last-minute trips to London and Amsterdam, Judy and Jancsi did not know which of the two career opportunities would pay dividends: his brewing skills or her painting. If they had been able to read the signs, they might have discerned a slight but important shift in their relationship. In the first years of their marriage Judy had been the more dependent of the two. The freedom to paint had been his gift, and so it would

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remain. But Jancsi had made Judy strong, first by sending her to study in Prague before their marriage, and later by urging that she study in Budapest while he was in forced labour camp, rather than stay at home with her mother in Beregszász. His belief that she could survive without him in wartime Budapest was crucial. He was right to send her off to find her own way as the factory worker Mária Koperdák. That decision probably saved both their lives. It also gave her confidence. Alone in Budapest, she had to make choices of her own, not just on everyday matters but choices which meant life or death. She took the active role in rescuing him from the ghetto. He had to accept the heroic kindness of the friends who hid him in the last months of the war. In his risky, brilliantly successful venture on behalf of the starving survivors of the death camps the prewar Jancsi re-emerged. It remained to be seen whether or not Australia would give scope to his abilities. In the postwar years, travelling in Europe from a base in Austria, Jancsi concentrated on earning money for their future while making it possible for his wife to practise her art and, with the help of a nanny, keep the children safe and happy. It was not easy for her, living as they did with suitcases half unpacked. There were terrifying episodes when Péter was ill and Jancsi was away on one of his business trips. János always missed his father acutely. His anxieties during their many separations added to Judy’s loneliness and perhaps also reflected it. There is no evidence in Judy’s diaries that either of them spent much time learning about Australia. Their future home was a large, blank space, its meaning yet to be inscribed.They chose Sydney, not for its culture or its climate, but because several Hungarian friends were living there, and would make them feel less alone. They could have taken English lessons in Vienna or Salzburg but they did not do so. Judy packed Winston Churchill’s Painting as a Pastime, a gift from her English friends, to read on the ship; and with the help of

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a dictionary she was able to enjoy it. She had a better ear for language than Jancsi and because she was the more gregarious and less self-conscious of the two she had more practice in conversation. Best of all, she had the international language of her painting. Her paintbrush was her tool of trade, and as her London experience had demonstrated, portraiture would take her to the centre of her new world. The last of Europe was Genoa. From there the Sydney would take the Kämpfners to Australia. Hearing that cars were hard to get in Australia, they bought a little Austin in Zurich and drove south, saying their farewells to landscapes they might not see again. The saddest farewells had been said to their friends in Budapest in 1949. In Vienna Gyuszi and Manyi Kont represented Judy’s diminished family and Count Schönborn stood for Jancsi’s former life. Many of their other friends had already scattered throughout the world. The exotic stamps on their letters to Judy, from New York, Tel Aviv, Chile and other distant places, were a poignant reminder of her father, sitting with Lili in his little flat in Budapest before the war, soaking envelopes in bowls of water and talking about the shop where children would come in and buy his foreign stamps. Unbelievable that the grandsons of this sad, elegant man of the old Budapest would grow up in the Antipodes, not speaking Hungarian. Unbelievable too that Judy would never go back to Beregszász, never again see Mária Koperdák, who had saved her life. Impossible to think that the fate of Judy’s mother, grandmother and uncle, Jancsi’s mother, brother and young nephew, would never be known.Would their ghosts travel on the Sydney? Would they fade in the bright light of the Australian sun? The Sydney sailed from Genoa on 22 September 1951. On the last evening, with luggage already on the ship, Judy sat on the beach. János and Péter brought her shining pebbles to be admired while she gazed at an unreadable horizon.

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Chapter Six T H E

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The voyage out on the Flotta Lauro ship Sydney was neither good

nor bad for the Kämpfners: just tedious. As an idea and a place Australia was at first elusive. The boarding house in the Sydney suburb of Bondi, close to the sea, was chosen for them by Hungarian friends—the only people they knew in this new world. It seemed to Judy like an offshore island on whose beaches, week by week, fragments from shipwrecks were washed up. Not the same shipwreck: that might have created a community. The mainland was Australian life from which came cryptic messages. In the Bondi boarding house, the Hungarian owner Rozsnyai and his dancer wife Greta presided over a disparate group of twenty adults and their children.They had their own language in common; and their anxieties about finding a place in the new country made a bond. Judy’s diaries of the first weeks show her struggle to find inner calm in the crowded space.

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The hours went by in the daily routine of shopping, cooking and caring for the children. This seemed harder than it had been in Austria, partly because she had been used to a nanny, but also because the waiting was over.The choices had been made; life had to start. A place to live and a job for Jancsi were the first imperatives. Then there was Judy’s future as an artist: was that a selfish dream when money was short? Most migrant women were taking factory work or cleaning jobs as a matter of course. Why should she be exempt, even though Jancsi insisted that he would earn for them both? As well as these pressing matters she could not evade the questions about identity and culture which had not been quite real in Austria. Judy’s love of order was tested by boarding house life. The day began with a communal breakfast served by the owner. Wearing a white chef ’s cap and pink rubber gloves, he responded in jovial, formal English to the children’s German: ‘Bitte schön, das Frühstück’, said János, holding Péter’s hand as they approached. ‘Certainly, sir, in one moment, sir’. The group, who breakfasted on Australian-style bacon and eggs, included a morose abattoir worker, a former Budapest socialite, a former boxer and a violinist who suffered from disabling stage fright. Some went out to work; others anxiously scanned the Situations Vacant columns. After breakfast the unemployed usually went back to their rooms. The white sands and salt-fresh air of Bondi Beach were not far away, but somehow the lassitude of the boarding house too often held Judy indoors. Anyway, here I lounge on one of the four beds in our room...The sight around me is demoralising. Medicine bottles, coloured pencils, fruit among the underpants because it doesn’t fit in the fridge, the forever scattered building blocks and torn pages of picture books, the smudgy untidy beds where the poor little one throws himself about trying to find a cool place. It’s awfully hot and the one and only shower is always occupied. Down the stairs, up the stairs.

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It’s evening now. Jancsi went to play cards to Elek [Kálmán] and I started cooking because at night there are not so many women (usually there are eight) around the one stove. Up the stairs. János is soaking wet. I rub him with a towel and give him fresh pyjamas, then race down to the kitchen because the roast is burning. Péter fell off the bed. He wants water. Down the stairs to shell peas. Screams. Up the stairs. Péter has a tummy ache. I massage it. ‘Take my pyjamas off ’. I take [them]off.

With so many migrants clamouring for accommodation the boarding house owners could not spare a room for chairs and conversation. When the children were ready to sleep Judy would sit on the stairs, as other mothers did, waiting for her own bedtime. She and Jancsi seemed to have little time to talk. Worrying about the lack of a job, he was becoming silent and withdrawn.They had not foreseen how much their lack of English would hamper them. Not only was it a barrier in job-seeking for Jancsi, it robbed them both of their accustomed level of confidence in everyday life. Outside the boarding house their assurance dwindled to nothing, as it did most painfully when Péter was ill, and they could not make themselves understood in the Casualty department at the local hospital. As weeks at the boarding house stretched into months, a certain camaraderie developed in the motley group. Politics were not discussed, which was just as well, since former Nazis as well as survivors of concentration camps were represented. The boxer taught Péter to sing ‘What shall we do with a drunken sailor’. The Budapest socialite cooked a meal for everyone. Greta, the owner’s wife, showed off her dance steps. But for the Kämpfners, the closest human ties were with friends whom they had known in Beregszász. Having already moved on from the boarding house initiation, they were mentors and confidants to the newcomers. Médi Schwartz persuaded Judy to send János and Péter with her own children to a

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kindergarten where a German-speaking teacher made them welcome. János became Johnny; and with an Australian vowel shift and the loss of the accent, Peter kept his own name. Soon it was Juci only within the family and among Hungarian friends: Judy in the outside world, and Cassab instead of Kaszab in her professional life. For Jancsi the new identity of ‘John Kampfner’ remained an awkward fit. It had to be John in job applications, but he would always be Jancsi—or as Australian friends rendered it in a phonetic equivalent ‘Yonchi’. So, too, with the acquisition of language. The children were as quick to learn English as to discard their Hungarian, although the German they had spoken with their nanny in Austria was retained. Judy’s ease and fluency developed almost as fast. Jancsi’s excellent reading skills matched hers but his spoken English remained a tangle of wrong tenses and hit-or-miss adjectives. He hated writing letters in English, and when this had to be done he usually dictated them to Judy with much frowning and frustration. Seeing this most confident of men so much diminished, Judy worried about possible divisions within the family: I ponder a lot about our friendship with our children and where it will lead, we see so many sad relationships. Children don’t usually speak Hungarian and as parents keep living in a Hungarian ghetto the children don’t merge into the atmosphere which makes a home a home. Most youngsters are ashamed of their parents, their accents, their habits, their cooking. I don’t see the melting pot at all. How will we ever be able to fuse our jewishness and their non-jewishness, our Hungarianism and their Australianism, our continental heritage with their future interests—in golf perhaps or parties. Everything which is valuable and dear to us, which is our taste or our spiritual anchor, will be remote from them. They will probably be happier than we were and this is the important thing…the prime reason for our

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immigration ... Holy God, how strange ... how far did I have to come to recognise that I’m a European?

Such questions would not go away. The immediate need was for Jancsi to find a job. The Kämpfners still had savings from Jancsi’s consultancy work in Austria and the money paid in reparation for the Kaszab house in Vienna. With their room and breakfast at the boarding house costing £10 a week, their assets would soon be seriously eroded. The prospect of a well-paid job in a brewery receded as the Kämpfners talked to Hungarian friends.They heard a cautionary tale from Pali Kalina who was working as a cleaner: ‘I didn’t want to tell them that I was a lawyer so I told them I was a labourer. “Good boy”, the [Australian] cleaner said happily, “all the other reffos say they used to be lawyers”’. The terms ‘reffo’ or ‘DP’ covered a wide range of immigrants. Later, in an effort at polite inclusiveness, ‘New Australian’ would gain currency. In 1951 Germans, Poles, Hungarians all came under the same umbrella. The British, who were the first and most numerous to be chosen under Australia’s migrant scheme, had a better quality umbrella, better employment prospects. Jobs were plentiful in an expanding economy, but the Europeans could not expect to use their professional skills. Lawyers did manual work until they saved enough to buy a small business, as did the Kämpfners’ friend, Emil Schwartz, who was a cleaner in 1948 and a manufacturer of raincoats three years later. Elek Kálmán, another lawyer with a brilliant career in Hungary, had managed to buy a very small tobacconist’s shop. The women worked as cleaners or factory hands. Those with good language skills went into retail sales work. Ili Kalina, who had been a pharmacist in Beregszász, was selling cakes at David Jones department store in the city. She was philosophical about her job: ‘Isn’t it the same whether I wear my white coat in the cake shop or the chemist shop?’

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With the example of her friends, as well as Jancsi’s deepening gloom, Judy’s conscience was always troubled. Was it self-indulgent to think of her painting as a career in this new world? Jancsi was stubborn: she was an artist and he would see that she resumed her work. One early success kept her hopes alive. Lord Wilmot, one of the London sitters chosen by Miki Sekers, had given her a letter of introduction to Charles Lloyd Jones, whose family owned the David Jones department store. From the perspective of the Bondi boarding house, Judy’s London triumphs seemed remote but she posted the letter. Lloyd Jones replied promptly, gave her an appointment and asked how he could help her. Could she paint his portrait? Unfortunately, no. His portrait was to be painted by William Dobell. But he would think about it and let her know. Judy took that response as a polite means of rejection, as it would have been in Hungary. She was astonished when Lloyd Jones telephoned to ask if she would paint his wife. The telephone call was a sensation at the boarding house, surpassed only by the spectacle of the huge, gleaming Rolls Royce, driven by a young Lloyd Jones who came to collect Judy with her easel, paints and brushes. ‘Everybody hangs out the window in disbelief.’ The time at the Bondi boarding house stretched to two months, then three, and still Jancsi stared fiercely at the employment columns of the Sydney Morning Herald. There was no space for Judy to paint, no possibility of having sitters in their cluttered room. It seemed that they might do best to put their capital into a house without more delay.They put a deposit of £3000 on a house which cost £10 000. This was conditional on their being able to raise a mortgage on the balance. When they found that the banks would not go beyond a loan of £4000, the Kämpfners lowered their sights, and paid key money to rent a flat in Weeroona Avenue, Woollahra, which was still under construction. For Judy it was ‘the most beautiful flat in the world’. Through the summer months she

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and Jancsi kept up their spirits by standing outside the flat, watching the painters’ progress, admiring the light sunny rooms and pristine surfaces. They liked the steep slopes and unexpected curves of Woollahra’s tree-lined streets. Nearby Paddington, where Judy did some of her first Sydney streetscapes, had a touch of Bohemian raffishness which was a welcome contrast to Bondi’s flat suburban sameness. Not much had changed since the prewar Bondi recalled by painter John Olsen: I remember the Hotel Bondi, on the hillside facing the beach, a double-towered, horned blazing-eyed monster ... with its crowds rolling out onto the pavement at six o’clock closing time, like froth at the mouth.There were milk bars and hamburger shops, but only one restaurant, a Chinese place on Campbell Parade, in those days. Bondi, without the weekend crowds, had a beachside seediness about it: low-slung buildings, bleached and glary, and puddles of rainwater lying in the streets with seagulls flying and drifting over.

By 1951 the Chinese restaurant had some competition, but there were no coffee bars, no chairs and tables on the street. Judy would have welcomed even a dirty bistro with a flagon of vin ordinaire on the table but no one drank wine, and the six o’clock swill of Olsen’s memory was still the rule. After three months of his dispiriting search for a place in a brewery, Jancsi knew he had to compromise, as he had done in settling for a flat instead of a house. He had learned by now that Australians were irredeemably parochial in their tastes in beer. Tooths and Reschs were the big names in New South Wales. It would be many years before names like Heineken and Hahn gained currency. Jancsi’s degree in chemical engineering from Prague, his expert knowledge of brewing processes and his executive skills, were no more relevant in the job hunt than his friends’

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qualifications in law. Accepting this unwelcome fact, he decided to buy a small business, perhaps a milk bar, perhaps a clothing shop. While they waited for the flat, Johnny started school and Peter went to kindergarten. Judy had time to paint but no space in the boarding house to do so. She began to explore the Sydney art scene. She was agreeably surprised by the size and dignity of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, its classical facade and its spectacular site with huge expanses of green lawn sloping down to the Harbour. Some of the paintings were mediocre or worse, but there was a Monet and a Pissarro to make her feel at home.With Charles Lloyd Jones’s portrait commission in mind she looked carefully at works by William Dobell and was impressed. She joined the Contemporary Art Society, heard a lecture by Lloyd Rees, and met fellow artists. Predictably, her first friends were Europeans: Michael Kmit, Desiderius Orban, Stanislaus Rapotec. An important exception was Sheila McDonald, an artist and a patron of artists, who welcomed Judy to her weekly sketching club in the city. Because the group had a number of well-to-do amateur painters as well as some professionals in its sociable circle, it would eventually bring Judy portrait commissions from wealthy and influential Sydney people. Meanwhile, in 1952, sessions at Sheila McDonald’s studio improved Judy’s English in an atmosphere which was hardly Parisian, as some claimed, but had at least a touch of Bohemia.Well concealed by the tall buildings of Sydney’s city centre, the courtyard studio could be reached through a creaking gate, past a cluster of noisome garbage cans, up a wrought-iron outside staircase. Pink hand-made bricks, dating from convict times, showed through cracked plaster walls. In its gently raffish atmosphere Judy met a motley group: elderly women, wistful and wispy, middle-aged men in dark suits, escaped from office desks, one or two Europeans, stranded in consulate jobs and looking for Sydney’s sub-culture. Elsewhere, among Sydney’s professional painters, Judy made important friendships. Because she was as fluent in German as in

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Hungarian, she was immediately at ease with many of Sydney’s migrant artists. Ukrainian Michael Kmit, a former student at the Fine Arts Academy in Cracow, had worked in Rome, Paris and Vienna before migrating to Australia in 1950. His neo-Byzantine style, with its rich colours and romantic mood, survived the Australian experience almost unchanged. Painting a Kings Cross street scene, he announced that he had caught the Australian mood, but it was as European as all the rest. He won the Blake Prize for religious painting in 1953. Slovenian-born Stanislaus Rapotec, another Blake prize-winner, was a strong presence in the 1950s Sydney art scene. In work and personality, according to John Olsen, Rapotec was as dramatic as a clap of thunder: his ‘black angular brushlines [were] like iron rods thrown down by Zeus’. Hungarian Desiderius Orban, who had been in Australia since 1939, taught a Post-Impressionist style at his art school near Circular Quay, and was held in reverence by many young painters: he had lived so long and seen so much. Judy established close ties with all three. The quality of these friendships is suggested by portraits in which colour and composition interact with psychological insight. She painted a young and edgy Michael Kmit in brilliant stained-glass colours, Byzantine to his elongated finger tips. In a 1960 study Rapotec swaggers, dominating an abstract design of pale green and blue. In a later painting (1969) there are dark tones for a sombre and reflective Rapotec, seated and brooding.Three late portraits of Orban, the last done when he was ninety-nine, show toughness and gentleness, failing eyesight and blind, visionary gaze. Orban, whom Judy met in 1952, had a quasi-paternal role in her life. Their shared Budapest background, Orban’s experience as a teacher and his sharp critical eye, made him an invaluable mentor. Friday night gatherings of artists at Orban’s house gave Judy much-needed stimulus. It was through him that she met Paul Haefliger, Sydney’s most influential art critic, and his artist wife Jean Bellette.

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In postwar Sydney the artists were not hard to find: so many clustered together in King’s Cross. Because of the postwar housing shortage and the fact that so many were struggling to sell their work, shared studios and rooms in boarding houses were common. At Fairlight, a huge shabby old house at the end of Elizabeth Bay Road, King’s Cross, painters Jeffrey Smart, Michael Shannon and Justin O’Brien shared a primitive kitchen, as well as painting space on the glassed-in verandah overlooking the Harbour. Adelaide-born Smart, newly arrived in Sydney in 1952, was feeling lost and despondent about a lack of direction in his work. He cites Judy Cassab’s intervention as a crucial moment in his career. They painted together at La Perouse and Botany Bay: ‘I don’t think she wanted to work there but she hoped it would move me and it did. She was a true friend’. Judy, too, recorded the day. She was intent on red trees, brown bodies and blue sea and sky; Smart gazed at the gasworks and said: ‘Magnificent!’ Judy’s response to the Australian landscape was tepid. Jeffrey Smart was right in thinking she went to La Perouse for his sake. She acknowledged the beauty of Sydney Harbour, but felt that it belonged to the Australian Impressionists; there was nothing she wanted to add. Like generations of Europeans before her, she failed to see the variety of the eucalypts; she defined them by what they were not.They were not green but ‘greyish-blue, as if dust has covered them and they have been bleached by the sun’. The tree trunks were not brown, but ghostly white. Driving with Jancsi to the Blue Mountains was an anticlimax. The road kept climbing up and up but the peaks were never visible: on arrival she looked down at ‘mountains with their heads cut off ’. Every township looked like the last one: there were no surprises, just billboards for Peters ice-cream, Kodak, Shell, endlessly replicated.The steep streets and small terrace houses around inner city Paddington did give pleasure and these would be her first Australian scenes. Her imagination was kindled by talk of a more distant

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prospect. When she heard about Central Australia she thought that might be the place she could make her own. Within Sydney Judy discovered the focal points of artists’ meetings. Some were within a short walk of one another.There was the East Sydney Technical College, where Godfrey Miller taught; Julian Ashton’s art school at The Rocks; Orban’s studio and art school at Circular Quay. Most of the painters lived in the inner city; very few could afford a car. A notable exception was Russell Drysdale who had independent means as well as commercial success. The Drysdales entertained other artists at their Rose Bay house which was Donald Friend’s Sydney base. Nora Heysen and her husband Robert Black lived in College Street, opposite Hyde Park, where acerbic John Passmore, who had studied in London’s Westminster Art School with Heysen, was sometimes to be met. Passmore taught at Ashton’s school and lived in Paddington, not far from reclusive Godfrey Miller’s Sutherland Street terrace house. John Olsen’s student progress shows how closely the network was intertwined. He went first to Orban’s school, then studied from 1951 to 1953 at Julian Ashton’s where Passmore was teaching, and on his free day joined Godfrey Miller’s life drawing class at East Sydney. All the while he worked as an office cleaner, starting at 4.30 a.m., in the company of migrant workers like the Kämpfners’ Hungarian friends. The map of the Sydney artists’ world had scarcely changed when, after work and travel in Europe, Olsen came back to Victoria Street, King’s Cross, in 1960: Coming back to the Cross was a real homecoming. Russell Drysdale was around the corner on Challis Avenue, Rapotec was at the bottom of the street, Bill Rose was in the same house as I was, Clem Meadmore was up the street, and Charles Doughtney was too . . . I went and taught part-time at East Sydney Technical College.

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If Judy had expected Sydney to be parochial or to lack interest in Europe, she must have been reassured by the talent and energy she found all around her. In the late 1930s Sydney painting had revived with the return of many who had been studying abroad, and with European newcomers. Sali Herman arrived from Zurich in 1938. Dobell and Elaine Haxton returned in 1939; so did Donald Friend. Paul Haefliger and Jean Bellette who had studied at the Westminster School with Dobell, arrived in the same year. Hal Missingham, who had studied and taught at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts, settled in Sydney in 1940. Grace Crowley and Rah Fizelle were well established in Sydney from the early 1930s. Bernard Smith, witness and historian of Australian art, sums up a period in which ‘an international outlook replaced a provincial one, while the pressures and urgencies of war brought a maturity and depth to art in Sydney that it had not experienced before’. All these doors to the art world were open to Judy in 1952, within a few months of her arrival. Sydney painters respected her talent and professionalism, her generous attention to their work and her open, friendly manner. Judy would have found friends on Crusoe’s desert island; that was her nature. And because she was young, pretty and always elegantly dressed, she was noticed by arts journalists and photographers who were not slow to find good copy in this migrant story. She responded to the warmth of her welcome, but she had one serious reservation: she missed the culture of the coffee-house and she was excluded from the male institution of the Australian pub. It would be many years before women were allowed to have a drink at the bar, and that was where the informal social life of the male artists went on. She thought it a pity that hospitality had to be pre-arranged. You could not just go out in the evening, knowing where friends would be meeting to talk over coffee or a glass of wine. In the privacy of her diary, she also lamented bland Australian cooking. She summed up one evening: ‘everything nice

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except the dinner—soup from onions cooked in milk or something horrible, macaroni cooked to smithereens with wilted minced meat and as a cake we had meringue with whipped cream ...’ The ordeal of the Bondi boarding house lasted only four months but it seemed longer. The Kämpfners moved into their roomy, sunny flat in March 1952. Jancsi bought a half share in a clothing shop in Leichhardt; the children were settled in school and kindergarten; Judy had a housekeeper. With all her problems seemingly resolved Judy expected a return to creativity. Instead, she had anxiety attacks soon after the move. Some days were better than others. Some days she was able to respond to the children’s needs, see friends, complete the first portrait commissions which made a promising start in her new life. A portrait of Mr Justice Maxwell, formally posed in academic robes, was a success. An influential Sydney journalist, known as Andrea (Dorothy Jenner) befriended Judy and gave valuable publicity in her social column for the Daily Telegraph. With so many blessings to count Judy felt guilty and bewildered at her inability to respond with her usual energy and hopefulness. She struggled through the first months at Woollahra: ‘I try to nestle, find a niche. But I am still afraid to open my eyes in the morning’. Nevertheless, Judy’s career was flourishing. Three paintings were accepted for inclusion in the spring exhibition of the Society of Artists in September 1952. Kerosene Lamp, painted in Austria, won special praise. The exacting Paul Haefliger, who was artist as well as art critic, remarked in the Sydney Morning Herald that ‘Aladdin’s Lamp’ would be a better title for a magical painting. When she and Jancsi read Haefliger’s review in bed one morning, Judy ‘jumped so high that the bed almost collapsed’. Her portrait of Johnny was sold and four new portrait commissions were offered. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, Judy’s photograph appeared in one of the Sydney daily papers. Jeffrey Smart, who reviewed the arts on a weekly ABC radio program,

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singled out Judy’s Still Life and heralded a new talent. Judy was ready to contest the principal Australian award for portraiture, the Archibald Prize. She entered Mr Justice Maxwell and Andrea. The latter, a study of the witty and often outrageous commentator on Sydney social life, was chosen as one of the finalists, as was the more academic Maxwell portrait.The 1953 prize went to William Dargie. It was Dargie’s seventh Archibald win. Judy thought this ‘second rate picture of a stiff sitter on a red velvet chair’ deserved the dismissive reviews it received. Students demonstrated on the steps of the New South Wales Art Gallery: ‘Don’t hang Dargie: hang the judges’. Judy regretted that her two portraits were not among the rejects where they would have been in better company. Judy’s Madonna and Child was accepted for the 1953 Blake Prize for Religious Art, which was won by Michael Kmit with The Evangelist. This time she felt that the judges were right: Kmit deserved to win. Jancsi was sardonic about Judy’s decision to compete in what was in effect if not by definition an award for Christian art, for which she had no background of belief. He told a story to illustrate his point: ...in a Catholic religious lesson a teacher promises one crown piece to the student who best answers the question, who did the greatest good in the history of mankind? One child says the American President. The other says Einstein. The third says Jesus Christ. ‘You win the crown, my son,’ says the teacher. ‘But I don’t know you. What’s your name?’ ‘Moricz Kohn.’ ‘How come you are in the Catholic religion lesson?’ ‘I heard one can win a crown.’

For Judy, elements in the Christian story resonated. She continued to paint for the Blake Prize. Her Flight into Egypt (1954) came from the heart: the mother of Jesus was a refugee as she had been. Critics noted the darkness and sense of danger in this painting which

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contrasts with the golden light of the Three Kings (1954) in which the birth of Christ is celebrated. She felt a spiritual dimension which went beyond doctrine. When Johnny, who had heard a Salvation Army sermon in the park, asked if Jewish people were allowed to love Jesus Christ, she told him that ‘of course we may love Jesus who was a wonderful, wise and good man’, but not the son of God, as Christians believed him to be. Judy’s lifelong habit of prayer and her belief in God’s providence never wavered. Alone in Budapest, she had sometimes prayed in the Catholic church near her lodgings, believing that any house of prayer could bring comfort. As in Europe, the Kämpfners had Christian as well as Jewish friends, but the experience of exile and the common language brought them close to other Jewish migrants in Sydney. They began to question the decision, made in the shadow of persecution, to have their children baptised. In 1945 when Johnny was born, it was beyond imagining that a Jewish child could grow up safely anywhere in the world except Israel. A year in Australia reassured them. Jews were a minority, like any other. Not that Australia was immune from racism: Judy would see evidence of that fact when she travelled to Central Australia and saw the sad state of the Aborigines. In Sydney the Jewish community was small and secure. Anti-Semitism showed itself in such matters as the exclusion of Jews from ‘establishment’ clubs and some private schools. Sectarianism was more obvious. Catholics of Irish extraction made up the largest minority group, and they too had been excluded from the establishment. At mid-century, however, Australian Catholics were becoming affluent and confident enough to forget a history in which the British were the oppressors and Protestantism the enemy. The arrival of migrants from Catholic Italy made a new focus for sectarianism and a new underclass, in which they were rapidly replaced by the Greeks. Asian migration did not begin until the 1970s; until that time the ‘White Australia’ policy ruled. It would be

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flattering Australian society in the 1950s to say it welcomed Jews; it did not. But in an expanding economy the level of hostility to European newcomers was relatively low. In the minds of many older Australians the divisions between displaced Hungarian Catholics and Hungarian Jews were scarcely noticed: they were all reffos or DPs. In this context the Kämpfners amended their ‘lapse of faith’, as Judy called it. This did not mean a decision to become orthodox Jews; it signalled their Jewish identity. The baptismal certificates were torn up. Johnny and Peter would be no more committed to orthodox religious practice than their parents, but they would have their Bar Mitzvahs and know the main observances. ‘One is what one was born to be’, Judy wrote. While their ties with other European refugees grew closer, Judy and Jancsi were made welcome by their Australian neighbours. Judy’s art was her passport into the domains of the wealthy. Patronage worked in more than one way. Through their new friend Roy McKerihan, director of the Rural Bank, who sat to Judy for his portrait, the Kämpfners were able to help the newly arrived Kletzmeyers from Vienna. Kletzmeyer was given a job as a cleaner in the Rural Bank; his wife became housekeeper to the McKerihans and with their two children they moved into a flat in the McKerihan house. ‘In this whole continent they don’t know anyone but us’, Judy wrote. Tremulous and sobbing, the newcomers clung to the Kämpfners, as dependent as she and Jancsi had been when their Hungarian friends had come to meet them two years earlier. Families like the McKerihans with high salaries and large houses were glad to get a Viennese housekeeper but this was not the rule in middle Australia where the Kämpfners lived. 1950s Woollahra was not yet a place for million-dollar houses. In Weeroona Avenue the Kämpfners’ neighbours were comfortable medium income families, some of them migrants. It was a friendly street. Johnny and Peter played with the other children; their

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mothers admired Judy’s paintings and wished they could afford to buy one. Judy kept to herself the thought that the price of a small painting was no more than they happily paid for a new hat. No doubt her Australian-born friends had reservations about the choices Judy made. To pay a daily housekeeper must have seemed a gross extravagance. Australian housewives of the 1950s counted it a virtue to do their own cooking and cleaning.The tradition of home help had waned during the war when Australian women went into factories in large numbers. With postwar full employment, few of them returned to domestic service. Middle-class wives did not take paid jobs; the care of their own house and family was the norm. In Weeroona Avenue Judy was exceptional in paying a full time housekeeper so that she herself could work. She was even more remarkable as a migrant woman who employed another migrant. It made perfect sense to the Kämpfners to employ Agnes, who brought her baby to Weeroona Avenue every day and took over everything except the care of the children. One year after arrival in Australia everything was in order for Judy to paint unimpeded. Yet this became one of the hardest years of her life. She had been brave and self-reliant in Budapest. Her depressions in Vienna had been short-lived. She had met the challenges of the first months in Sydney. Now, in a home of her own at last, she had panic attacks and recurring bouts of breathlessness and diarrhoea. For much of the time in the twelve months from October 1952 she could not paint. It was an enormous effort even to make little Christmas cards with a design of stained-glass windows: these she could readily sell to help pay the bills. There were many days when she could not look after the children. It was terrifying to go out because ‘the shakes’ came on without warning. Anti-depressants were no use. Psychotherapy might have helped. She consulted Bandi Petö, a friend who was also an analyst, but an expensive hour with him only served to demolish her frail defences.

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Treatment would have taken months, even years, and it would have cost a great deal more than the Kämpfners could afford. Jancsi’s shop had yet to prove itself and there was the expense of the housekeeper to compound Judy’s shame at her own uselessness. Even if money could have been found for therapy, Judy’s English was still primitive. She would have had to find an analyst who shared her language. Attempts to get help from general practitioners were almost useless: they could not come close to the accumulated terrors and losses of the war years. Jancsi was Judy’s comfort and mainstay. He took care of the children, listened to Judy’s outpourings of sadness and guilt; and on the nights when she had frightening onsets of breathlessness, he stood beside her for hours at the open window, holding her close, helping her to take in and release each breath of air. It seemed at first nonsensical that after enduring so much in the war years she should collapse when the dangers were over. She was ashamed of having to cancel a painting trip to Alice Springs where she hoped to see the real Australia. She listened sceptically when a doctor spoke of ‘understandable excitement’ about the flight. His prescriptions did not help. When she had the airline tickets in her hand, she panicked.The waste of money was serious when they had so little. Even worse was the sense of defeat and failure: I can’t function and I hate myself. I hate myself because when Jancsi comes home after the day’s work he has to do everything for the children by himself because I am in bed having the shakes. And later he has to attend to me, he takes me in a tight embrace to try to stop me shaking. I moan and all I wait for is that the sleeping pill should knock me out.

Eventually Judy came to understand what had happened to her, and to absolve herself of weakness. After ten years of holding in her fears and griefs she needed release. She had never had time to mourn her mother, or all her other losses. It would have been a

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consolation, even a luxury, to be homesick. But how could she be homesick for the place that killed her family? There was no turning back; when the train pulled out of the eastern railway station at Budapest, she had cut the tie for ever. And yet she would always hear ‘strings sounding in limbo like an Aolian harp. . . mute strings on a dusty piano’, when poems in her own language brought childhood memories. Her sense of home anchored itself in Jancsi. As well as all the other ties that made their marriage strong, they had their shared memories: each was the other’s witness. Jancsi in a crisis seems to grow into a kind of demi-god. He is understanding, accepting, intuitive, and spiritually like a mother. He interprets and deciphers all the reasons which could have caused a nervous breakdown. I can’t describe how I feel towards Jancsi, how close and sheltered, how at home on his chest. ‘You will surface again, Jucókám,’ he says.

In October 1953, after a year in which she was seldom free of diarrhoea, shaking and other symptoms of anxiety, Judy consulted a Dr Huth, who reminded her of the Beregszász family doctor, Sanyi Mandel—‘not only a medical man but a human being’. Huth talked of suppressed panic, delayed shock. He said she should have been to a psychoanalyst a year earlier. No one could help her if she did not help herself: ‘You have to learn to live with yourself ’. It is impossible to say whether it was Huth’s understanding that helped her, or whether she was already on the way to recovery, but as soon as she accepted the link between her physical symptoms and her fears the diarrhoea stopped. It would recur, as would her anxiety attacks, but she regained her feelings of hope. All this time Jancsi had given heroic support while his own career faltered. His clothing shop in Leichhardt was not a success. He sold it after little more than a year, and for three months, from August to November 1953, he was again scanning the

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advertisements in the Sydney Morning Herald. He bought three antiquated knitting machines to start a small factory but had trouble finding suitable premises. After weeks of anxiety the enterprise was rescued by Roy McKerihan who dropped in at Weeroona Avenue with the offer of premises in a Bathurst Street building owned by the Rural Bank. That was the beginning of Elasco, the business which Jancsi owned and managed for the next twenty-four years. Although manufacturing surgical stockings was not what he had hoped for, Jancsi chose it as the best he could do for his family. It was a hard choice. He could have done otherwise and used his abilities more creatively. McKerihan offered a way back to the brewery business. There was an opening in Darwin to establish and manage a new brewery: it was there for Jancsi if he wanted it. By now in his early fifties, Jancsi was unlikely ever to have such a chance again. If it had not been for Judy’s needs he would have accepted it eagerly. Johnny and Peter were still very young: they could have adapted to Darwin. But for Judy, with the Sydney art world opening up to her, her painter friends, her portrait commissions, Darwin would have been another exile. Darwin in the 1950s was a frontier town with a harsh climate, a population of eight thousand, and no pretensions to cultural life. Judy would have withered there. So Jancsi renounced this last chance to remake his career. Elasco would make profits but there would be no power, no prestige, no fulfilment. For a man who had employed hundreds on Count Schönborn’s estates, it was a comedown to spend his days with two or three workers and the everlasting ‘clickety-click’ of the knitting machines. Had he lost confidence? Judy thought that he had. Starting anew at fifty years old, in a strange land without his own language, had been too hard. Yet she was in no doubt of his unselfishness in turning down the Darwin offer. From then on, her career took precedence over his. He was the firm, fixed point from which she could take flight.

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radically revised the stereotype of women painters in Australia. Belated or scanty recognition in their lifetime has been a common fate. At one extreme is the pale, reproachful ghost of Clarice Beckett, dutiful daughter, solitary artist. In the 1990s a Beckett retrospective toured the main Australian galleries. Collectors now compete to pay high prices for her evocative street scenes, but these works mouldered away for sixty years in a damp shed, some gnawed by rats, many damaged beyond repair. Clarice Beckett died in 1935, unknown except to her fellow painters in the Melbourne group who followed Max Meldrum’s style of tonal realism between the wars. A contrast with Beckett in personality, the rebel bohemian Joy Hester was a strong presence in the Heide group of artists in the 1950s but known in her lifetime more for her stormy marriage to

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Albert Tucker than for her paintings. Hester’s due recognition, like Beckett’s, came long after her death. Nora Heysen, often relegated to a footnote in the story of her father Hans, won the Archibald Prize for portraiture in 1938 but had to wait another sixty years for a major exhibition of her work. At eighty-nine, Heysen summed up: I was always a talented daughter of the famous Hans Heysen and I wanted to be recognised in my own right and it’s taken me eighty years to do it ...We’ve had a long way to go, woman artists. They were not recognised. They should be in the kitchen [and] rearing children, they shouldn’t try to paint. That’s what Max Meldrum said when I won the Archibald.

Meldrum had said it more bluntly than that. In a peevish reply to a journalist’s question about Heysen’s win he said that it was ‘sheer lunacy’ to expect women to paint as well as men. A great artist needed all the manly qualities of courage and endurance. As Drusilla Modjeska brilliantly demonstrated in Stravinsky’s Lunch, a study of the careers of Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith, the roles of wife, mother and artist are not easily combined. Bowen lived for nine years as the wife of writer Ford Madox Ford with whom she had one child. Struggling to find time to paint, she put her art aside in the service of Ford’s career. ‘Even when I was at my easel my head was conscious of Ford’s needs and wishes and states of mind’. Cossington Smith, unmarried, with a small private income and a self-abnegating sister taking the domestic role, was free to paint, but for her, too, recognition was scanty until after her death. Not one of these painters—Heysen and Hester, Beckett, Bowen and Cossington Smith—reached due public estimation until the revisionary work of the women’s movement had its full effect. All owe a large measure of their present fame to a conscious act of reclamation. Rosalind Hollingrake was Beckett’s champion, as Janine

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Burke was for Hester, Daniel Thomas for Cossington Smith and Lou Klepac for Heysen. Modjeska’s book spoke not only for Bowen and Cossington Smith; it was an eloquent plea on behalf of other women, dim or invisible presences in the art world. Within the last decades of the twentieth century expectations changed. It became de rigueur to mention the women—at least one or two—in reviews of group exhibitions. More important than the token recognition (‘we need a woman on the shortlist’) was the slow collapse of the assumption that the men would win the prizes because their work was stronger. There are many stories of women artists’ lives, subtly different from one another, but with the same underlying conflict. His career or hers? The easel or the cradle? These conflicts were always present in Judy Cassab’s life.There is no point at which it can be said that she had solved the problem. She was always painfully aware of the cost, whatever choice she made between art and family life. With her strong talent and much determination she came confidently into the Sydney art scene, expecting to learn and to practise with male and female painters on equal terms. At a time when Australia’s sense of cultural worth was fragile, her European background was probably an asset. Nevertheless, it was never a straight road to the public acclaim she found as early as 1954, and held for the next half-century. There are obvious signposts by which Cassab’s road to success can be measured. She had her first solo exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries in 1953, just two years after her arrival in Sydney. A second exhibition, at the same gallery, followed in 1955. By the end of 1955 her work had been included in twenty-three group shows. These included the contenders for the Archibald Prize for portraiture (chosen from several hundred entries) and for the Blake Prize for religious art. Cassab’s portrait of Michael Kmit was noted by several critics as the likely runner-up to Ivor Hele for the 1955 Archibald Prize. The Contemporary Art Society’s Annual Interstate

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Exhibition was a showcase for emerging and established talent. In 1952 a Cassab work was chosen for the show which was held in alternating years in Melbourne and Sydney. In subsequent years her inclusion was taken for granted. Reviews of the early group exhibitions almost invariably singled out the Cassab paintings for comment. Although she won a great deal of praise, it was often qualified by a patronising phrase or two which suggest that the critic brought certain presuppositions to his viewing. Most reviews speak of charm and sweetness. A ‘fluttering’ quality in the colour suggests the limitations of feminine sensibility. As an emerging personage, soon to be a celebrity, Cassab had more than her share of attention in those early years but it too was qualified, and sometimes irritating. She herself described it as the ‘she wore a green hat’ style of newspaper comment. Was it good or bad for the artist’s reputation when a Sydney columnist wrote of her as ‘the enchanting little Cassab’? Another journalist devoted a tactless column to the artist’s marriage, praising Jancsi Kämpfner for his unselfishness in allowing his wife so much freedom. Kämpfner was carving out his own career in business, the writer said, and although the couple sometimes had ‘one hell of a row’ each one respected the success of the other. Without mentioning anything so mundane as the manufacture of elastic stockings, the article hinted at a lowering of status: John Kämpfner is the epitome of the sort of settler Australia cries out for . . . philosophically, the good man has gone to work and learned another highly technical trade . . . such migrants as John and Judy, little John and Peter, are the salt of the earth.

The marriage was far more complicated than that. Jancsi was proud of Judy’s creativity and committed to her success. He had promised her a career, and he would never break his word. Yet there were

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times when the price was too high. There were two crisis points in 1954, just after Judy’s Archibald prize entry was among the few chosen for exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia. People magazine interviewed Judy for a feature article and asked for photographs of her family. When she told Jancsi that a photograph of the two of them would be published he became violently angry: ‘You know how I feel about publicity, how could you do this to me?’ Even when Judy telephoned the editor to have the photograph withdrawn Jancsi was silent and unforgiving. Some weeks later Judy understood the full measure of his unhappiness: In the end the festering sore burst when Jancsi said: ‘I am a humble man and I have a famous wife. My business is not successful and I can’t get a grip on life. I don’t sleep and I am troubled because at home things are going the wrong way.’ That shook me. Jancsi started anew when he was fifty. He had to struggle alone so I should be able to be an artist. I leaped ahead because he made it possible. I had a prop, a support, a hold. He stayed in the background because of me. I am young and wellknown and he lost his confidence in himself, which he needs to remain the man I love... He didn’t get from me enough understanding in money matters. He is the patriarch, the head of the family and felt his position threatened. He is sometimes called Mr Cassab at parties. His sense of humour and his wisdom do not stretch this far. The newspapers mention me frequently, it’s unavoidable. While he works so that I can have a car and a housekeeper and comes home exhausted and doesn’t have the stamina to play with the children. It’s a crooked shifting situation.

There were many points of contention. Over the years Jancsi gave very large sums of money to people in need. New arrivals in

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Sydney and old friends in Hungary could be sure of his generous response to their difficulties. Hundreds of pounds in the 1950s, thousands in later periods, were quickly and unreservedly given with no thought of repayment. Yet he would be angry if Judy threw away a lemon from which one more drop of juice could be squeezed. His love for his children was unquestionable, but he found it hard to tolerate their carelessness. Their broken toys, wasted food, lost pocket money brought his reproof. Judy thought he should praise them more; he thought she was over-indulgent. As their finances improved, Judy spent quite lavishly on clothes, which did not trouble Jancsi, but he was enraged by her extravagance in spending twelve shillings and sixpence a week at the hairdresser. She had the use of their car and went wherever she pleased; he never questioned her right to go out painting with other artists or to visit their studios. Now and then, however, when she was straining to finish a commission, he would insist that she help him at the factory in some manual work which could have been better done by someone else. Driving him to work and calling for him at the end of the day took more time than she could afford, but she would not have dared to suggest he call a taxi. Although Judy understood such demands as his way of proving that she put his needs first, her own anger was hard to restrain. Their quarrels always ended in loving embraces, regrets and resolutions from each of them to understand the other’s feelings. Both were quick-tempered but Judy’s anger soon dispersed itself in tears. Jancsi’s icy silences sometimes lasted for days. Jancsi was probably right to protest against too much publicity. He thought that Judy was in danger of living on the surface. Her facility in painting and her pleasure in public admiration could have been destructive; he wanted her to work harder—and stay out of the newspaper columns. Judy argued her need to be known. The publicity would help to sell paintings and get portrait commissions

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from rich people.The issue was unresolved between them when her 1955 solo exhibition opened at the Macquarie Galleries in Bligh Street. Because there were many emerging artists and only a few commercial galleries, it was an accolade to be given a second chance at the Macquarie, where the first Cassab show, in 1953, had not made much of a stir. Macquarie had always been discerning in finding new talent, always willing to take a risk. Roland Wakelin had shown his modernist work there as early as 1925. In 1942 Russell Drysdale had his first one-man show at the Macquarie and it was there, in 1949, that his controversial Woman in a Landscape was first seen. It was unusual in its time for having two women (Treania Smith and Lucy Swanton) as co-directors and in having promoted a number of women painters, including Thea Proctor, Grace Crowley and Grace Cossington Smith. As one of the Macquarie artists, Cassab had to be taken seriously. All the Sydney newspapers sent photographers and gave ample space to the opening. Next day, beside reviews which were mainly favourable, a thoughtful Judy was seen listening to painter Wallace Thornton and a smiling Judy offered a tray of drinks to Michael Kmit. Well-dressed, paintable young women were photographed gazing at her portraits of other paintable young women. Judy’s friend and advocate, Andrea, columnist for the tabloid Daily Telegraph, bought a painting she could ill afford and chivvied Warwick Fairfax into following her lead. Only three paintings out of the twenty-four were sold at the opening and two more before the exhibition ended. Not a disaster, but not a triumph. Three influential critics—all painters—emphasised Cassab’s promise but all had reservations. James Gleeson praised three paintings for completeness and finality of statement: nothing was lacking, no brushstroke was misplaced. But Gleeson used the fatal word charming, and summed up rather flatly with ‘a pleasant experience which shows development upon [Cassab’s] earlier work’.

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W. E. Pidgeon, of the Daily Telegraph, found rather different qualities: enthusiasm, gusto, natural ability running riot. Paul Haefliger, reviewing for the Sydney Morning Herald, was more positive. Cassab’s ‘excessive sweetness’, her ‘gentle harmonies’ and suavity of style were gone and in their place was a welcome astringency. The awkwardness of her struggle forecast better things. Haefliger’s bossy concluding sentence (‘woe betide this artist if she dares to repeat herself ’) makes sense in the context of his friendship with Judy. This Savonarola of the Sydney art world, as Judy called him, had been making it his mission to revolutionise her style. He thought that the discordancies of her 1955 exhibition were proof of his influence. Among the critics Haefliger was very powerful: ‘a bad review from him and you were really sunk’. Having recently been converted to abstract art, he was pushing Judy away from the figurative mode, and urging her to give up portraits. It was in portraits, however, that she had her first big success. In August 1955 her portrait of Michael Kmit won the Perth Prize for an oil painting. It was an open award with enough prize money to tempt many established artists. A few weeks later she won the prize of £500 for the best portrait by a woman artist in the Australian Women’s Weekly competition.This magazine, which focused on news of the royal family, fashion notes, gossip and recipes, had a central place in Australian life: everyone read it, though many pretended they just picked it up in the dentist’s rooms. As an international award with generous prize money, judged by the directors of the state galleries of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia, the Women’s Weekly competition transcended its embarrassing origins. Although the open award of £1500 went to Tasmanian artist Jack Carington Smith, the Cassab portrait of former fashion model Judy Barraclough won even more publicity. It was a popular win, with Judy scoring narrowly over a Canadian painter. Once more Jancsi

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shuddered at the press coverage while exulting in her triumph.With letters, flowers, telegrams, phone calls and friends dropping in, the Weeroona Avenue flat was a scene of happy confusion. Mistaking two Salvation Army workers for journalists, Judy invited them in, urged them to sit down, offered them tea. ‘They were overjoyed to be so welcome and at once started with some bible-reading. I was so ashamed I bought a book for four shillings.’ Paul Haefliger’s review was unenthusiastic.The Carington Smith entry was judged clumsy and ill conceived, yet there was a certain sympathetic feeling for its ‘pudding-shaped’ subject. The Cassab portrait was excellent in design but superficial. Neither had anything to say to the twentieth century. Judy was too happy to be deflated but she took the criticism to heart. So far as her own achievement was concerned she was as exacting as the Savonarola of the Sydney Morning Herald. Indeed, she welcomed Haefliger’s severity: this was the kind of talk, passionate and invigorating, that she had not heard since leaving Hungary. Instead of denying or resenting his strictures, Judy weighed up every point and kept close notes in her diary. It says much for her toughness and certainty that she could write it without flinching. It hurt but she knew it was the truth: Paul said I retrogressed. I am sweetish, slimy, and this still life here is for a boudoir. He is sure I will sell it as most people’s taste is abominable. And this one, with the clever technique, of course it’s no more than a trick. It’s easy, isn’t it. If this is what you decide to do, he said, you will win another prize or two, no doubt, and repeating this sort of performance you will melt into oblivion. Make a decision. Is that what you want? Do you want to be a fashionable portraitist or do you want to be an artist? I wouldn’t even bother telling you all this if I didn’t know how talented you are. I expect there is more of you. Self-discipline, girl. Kick a hole with your shoe through

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those still-lifes. Don’t exhibit for a few months. And try something you haven’t tried before, for God’s sake. Try abstract.

Haefliger had not long been converted to abstract art. He had been the champion of Drysdale and Dobell; he saw erratic genius in the young Sidney Nolan and he had undervalued such 1930s Sydney abstractionists as Ralph Balson and Grace Crowley. In the mid-1950s when Judy’s work caught his attention, he made it the occasion for a series of sermons, some face to face with her in the studio, others in a spate of letters from Europe. Most of the excitement of the Australian art world was then centred on Melbourne, where the work of abstract expressionists and social realists (Tucker, Boyd, Nolan, Perceval, Counihan) made Sydney painters appear less than robust. At this time the young Robert Hughes coined the unfair but memorable phrase: the Sydney ‘Charm School’. It was unfair, John Olsen said, because it dismissed technical excellence so lightly. Yet Olsen believed that by the mid-1950s, when he himself left for Europe, painting in Sydney was losing its drive. Drysdale and Dobell were nearing the end of their careers. The big names of the 1960s would come from Melbourne image makers, headed by Boyd and Nolan. Drifting, eclectic, neo-romantic, Sydney painting had to reinvent itself. Abstraction became the new orthodoxy. By the end of the 1950s, Bernard Smith estimated that ‘most of the younger painters of the postwar generation were experimenting with some form of abstract painting...’ Arguing with Haefliger, Judy suggested that the era of the abstract might already have ended. What was the new frontier? Haefliger did not know. He did believe, however, that Judy’s talent for the figurative, combined with her ability to please as a portraitist, would self-destruct. She conceded the risk but she was not willing to turn abstract for the sake of being in fashion. She had powerful memories of the postwar years in Hungary, when social realism was

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imposed by political decree, when her Budapest friend Kmetty had to choose between the party line and the artist’s conscience. She had no impulse towards abstract art. Why should she deny her gift for the figurative? When Haefliger urged her to give up portraits altogether, she rebelled. She knew there was more she could do in that form, and as she completed a study of Elaine Haxton, which was to be her entry in the 1956 Perth Prize, she reflected on the problem. To distort, as the expressionists did, would be to go against her nature. She had to find her own way to ‘break through this awful wall of the human face’. Trying to explain why she was not satisfied with her success as a portraitist, she compared herself with a singer ‘trying to hit a certain note in a certain way’. She needed time, thought and study, as well as the stimulus of fellow intellectuals and professional painters. Being a celebrity was easy. The seductive power of the local press could have ruined her. Cameramen at every art show trained lenses on ‘the unforgettable little Cassab’, the ‘sparkling brunette’ whose smile lit up the front pages of the tabloids. She attracted the kind of attention given in later times to film actors and television presenters: She is five feet, three inches, not as plump as she used to be but still plump, pretty with curling red-brown hair, well-brushed. She smokes a good many cigarettes in a long yellow holder and wears tapered black pants when she’s painting. Her eyes are large and brown, thoughtful but lit with humour—a serious painter, without pose, conceit or bohemianism.

Just as well, probably, that the press effusions met the sardonic gaze of Jancsi. Judy herself was impatient with the concentration on her smile and her clothes rather than her paintings but after the deprivations of the war years, when safety depended on invisibility, it was pleasant to be admired. Sometimes, however, she rebelled

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against her image. That ‘radiant smile’ of the newpaper columnists had nothing to do with the intense, conflicting longings of her life as wife, mother and artist. The complexities of Judy’s life were dramatised most strongly in 1956. The front pages of the same Sydney newspapers which celebrated the Cassab smile brought powerful images of revolution in Hungary. First hope, then despair in November 1956 as the Russian tanks rolled in. Meanwhile, distracting the western world from Hungary’s tragedy came the crisis when Britain intervened to keep control of the Suez Canal. Political upheaval in Egypt had already touched the Kämpfners closely. Judy’s aunt Ami, her mother’s sister, had been living in Cairo since the 1930s. Judy had not seen her since Beregszász days. Ami and her husband Jacques Kohn, who lost their property when Nasser came to power, left Cairo in August 1956 to settle in Sydney, bringing their 16-year-old daughter Maya. Judy rejoiced at the prospect of having family around her. ‘There isn’t an hour when I don’t think of Amika. . .we are so alone. . .’ Ami would be something like a grandmother for Johnny and Peter who had never known an extended family. For two months the Kämpfners were absorbed in preparing for the new arrivals, finding them a flat in Edgecliff, and devising a way for Jacques to join Jancsi in the Elasco factory as an equal partner, even though Jacques would have nothing to invest. During this time Judy heard the astonishing news that she had won the Perth Prize for the second successive year. Her portrait of Elaine Haxton, in harlequin colours, was finely composed, not as strong as her Michael Kmit of the same year, but a very assured piece of work. And the prize was £500: a handsome sum at a time when the weekly basic wage was £12. For a day Judy felt euphoric. Then came emptiness. The win meant very little after all. All her emotional energy was invested in the arrival of Ami and her family and in the memories it stirred.

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Nothing could have lived up to Judy’s expectations. If she had hoped for the strength and comfort she associated with her family in Beregszász she was bound to be disappointed. After a day of happy embraces and Hungarian paprika chicken, the mood was bleak. Nothing pleased Ami. All that Judy and Jancsi had prepared went unremarked in Ami’s overwhelming fear of the new, and grief for what she had left in Cairo. Jacques too seemed destined to be a burden. He scarcely registered the generosity of Jancsi, who in effect was preparing to support the newcomers financially. As Ami wept and complained about the high prices of everything in Sydney, Judy became impatient and then angry. She could not help thinking how much easier it was for Ami’s family than it had been for herself and Jancsi. No one had prepared such a welcome for them; they had struggled alone to their present level of comfort. Nor had Ami, safe in Cairo, seen war and suffering as Judy had. When Ami’s small domestic mishaps took on tragic dimensions, Judy released her own rage and frustration, saying in her diary what she would never say to her aunt and uncle. Ami’s attempt to economise on dry cleaning provoked a passionate ouburst from Judy: While Maya and I are out job-hunting, she hangs all their coats, suits and [other] clothes on the rod of the shower-curtain above hot water to steam them and the whole bloody lot crashes into the water. Then—in three goes—she carries the wet load to the drycleaner and by the time we return a dead-white ghost of an Ami looks at us with the eyes of a mortally wounded animal. She bursts into heaving sobs and repeats like a gramophone record, ‘This is awful, this is awful.’ I tell myself, they didn’t live in Europe under Hitler, they didn’t live in twenty different slums, they are older than we have been when we migrated. No use. We have changed too. Without having realised it before, we took over the English habit of

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understatement, of not burdening each other with emotional outbursts ... It’s incredibly sad for them as well as for us. I am escaping myself into the usual diarrhoea and palpitations. I lost half a stone in a week. What with Ami worrying about sharks on the beaches for Christ’s sake and about rape and one has to soothe her like an infant afraid of the dark...

In her disappointment at Ami’s failure to be a source of comfort, Judy forgot that she too had needed to be soothed like an infant during her breakdown in Sydney. Granted that the wartime ordeals of Ami and Jacques were comparatively minor, Judy did not allow for the fears, stemming from loss and dislocation, which Ami was transposing into fantasies about shark attacks. Ami had lost mother, sister, brother and homeland in Hungary, house, money and possessions in Egypt. Perhaps she had dreamed of comfort and the renewal of family ties with a strong young niece who was already confident of her place in Australian life. The pages of Judy’s diary show how hard it was for her to reverse the generation roles and be Ami’s protector. If it had not been for Jancsi’s determination to cushion the newcomers in every possible way there might have been a breach between aunt and niece. The unrestrained rage of the diary at this period and at other times of crisis dispels any notion that the smiling elegant young artist known to Sydney people was Judy’s essential self. Whatever she might say about having learned English reticence it is clear that she had strong passions to hold in. Some of the force of her indignation at the helplessness of the Kohns may stem from inner deprivation. Having given birth to Johnny and Peter in postwar Budapest without the support of her own mother, she may have transferred to Ami the sense of need and the unconscious anger of that time. No blame could touch Ilus, the victim of Auschwitz, for not being there. There is also a striking parallel between Judy’s

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father and her uncle Jacques Kohn, another failed businessman whom Jancsi had to rescue. The overwhelming sorrow and resentment Judy felt when the Kohns came to Sydney could well stem from her early life as well as from the postwar years. The episode also reaffirmed the bond with Jancsi. Her pride in his generosity to her family was unbounded. Just as he had helped her father to set up the stamp shop in the first years of her marriage, now without question he took on the burden of three people he scarcely knew. All their disputes about her celebrity, his complaints about her extravagance, his persistent card-playing, were of no consequence as she reflected on seventeen years of marriage in which he remained ‘the core of my shaky universe’. The comfort a mother might have given and the security of a strong father were united in Jancsi, to whom she looked for all her needs. Reading about the Hungarian revolution and its aftermath, Judy and Jancsi relived their time of displacement. Again Vienna was full of refugees. Soon there would be another wave of Hungarian exiles in Sydney. As Judy reflected on her life in Sydney the mood was one of loss. With Communist rule brutally re-imposed on Hungary there was no hope of return. ‘We lost our identity’, she wrote: Without the familiar background no one is quite themselves, neither in the eyes of the others or in [their] own. Most pathetic are those migrants who conjure up the past. Whose eyes sparkle when they talk (before a bored audience) of what sort of people they used to be. Of what the gypsy band used to play when they entered, of how many servants they used to have, and how many rooms, decorated just so.

In March 1957, less than three months after the Hungarian revolution, the Kämpfners took out Australian citizenship. To judge from Judy’s diaries of the period there was no strong affirmation of

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feeling for the new world. It was sensible, practical, best for their children. She noted, sadly, that she was losing her fluency in Hungarian. Because she and Jancsi spoke English with the children, their own language was less and less the instinctive speech of everyday use.When they were alone together it was the language of love; and it came to life also when they were among fellow migrants. For Judy, Hungarian remained the language of poetry.The poems that meant most to her could not be translated. She treasured those she had on tape and played them over and over again. These poems were like music; they touched the inner self as words in English could never do. That self was suppressed in daily life: in friendships she felt the difference. Even when she met fellow artists Elaine Haxton and Margaret Olley she ‘felt like an outsider. Which I am’.There was a lift of the spirits when she saw the design for the Sydney Opera House, not only because of its beauty, but because Australian judges had chosen adventurously from among works by competitors which were shoddy but safe. Australian citizenship had another aspect. It meant new passports. Having arrived as displaced people, the Kämpfners were now free to come and go as they pleased. With the money from the 1956 Perth Prize added to her two wins of the previous year, as well as many portrait commissions, Judy had earned enough to take time out, reflect and study. In the first months of 1957 she felt depleted and uncertain about her work. Forcing herself to paint abstracts, she looked with loathing at the results and began to overpaint them. When ‘lovely figures emerged with an underlying abstract pattern’, she felt some creative pleasure, but the doubts remained. Rather than drift unhappily, or settle for the portraits that came easily, Judy took the extreme step of leaving home and family for five months in order to reconnect with European painting. Hers was exactly the same decision as that made in the same year by John Olsen, who set off alone to see Europe. Olsen said that his young

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wife Mary ‘quite rightly’ did not come to see him off. It was the end of his marriage. Some Australian painters took their families to Europe in the late 1950s and set up house there, as Arthur Boyd did, and Charles Blackman. Other male painters went alone and returned to family life. For a woman with young children to claim this freedom was unheard of. It could not have been done without Jancsi: in the end it was his decision that Judy should go. They already had a competent live-in housekeeper, well liked by 11-yearold Johnny and 9-year-old Peter. The children’s daily routine would go on as always. Jancsi would supervise the household, as he had done during Judy’s illness. She would be as free as she had been as an 18-year-old student in Prague, before their marriage: so Jancsi told her. Of course she was not free. By giving her an astonishing release from the role of wife and mother, Jancsi only strengthened the ties between them. Was it a gamble on his part? He had always been a risk-taker. Perhaps he saw that his best means of holding his brilliant young wife was by sending her away. Before her departure in September 1957, for five months’ travel and study in the United States and Europe, everyone spoke of Judy’s luck in having this adventure given to her by a selfless and generous husband. Yet the cost was high. Smiling and responding to good wishes and expressions of envy, Judy lived in her own ‘private, secret hell’ of fear and all the physical symptoms that went with it. Although people said that the boys were not of an age to miss her, she only half believed this reassurance; and she knew that she would miss them. Impetuous, demanding Johnny and sensitive, yielding Peter often needed her mediation when they quarrelled, as they often did. They were used to having her at home at the end of the school day, and she had often reflected with satisfaction that they were not latch-key children. Would the housekeeper respond to their non-material needs? Jancsi kept long hours at the factory and came home tired, wanting only to read his newspaper. To leave the

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boys for such a long period needed to be justified, if only to herself. There were times when Judy was not at all sure that the demands of her art should come first. Public sympathy was all for Jancsi, left behind with the children and the factory knitting machines. Yet his will was stronger than hers. Once the decision was made, he was merciless in sending her away. Having lost his own pleasure in work, he found vicarious satisfaction in her creativity. At one remove, her art was his. During one of Judy’s outbursts of uncontrollable weeping, he said: ‘After all, we are only half of your life. Stop being such a coward. Jump into the water and swim’. Air travel from Australia to Europe was not yet common. Much slower, though more comfortable than it would be when the first jet engines came into commercial use, it meant a refuelling stop at Fiji and an overnight stay in Honolulu; then two more long flights to San Francisco and New York where Judy arrived, sick, tense, desperately lonely and sad at the beginning of her five months of looking and learning in the great galleries of two continents. Given wings by Jancsi, the Prospero of her island, she was Miranda, soon to be astonished by the wonders of the world.

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Chapter Eight F I N D I N G

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For Judy Cassab, wife and mother, thirty-seven years old, two days

flying time from home in suburban Sydney, it was terrifying as well as exhilarating to be alone in New York, answerable to no one, with no guide except her own artist’s eyes and no duty except to satisfy her own wish to learn. In September 1957 she spent long days in the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, meeting with a shock of recognition great paintings she had seen only in reproduction: Cézannes, Monets, Renoirs. It was like leafing through the pages of a much loved book, she wrote at the end of one crowded day. And yet that image did not do justice to the power of the experience. She went back to her hotel room at the end of the day exhausted, visually and emotionally. More than ever she needed her diary. At home she would always talk over the day’s events with Jancsi. Alone, she wrote more and became more alert to

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her own feelings, more analytical of people and places. Neither happy nor unhappy she spent solitary days: closing her eyes at night she could still see the swirling brushstrokes and thick paint of De Kooning and Jackson Pollock. In Amsterdam her uncle Gyuszi came to meet her, clutching a bunch of flowers, tears flowing. She would see him again in Vienna, but he wanted to be the first to welcome her on European soil. She went with him to the Rijksmuseum where the Rembrandts glowed for her as they had done on that earlier solitary trip across warscarred Europe, before sailing for Australia.Then the Stedelijk for an exhibition titled ‘Europe 1907’. Room after room: Dufy, Monet, Kandinsky, Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Vuillard, Modigliani, Chagall: all painted nearly two decades before she was born. The ‘mad and gentle melody’ of Van Gogh was the most haunting of all. Meeting the past with reverence, Judy struggled to understand the new: Walking through rooms full of abstracts I find it hard to see their value. Is there no talent, no genius perhaps, who by sheer force could reach over to me? This isn’t painting, for heaven’s sake, this is cuisine. Scratched, dripped, cunningly tricked, there seems to be effort in it but I don’t feel the inspiration. Oh, I know I shall recognise the genius when I see one.

After Amsterdam she saw Rome, Florence, Assisi, Pisa, Milan. At first she could not even make sketches. It seemed an imposition of ego to put pencil to paper while taking in the colours of Italy, the warm tones of the houses, the subtle light and dark of marble and stone; the Pietà of Michelangelo, the Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum, the Forum. Travelling like a student, third class, sitting on wooden benches, staying in cheap lodgings, washing in cold water, eating cheaply at street cafés, she let Italy talk to her without distraction. She still hardly knew what she was looking for, but she began to

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understand that it was not any one artist, not a style to follow. Nothing to do with geometric forms. It would come from nature, and there would be a place in it for poetry and mystery. For the moment she would be quiet and humble, look and wait. Except for a few chance meetings with strangers, Judy’s Italy was solitary and contemplative. Vienna brought echoes of her earlier life. Reunited with Gyuszi and Manyi she was treated like a prodigal daughter, taken to Fidelio in the reconstructed opera house where, seated in a proscenium box, she was plied with chocolate bonbons filled with sour cherries. Gyuszi’s treats were lavish and imaginative, designed to store up memories for this exiled niece. She saw Shakespeare in German and was taken to supper at the Auersperg Palace where waiters glided with silver trays against a background of a great Titian and a Gobelin tapestry while the pianist played ‘Wien, Wien, nur Du allein’. At the Kunsthistorisches Museum she revisited the Brueghel Peasant Dance which she had copied in 1951. Remembering those anxious postwar days it was strange to think that her copy now hung at Weeroona Avenue, where Johnny and Peter played and squabbled and dropped their schoolbags on the floor below it. Thinking of Sydney, Judy envied and wondered at the placidity with which the Viennese sat at their marble-topped tables, glasses of water and small coffee cups beside them, newspapers open. No one seemed to hurry. Family and friends asked about Australia. Everyone commiserated at the distance and gasped at the idea of the series of flights Judy had made on her round-the-world ticket, with the first stop for refuelling at exotic Nadi, in Fiji.The fact that it would take her fifty-six hours to fly home seemed more alarming in the pre-jet 1950s than the four-week sea voyage which was still the usual way to travel. Viennese notions of Australia were vague. They could imagine kangaroos there but not artists. They spoke so sympathetically; it was almost as if Judy had been deported. She missed

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Jancsi and the boys, ‘like an arm and a leg’. In those days of costly 3-minute international calls, punctuated by the operator’s sharp reminders, it was unthinkable to phone home. Letters from Sydney took six or seven days at best, and because Judy was moving from place to place, finding lodgings as she went, Jancsi’s news of the children and his words of love and reassurance arrived after arid stretches of time which could be as long as two weeks. Johnny and Peter wrote too. They sounded happy enough, but there was no knowing how much they were missing her; their letters gave nothing but facts about school and swimming lessons. Giving Gyuszi’s young son a goodnight kiss brought a pang: ‘I touch his thin back under the pyjamas and I cry with longing for mine’. Early in November, as the days turned grey and light failed early, Judy flew to Paris. Again there were memories, reunions with great classic paintings, but now she felt ready for the new. At the Galerie Charpentier the tips of her fingers itched: Contemporary, yes. But distilled from nature.What a comfort.The New I see and saw in Italy already is that the abstractions are not rigid and controlled, sliced, calculated, but freeflowing and personal. There is anarchy enough here too but there is Hartung, Soulages, Manessier, so subtle in colour they almost whisper like a breeze.

Exultant moods, lapses into depression and loneliness: Judy’s Paris was all contradictions. Glimpses of luxury with some old friends, sadness and poverty with others. Grotesquely deformed lives among rich and poor. She lived simply and uncomfortably. Three pounds a day paid for bed and breakfast in the Hotel Haussman. As the wintry light faded early she spent more time in her room. From time to time the familiar symptoms of anxiety recurred: diarrhoea, shaky knees, a palpitating heart. When she developed flu, she spoke

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for days to no one except the chambermaid who brought her food and chatted a little: ‘I would have welcomed the devil’s grandmother, I was so lonely’. In Paris Judy renewed her perennial debate with Paul Haefliger, friend, artist and newspaper critic, who was alone and desolate. If Judy had been living in a novel, as sometimes it seemed that she was, she and Haefliger might have fallen in love during those chilly November days. The reality was not romantic. Judy would sit patiently in coffee-houses and listen to Haefliger’s tale of frustrated love for Annette Shaw, the rich, beautiful married woman whom he had been pursuing in Sydney. In return he gave his scholarly attention to the qualities of the paintings they saw together. Haefliger had left his artist wife Jean Bellette, and was living in a furnished room in Montparnasse, deeply depressed, hating Paris, hoping for a letter from Annette, which never came, talking of killing himself, complaining of filth and rain. It was no use for Judy to show him how the leaves of the chestnut trees glistened in the drizzle, nor to mention the letters from Jancsi which brought so much comfort and joy that she read them over and over again. So they paced the galleries and talked of Kandinsky and Seurat and why even an ugly painting by Picasso had the authentic flame which was missing in the admirable Braque. Annette did not write; Haefliger did not kill himself; he would eventually go back to his wife, and his attempts to divert Judy away from portraiture and towards abstraction would continue. The lure of the portrait was never stronger than in the last months of Judy’s study tour. After a snowy, nostalgic Christmas with Gyuszi and Manyi in the Semmering, where she had stayed as a child, Judy moved on to London. For three weeks in January 1958 she despaired of earning anything towards the expenses of her travels. The successes of her first postwar visit, sponsored by Miki Sekers, seemed remote, and Sekers himself was busy and too

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preoccupied to give her more than a humiliatingly brief moment in his London office. Then, suddenly, the luck changed. A famous London fashion model, Barbara Goalen, who had heard from fellow model Judy Barraclough about the Women’s Weekly prize, commissioned a portrait.The result delighted Goalen and was talked about in places where the rich and famous gathered. It came to the attention of René, hairdresser to Princess Margaret, in whose London salon duchesses and maharanis and the wives of millionaires were all equal under the dryers. ‘He is a hairdresser like Dior is a tailor’, Judy wrote. He was also a connoisseur and collector of paintings. After having her hair ‘sculptured’ by René, Judy was invited to paint his wife. René became a friend and patron. Four more commissions followed, at £200 each. Even more pleasing to Judy were commissions for portraits of the Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell, whose children she had painted in 1951, and Peter Thorneycroft (later Baron Thorneycroft), Chancellor of the Exchequer.The Gaitskell house in Hampstead was shabby in Oxbridge academic style; the Gaitskell car was an unwashed Morris Minor, but the commission outranked anything in Knightsbridge, no matter how brightly the Rolls Royces gleamed. It was generally believed that when the British Labour Party returned to office Gaitskell would be prime minister. In the meantime the talk at his lunch table was exhilarating with its casual references to what Khrushchev had said or what the American Ambassador wanted. Another guest was John Douglas Pringle, the influential editor of the London Observer and former editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. He greeted Judy warmly, telling Gaitskell that everyone knew her as one of Australia’s most brilliant young painters. Gaitskell relaxed and chatted as Judy painted. He told her about himself, his transition from academic to politician; he gossiped about Anthony Eden’s affair with Judy’s next sitter, Lady Beatty, and Winston Churchill’s having intervened to persuade Lord Beatty not

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to name Eden in a divorce suit because it would damage the party. He told her about the Labour leadership and why he owed it to the folly of Aneurin Bevan who could have taken it for himself. Then he drove her home to Queensway in that very dirty Morris Minor. Next came Peter Thorneycroft, a politician in a very different style. An elegant townhouse in Chester Square; no hand-knitted woolly jumpers; none of the middle-class intellectual’s disdain for appearances: Thorneycroft, who posed for Judy in a a white ski pullover, invited her to meet his wife Carli, an Italian contessa, ‘very beautiful, polished, elegant’. Both were to become Judy’s lifelong friends. To complete her triumph Judy had a letter from Graham Sutherland, one of Britain’s foremost artists, whose controversial study of Churchill was destroyed by an enraged Lady Churchill. Sutherland praised Judy’s work and asked if he could refer prospective sitters to her, since he limited his portraits to one a year. The Gaitskell lunch, the Sutherland letter and the heady sequence of portrait commissions had a powerful effect. Judy was dazzled by postwar London. She loved the theatre, and she had been dismayed by Sydney’s offerings, which she thought were amateurish and provincial, with an audience to match. It was the same with music: long periods of drabness lit occasionally by the brief, brilliant visit of some famous virtuoso. There was plenty of talent among Sydney painters but she had seen how much they longed for Europe—and how many of them in the 1950s were making their escape. Her six years in Sydney was more than enough to reveal Australia’s deference towards Britain. Politically and culturally it was still colonial.These were the Menzies years, in which the 1954 royal tour of the young Queen Elizabeth crowded the streets with patiently waiting crowds, fervently loyal. Older Australians, making their first postwar visit to Britain, still called it ‘going home’. Judy could not go home to Hungary, but with her new Australian passport she was free to live and work in Britain, as other Australian

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artists and intellectuals chose to do. In the next decade Sidney Nolan, Charles Blackman, John Perceval, Arthur and David Boyd all bought houses in London. Judy had the added enticement of a welcoming circle of other émigré Hungarians. Among them was her younger cousin Zsuzsi Roboz who had escaped from Budapest as a child, and was now making her name in London as a portrait painter. Zsuzsi was beautiful and talented and it was a pleasure for them both to exchange ideas and appraisals of one another’s work. It was like having a family again to meet so many with whom Judy shared memories of Hungary. Some of the émigrés had become wealthy in the postwar years, and they were eager to look after Judy. Cosseted by her Hungarian friend Ibi Hausman in her Queensway flat, with Hungarian cooking, cakes and coffee, and sisterly offers of jewels and furs to wear so as to shine among the English, Judy could not help thinking about a future in London. After the Gaitskell lunch she wrote to Jancsi, full of hope: It would be my greatest wish for you to come over next time because one can’t sense the difference between the two worlds until one has returned to Europe. My values are totally turned over. For the first time in my life I would be willing to housekeep without help and still paint, or live in the country. Life gives so much more here, life, of which there is only one. I emphasise, if there is no chance for this I won’t grumble or nag either you or myself. There is nothing more important for me than us four. But what I realise from the distance is that what falls outside this unit—our idealism, humanity, spirituality and our place in a community—all remained over on this side. I won’t make your life (which to me is more important than mine) more difficult. But I would like you to make a trip too and look around because that much I see: that here you can count on me too to earn my living.

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It was too much to ask, and probably Judy knew it as she wrote the letter. Although it distressed her to see how little pleasure Jancsi gained from his work in Sydney, there was nothing she could offer in its place. At fifty-five he could not hope to start another business in London; and there would be no joy for him in being supported by his famous wife. Her diary shows strong regret at having to turn away from such alluring prospects, but no rebellion. Jancsi offered a compromise: that she should accept all the new commissions (which included Dora Gaitskell) and plan to return to London in a year’s time for another visit of two or three months. Reunited with her family in February 1958, Judy was shocked to see how old and tired Jancsi had become. He did not greet her happily and embrace her as the children did but stood silently to one side, with the withdrawn expression she remembered from his return from labour camp in 1944. Later he told her about his business worries. A new factory he had set up to finance Jacques and Ami Kohn was failing and would have to be sold. They would still have to support the Kohns but not at such a cost. There was worse news to tell. When they were all on holidays at Christmas in the Blue Mountains, Sybill the housekeeper lost her baby in the heat of the bushfires, trapped inside a car. Jancsi had to help Sybill as best he could, calm his bewildered children and arrange the baby’s funeral. All this he had kept from Judy. At last he told her how hard it had been: ‘Jucókám, I dried out, this is the only way I can express it, without you. No one to share with. I craved your love’. It was a compromise for them all when Judy began to plan her next visit to London. She could never know how much the boys missed her, but in the months that followed her return she was aware that neither one found life easy. Both were clever but easily disheartened in their school work. Johnny was demanding. He took the role of the troublesome one which prompted Peter to win approval by being gentle and considerate. Judy was distressed to see

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how much Johnny wanted to conform to Australian ways. In voice and language he transformed himself when he came into the company of other boys. His slang, bad grammar, and denigration of his mother’s painting (‘crazy abstract stuff ’) were evidence of unease. Having done well enough academically to be accepted by Sydney Boys High School, Johnny promptly failed his mid-year exams in French and did poorly in his other subjects. Judy consulted his teachers, asking if she was wrong to leave him for another two months. Called in to the interview, Johnny spoke with such maturity about his regrets at having ‘loafed’ and misjudged the high school routine that the teacher was impressed. ‘No need to worry about John’, he said. Peter troubled Judy in a different way. He went to school dutifully, but complained of boredom and lack of friends. He was generous, affectionate, perceptive beyond his years, but not the buoyant 11-year-old he should have been. The year’s interval between her London visits, suggested by Jancsi, was cut to six months so as not to keep her sitters waiting. Home in February 1958, Judy left again in August for a stay of eight weeks. She was less anxious this time, more confident about travelling alone, but the wrench of parting hurt just as much. Jancsi spoke with such understanding of her needs and desires that the bond that held her to their marriage tightened even as she prepared to leave: ‘You want much, Jucókám’, he said. ‘You are a good mother, a good partner, a decent human being. I want you to run your course. You don’t go to earn money. If that would be it, I wouldn’t let you go, not for £600 and not for £6000. Wouldn’t let you is the wrong expression, forgive me. . .You want to be a good artist and study. And you want to be seen and to be known. Your vehicle is the portrait. It’s not sufficient to be known in Weeroona Avenue. That’s why you have to go ... It’s your father in you who could never make it. I want you

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to be a whole person, I want your life to be a full life. Whether you will come home with money and glory is irrelevant to me. Don’t worry, control your anxieties, you are as free as a bird.’

London was welcoming as before. Judy’s friends busied themselves to find more commissions. When she had trouble finding a place to stay, René offered the Knightsbridge flat which he and his wife kept for their Paris guests. The rent was low—the same as René paid— and the rooms were light and spacious. Touring the autumn exhibitions Judy saw works by British artists Graham Sutherland, Ben Nicholson, John Piper, Matthew Smith—none of them exciting. She concluded that there was more talent in Australia. Whatever confidence the comparison offered, it collapsed in the humbling experience of trying to find a London gallery which would give her an exhibition. She toured half a dozen, her portfolio under her arm, feeling with each refusal more and more like a failed door-to-door salesman, hot, red-faced and humiliated. At the Redfern, Waddingtons, Leicester’s, Roland Browse, the verdict was the same: booked years ahead, no hope even if Picasso came in person. Most softened the refusal with praise. One was rude enough to say he found her work too abstract as he brusquely turned away from her open portfolio. Losing hope, she telephoned the Crane Kalman Gallery. It too was booked out but Kálmán agreed to see her. Judy’s Hungarian accent worked the miracle. Where did she come from? From Beregszász. Kálmán was from Mátészalka. Judy remembered being invited to dinner in Mátészalka by a chemist named Kálmán who had three sons. ‘I am one of them’, André Kálmán said. The rest of his family had died in Auschwitz. After such a coincidence he could not refuse Judy an exhibition. He liked her work and he would be delighted to show it in a year’s time. So, after four weeks (‘despicable, impatient monster that I am’), she had what she wanted. The portraits paid for her trip and the exhibition

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would give the chance to show an exacting public what she could do in other genres. One small embarrassment showed the perils of doing business with friends. Hugh Gaitskell found her a commission with a Lady Pakenham. It might have to be done for nothing, he said, but because she was a famous society beauty it would be worth it as advertisement. Hearing what Judy’s usual fee would be, the Gaitskells were shocked. Even though Judy quoted £150 instead of £200 they realised that they could not afford the portrait of Dora they had commissioned. She had charged only £50 to paint Gaitskell in the previous year and had made them a gift of their children’s portraits in 1951. She explained that she could not let herself be known to paint at cheap rates. It had to be a professional fee or a gift—and she hoped they would accept Dora’s portrait as a gift. She did not want the friendship to founder. Hugh Gaitskell, then fifty-two, was an attractive man, intelligent, friendly, seemingly at ease with himself and the world. Judy could not help being flattered by an attentiveness which went beyond their professional relationship as painter and sitter. The telephone calls inviting her to their house came from him, not his wife; and more than once while Dora prepared lunch, Hugh took Judy for a stroll on Hampstead Heath. Judy’s diaries reflect her pleasure in the company of one of the most powerful figures of the day who was ready to confide in her, talk about his ambitions, and pay her the compliment of assuming her interest in world affairs. Gaitskell must have felt Judy’s charm. He did not need to drive her home, nor to spend his statesman’s time finding sitters for her. Pretty and elegant with a sparkling wit, a good conversationalist in any company, with a tragic and unusual life experience, she could easily outshine women of classic beauty. On her side, Judy was always drawn to powerful men. Talking with Gaitskell she felt that she had reached the centre of British life. But if there was more than a spark

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of attraction, there was too little time for it to grow. Judy was busy, tense with the excitement of London, and so closely bound to Jancsi that a love affair with Gaitskell or anyone else had little chance. The London visit ended with an astonishing commission. René telephoned to say that his client the Maharani of Jaipur wanted a portrait. Could Judy ‘drop in’ on her way home to Australia? Jaipur was not on Judy’s map; dropping in at an Indian palace sounded as improbable and romantic as the Arabian Nights of her childhood reading. She had the presence of mind to increase her fee to £450 for two portraits: the maharaja’s as well as his wife’s. She remembered to allow for the extra cost of re-routing her airline ticket via Delhi. Then she sent a telegram to Jancsi, who replied with amusement: ‘Hurry up, they won’t last much longer’. The maharani, known as one of the ten most beautiful women in the world, was bored. She welcomed Judy as a diversion. Choosing the sari of turquoise silk and the jewels for the portrait was a serious business. ‘I simply hate sapphires, they look black at night, don’t you think?’ She was too aloof to be an easy sitter. She loved the painting (‘better than Annigoni’s’) but Judy thought it was stiff. The commission was exacting in many ways. Judy was never left alone except to sleep. By day four orange-turbaned servants in white gloves waited to perform even the smallest service, and a guard stood by when she swam in a pool of Olympic proportions. A chauffeur with a Rolls Royce was deputed to show her Jaipur: Maybe the stench is reduced in a Rolls Royce but there is one. Pink palaces, hovels, Cadillacs, cows, bazaars, dust. I offer the driver a cigarette which he smokes noisily, having no teeth. The wind palace is a masterpiece of marble lace and no one lives in it but the wind ... The contrasts are shocking.

The palace at Jaipur was like a musical comedy set but with an uncomfortable edge: these were real people. Two scenes stood out.

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The first was a five-course dinner under the stars in the garden of the hunting lodge. Within sight of the party, in a deep ravine, a buffalo was tied to a pole with spotlights trained on him. The smell of the terrified, tethered animal was intended to lure a tiger into the bright circle. The tiger would attack and in turn be shot by one of the party whose expensive rifles were ready and loaded. Judy thought it an even more cruel and perverted blood sport than the bullfight, where at least the bull has a chance to fight. She prayed silently that the tiger would not appear. They waited till eleven o’clock and to her great relief there was no tiger. Two days later it was Judy’s turn to entertain. It occurred to the maharaja to ask her to prepare the famous Hungarian paprika chicken which he had once enjoyed at the Ritz in Budapest. Daunted by the thought of cooking for twenty-four, Judy went by car to the kitchens which seemed like catacombs, deep and wide with thick walls. There the chef, a eunuch, and his seven assistants stood to attention waiting for her orders. All the ingredients were ready, measured according to her hasty arithmetic of the previous day. She had only to tell one of the team to cut the chickens, another to chop onions, a third to melt butter, a fourth to slice capsicums.When their collective task was done she was taken back to the palace to wash and change and join the guests. The party included a great number of sisters-in-law in glittering saris who sat in a line like birds on a telegraph wire, eating with their fingers, letting the red gravy trickle down to their elbows. ‘I must say it was more successful than the portraits and certainly more appreciated’, Judy wrote. Resuming real life in Sydney in November 1958, she found the contrast sharp. Jancsi, tired and irritable, wanted her in the factory to help with the finishing process of the elastic stockings. A junior at £10 a week would have done the job more efficiently, Judy knew, but she also knew that the money was not the point. After her two months absence she had to put Jancsi first. She had also to drive him

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to and from work and show no sign of impatience when he kept her waiting in the car on days of sweltering heat. When school holidays began she took the boys to Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, where Jancsi later joined them.There, with no chance of painting, she could forget that in less than a year she would have to assemble her London exhibition. She had scarcely had time to assimilate the visual impressions of her two visits. For the summer of 1958–59 she was a full time housewife and mother, cooking, cleaning, washing, entertaining visitors, driving the boys here and there, playing board games with them, teaching them to dance in time for their first teenage New Year’s Eve party. Cold days and rain, dripping trees, fogs and mists made nonsense of the Australian summer and as she put the boys’ wet shoes in the oven to dry Judy thought a little nostalgically about the snow at Kitzbühel where Gyuzsi was spending Christmas with his family. ‘It’s not a complaint but if anyone calls this a holiday I kick them in the shins.’ Back in Sydney Judy worked hard at her painting but took no pleasure in the results: streetscapes of Kings Cross, wharves and ships, cranes and bridges and steel constructions. ‘It isn’t me. Me is vacant.’ There were no Sydney portrait commissions, and the fact that more were still coming in from London underlined her sense that only there would her work flourish. All her painter friends were in Europe. New painters, Gleghorn and Coburn, were doing interesting work but they did not exchange ideas. Judy began to teach again. Three students meant £3 a week which helped to pay the housekeeper. Jancsi’s Elasco factory was struggling; and he came home too tired to talk. At last a buyer made an offer for his second factory, Wallis, which had been set up in order to give work and income to Jacques and Ami Kohn. It was dispiriting to admit failure but a relief to let it go. For the second time Judy postponed a painting trip to Alice Springs because of illness and anxiety. Only the boys were exempt from the gloomy mood at Weeroona Avenue.

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Johnny, whose voice was breaking, was happy, healthy and confident. He had found a girlfriend at Blackheath and won a pingpong championship. Peter was chosen to write a script for a school play. It was clever and funny; and it reminded Judy of the witty sketches her father had composed. In the early months of 1959 Judy’s spirits revived. She accepted the fact that her work was not easily categorised, and began to believe that in an over-programmed era it was a virtue not to follow any fashion. She had a style of her own, neither fully abstract nor figurative. There were artistic muscles she did not possess, great gestures she might never make, but she had lyricism and a sense of mystery. New ideas were forming; there were new ways to work. Starting with a very freely painted abstract foundation she created a second layer which was the theme, and a third which was ‘the coming and going of the planes which form space’. Her long deferred visit to Alice Springs could not have come at a better time. As her ideas took shape she was ready for a new experience. She set out in May 1959, anxious as always about travelling and leaving her family. The trip started badly: there were no direct flights from Sydney to Alice Springs, and somehow in transit her luggage was mislaid. Between flights at Adelaide airport, Beryl Foster, a young painter going home to Alice Springs, saw a tense little figure, demonstrating her predicament with tragic gestures, her Hungarian accent deepening with emotion. Beryl introduced herself, offered help, shared the next stage of the journey and, on arrival, took Judy to meet her mother, Cloudy, who ran a small family boarding house. This was Judy’s introduction into the community which would welcome her back again and again. Artist Rex Battarbee, who had tutored Namatjira, guided Judy and Beryl Foster on Judy’s first painting trip in the desert—a day which changed Judy’s life. Nothing else in the Cassab diaries matches the triumphant creative energy of Judy’s first Alice Springs trip. Primitive

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conditions, heat and dust, ants and flies, bumping over desert sand in a jeep or flying in a perilously small plane, all these made no difference. Watery scrambled eggs for breakfast, and at the main meal chunks of nondescript meat and thickened gravy known as Irish stew, all served at tables with plastic cloths and plastic flowers. Cold water for the outdoor shower where the taps were turned on with pliers. Hard mattresses, nothing to cushion the back after a long day’s painting. She exulted in it all. She understood for the first time since arriving in Australia that it was possible to love the desert as the Hungarian loves the great plains. . . . Ormiston Gorge, another Taj Mahal, a miracle. I didn’t even look at the majestic rock walls on both sides of this dry river bed. Around me were marble piazzas, surreal shapes in mauves and purple and pink, and giant pebbles of the same hue. My eyes watered from the brilliance of the stripes and dots on these marble rocks, washed and polished smooth by a water that disappeared thousands of years ago. . . All that stretches around in abundance and magnitude and volume and quantity, massive, intense, noble, extravagant like every part of the Territory...

Writing home to Jancsi from London, urging him to consider a move to Europe, Judy had spoken of the isolation of Sydney. It had seemed to her parochial, narrow, too remote from the places where things happen. In London the stone was thrown into the water. In Sydney, much later, the faint, diminishing ripples from that stone could be seen. The centre was Europe: Sydney was the edge. Now, that thinking was reversed. She found another centre in the heart of Australia and claimed it for herself. Cézanne had his Mont Saint Victoire; Cassab’s Ormiston Gorge had the same transcendent meaning. If it took her the rest of her life to paint this region she would be happy in doing so.

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Chapter Nine D E S E R T S

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The colours and shapes of the Australian desert changed Judy

Cassab’s life. Their discovery did not, however, divert her from portraiture; it added a new dimension to a career which was already complicated by other choices. Landscapes or portraits; abstract or figurative; Australia or Europe: these possibilities were still open to her in 1959, as she prepared for her first London exhibition at the Crane Kalman Gallery. Seldom out of mind was the unanswerable question of how best to reconcile the competing claims of painter, wife and mother. Her desert encounter solved the problem of what to show in London. As the centrepieces of the exhibition she would take the works which had been inspired by the Alice Springs trip and painted with joyful energy: I work on the Alice pictures.They have so much to say that I don’t even stop to apply techniques, the brush is all I need. A new

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world opened up, not a limited one any more but a treasurehouse to which it is possible to return for inspiration and suddenly—my immigration made sense, from a visual, artistic point of view as well. The paintings catch the eye with their abstractness but looking into them they make sense as objects, too.There they are, the dry fallen-soldier trees, shifting rocks, burning colours. And for the first time the figure is on it without being conspicuous.

Leaving home alone to face the London critics was hard. Jancsi did not go with his wife.This was not simply because he was needed to look after the children. No matter how much he rejoiced in Judy’s development as an artist he hated the attendant publicity and would not be part of it. He never went to her gallery openings in Sydney; and he would not change his rule even for this first London occasion. On a grey London morning, with no one at the airport to meet her, Judy’s confidence crumbled. Doubts about the paintings themselves loomed large; so did worries about practical matters. The paintings might not arrive in time and even if they did, would anyone come to see them? Would the critics come? How much would the drinks cost? And the catalogue, for which she had to pay half? In the first two weeks Judy managed to offset some of her costs by painting three portraits. She slept badly in her borrowed flat. Waking from a nightmare, her hands shook so much that when she reached for the bedside glass of water she dropped and broke it. Some confidence returned the day before the opening when a tape arrived from Jancsi with recorded messages from himself (‘his dear, self-conscious loving words’) and from the two boys.The opening at the Crane Kalman Gallery passed in a blur of confused impressions. Judy’s social ease faltered. She forgot names and faces and found herself introducing close friends to one another. Her Hungarian friends were there, and some of her famous sitters. Next day, doubts

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and fears vanished. Reviewing for the Manchester Guardian, Eric Newton gave high praise to the desert paintings. Privately, he told André Kálmán that he would buy one for himself. His phrase for their painterly qualities was ‘positively rapturous’. This was satisfying, not only because it did justice to the mood of the paintings but because Newton was a stranger. In the small world of Sydney personal relations often obtruded. Comparing herself with the rich girl who suspects boys love her for her money Judy often wondered if it was her personality rather than her talent that won applause. Success with London critics dispelled that uncomfortable thought. Almost as satisfying as the Guardian, The Times placed Cassab in context. Her work was seductive and compelling. Its romantic transformation of scale recalled Sutherland’s strategy of equating small forms with large ones in his English landscapes. It was also seen as an interesting variation on the versions of the desert, ‘haunted and implacably harsh’, that other Australian painters had created. Suggesting comparisons with Drysdale and Nolan, the reviewer saw a certain ‘sweetness’ in the fiery colours as Cassab’s distinctive note. Like ‘charm’, the word ‘sweetness’ was doubleedged; it is hard not to suspect that it came readily to the reviewer’s mind because this was a woman painting. It was left to the Sydney artist and critic Elwyn Lynn, in a later appraisal, to do justice to the desert paintings: The originality of such paintings as Ormiston Gorge and Detail of Ormiston should have been immediately apparent to both European and Australian viewers; in Australia Hans Heysen had depicted the grand sweep of the Flinders Ranges though he sometimes refined their ruggedness to drawing-room acceptability. Sidney Nolan had shown aerial views and vast, infinite horizons and Russell Drysdale the surreal uniqueness of rocks and contorted trees and corrugated iron ...

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Detail of Ormiston [has] energy, power, heat and a feeling of nature’s holocaust with a slender tree surviving with timid insistence. What is notable is how the sense of weight, chaos and volume is obtained without bounding and emphatic lines. Cassab has used the more painterly elements of abstract expressionism to create a situation that is both monumental and full of flux.

Of the fifty paintings shown in the Crane Kalman exhibition Judy sold enough to feel vindicated. But if the landscapes caught the eye of the critics and a few buyers, it was a portrait that had an immediate and powerful effect.William Servaes, one of the directors of the Orient Line, bought Lady in Green, showed it to the chairman, Sir Colin Anderson, and invited Judy to a meeting in their London office. They had it in mind to commission a portrait of Princess Alexandra for the new liner Oriana which the princess had launched. Anderson stressed the fact that royal approval must be sought; Judy had to keep it a secret; it all might come to nothing. If the idea found favour, her fare from Sydney would be paid as well as the fee for the portrait. Judy walked away ‘stunned, as if I would carry an atom bomb in my handbag. God, it’s too good to be true’. Nearly half a century later it is hard to realise how much prestige went with the commission. The British monarchy had never been so popular. Ever since the coronation of the young Queen Elizabeth in 1952 there had scarcely been a dissenting voice in a chorus of adulation. Today’s tawdry soap opera would have been unthinkable. The Queen played her public role with dignity; her family life with Prince Philip and their young children appeared a model of domestic harmony. The press was still dealing gently with Princess Margaret, who won public sympathy in 1958 for her decision not to marry the divorced man whom she loved. Yet gossip about the rackety ‘Margaret set’ and doubts about her stability gave her cousin Alexandra—the only other royal princess of that

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generation—special value as a substitute on the duty list for opening hospital wards, launching ships and acting as patron for various charities. In 1959 Alexandra was twenty-two, tall, attractive and equable: perfect copy for the tabloids and women’s magazines whose quest for her suitors and analysis of her fashion sense became a minor industry. A portrait of Alexandra would be a news item. For Judy Cassab it was a coup. Returning to Sydney to wait for Buckingham Palace’s decision, Judy felt a quiet happiness she could not explain. Perhaps it was because she knew now, after three visits to Europe, that it was possible to come and go without damaging her family life. For some weeks after her return Jancsi was more loving than ever, wise and tolerant. Was this because he had stopped worrying about her ‘going berserk’ with fame or becoming more dissatisfied with Sydney? In fact, she said, she accepted Sydney’s limitations more easily, and enjoyed its tranquillity more, because her world had widened to take in Alice Springs and London, the desert and the metropolis. The boys were happy and companionable with one another; they were the source of her greatest happiness. This tranquillity was short-lived. Jancsi’s depressed moods returned, darker than before; and the boys were quarrelsome and demanding. Summoned to return to London for the royal portrait in March 1960, after only four months in Sydney, Judy was anxious: ‘I can’t help being an artist’, she wrote defensively. In London the excitement of the occasion lifted her spirits. Allotted the use of the Yellow Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace—but only until it was needed for General de Gaulle—she reflected on her situation. Looked at from a Beregszász perspective, it seemed very strange. In the office of Alexandra’s mother, Princess Marina, she was reminded of Count Schönborn’s castle: the same musty smell ‘like old lace put away in attics, apples in winter, perfume and smoke’.

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This was not like other portrait commissions. The sittings took place under the constant scrutiny of palace staff and distracting visits from Princess Marina. Royal portraits were often insipid because of the painter’s need to please. Walking the red-carpeted corridors Judy took a sharp look at The Crowning of King George, silently exclaiming: ‘What a horrid painting!’ It was astonishing for the girl from Beregszász, now a little-known Sydney artist, to become part of a long tradition of court painters. British monarchy had been commemorated in this way for centuries, by great masters like Holbein and the recent, crowd-pleasing Annigoni, whose portrait of the Queen in a dark blue velvet cloak against a pastoral landscape was to be seen in reproduction all over the country. In between sittings, anxious enquiries came from the Orient Line officials. Consultants were summoned to meet Judy. If all went well she and her painting would be filmed for Monitor television and Pathé newsreel. The frame, which would be made in Paris, would have a thin rim of gold leaf. The full-length painting would hang in the first class saloon of the Oriana. ‘What happens if a child puts his foot through the canvas?’, someone asked. ‘Surely not first class children?’ William Servaes replied. Unconcerned, friendly and co-operative, Alexandra came for her sittings. Judy’s diary charts the alternating moods of doubt and satisfaction in her work. First to get the expression right, then attend to the hands which held a spray of flowers; and last the real problem which was to bring the same spirit into every part of the portrait. The background was pale gold. Alexandra’s evening dress was a semi-abstract in grey-blue; her diamonds were a subdued note in a design which stressed unclouded youth. ‘I think, I think the portrait is alive’, she wrote after the third sitting. Then came the ordeal of the Duchess’s visit: ... the duchess looked at the picture while I watched like a hawk. No need for those sleepless nights. She was speechless first. Then

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she said: ‘Yes, oh, yes, but this is excellent. This is you . . . The expression is wonderful. May I say one thing? The only thing is— couldn’t the colour of the skin be a bit warmer? Sort of flesh colour?’ ‘Ma’am, try to visualise a Gainsborough skin or a Renoir skin. It has to go with the rest, you see.’

Later, after congratulating Judy on having passed the Duchess’s scrutiny, Alexandra asked if she could have a portrait for herself. She wanted to be painted with her two brothers, the young Duke of Kent and the schoolboy Prince Michael. Triumph and sadness mingled when Jancsi telephoned. It was the first Sydney to London phone call of their lives. Judy spoke to him and the children, and ‘then the click came and Australia slipped back to the opposite earth and here there is London’. The separation bit more sharply because they had shared the three minutes of time present. Yet London was seductive, full of new experiences which Judy could not resist. She had been accustomed to media attention in Sydney, but never on this scale. A big photograph appeared in The Times; there were articles in the Daily Telegraph, News Chonicle, Daily Sketch and Daily Express. Camera crews from BBC Television and Pathé News were set up to film Judy arriving at her cousin Zsuzsi Roboz’s picturesque mews house, canvas in her hand, walking over cobblestones to the front door and, once inside, settling down to work as if the portrait were not already completed. As she posed, brush in hand, Judy heard the Orient Line’s publicity officer fending off the Woman’s Journal and Woman’s Day who wanted exclusive rights for a cover story. The Sydney Morning Herald sent a photographer. That evening Judy was invited to watch the news coverage at a cocktail party given by one of her sitters, Lady Beatty. Other guests assembled for paté de foie gras and smoked salmon included Britain’s most famous ballet star, Margot Fonteyn, her

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husband Dr Arias, the actress Moira Lister and Lister’s husband, a French aristocrat who told Judy that he would never go to Australia ‘because nobody cleans your shoes there’. He had thought of taking his butler but was advised against it. Judy was alert to the comic aspects of this new world of wealth and privilege, incredulous at being part of it, yet beguiled just the same. At René’s salon next morning, champagne flowed in her honour. The glossy Queen magazine gave two full pages to Judy’s photograph and Alexandra’s portrait. There were big posters outside Agnew’s gallery on Bond Street where the portrait was on display, lit with spotlights. Judy gave an interview to the Manchester Guardian. Radio Free Europe made a program in Hungarian to be broadcast in Budapest. The triple portrait of Alexandra and her brothers was unfinished when Judy’s time in England—already extended—was over. She promised to return the following year to complete it and to paint Princess Marina. After much deliberation and the usual royal insistence on secrecy, she was allowed to carry the rolled-up canvas of the three young Kents on the plane. Keeping anxious watch all the way, she felt like a spy in a comic film. It was a relief to be in Sydney after so much hard work and high tension. Jancsi was at his best: warm, witty, sparkling, full of energy. Peter, on the other hand, reproached Judy for being away so long: ‘What is so frightening, I am getting used to your not being at home. Sometimes I don’t even miss you’. Troubled, Judy defended herself: ‘You have to know that I am like a rock and I shall be here for you until the day I die’. She was uneasy about her family when she left again for London in November 1960. Nevertheless, the spectacular success of Alexandra’s portrait made it certain that there would be many more absences. Portrait commissions within Australia competed with Judy’s need to return to the desert. Within the diplomatic circles in the national capital her royal commissions became known; and invitations to Canberra

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(‘just for a day or two’) arrived in Weeroona Avenue. This was more strenuous than painting in her own studio. As a guest in a patron’s house she had to go to the dinners and cocktail parties which on the diplomatic circuit were almost daily events. There was a great deal of drinking and too many people who did not know anything about art but knew what they liked. Having unwisely told her story of cooking paprika chicken in Jaipur she was asked by the Dutch Chargé d’Affaires to repeat the performance in his kitchen.This was a huge effort because she was suffering from a hangover as well as from the stress of painting his 3-year-old daughter, who demanded fairy stories and word games during the sittings. Judy’s disciplined social self came close to its limits: When I said for the umpteenth time ‘and I say horse’ and she said ‘and I say rabbit’ I thought I strangle her. And when I rushed near her and the canvas because I felt—now, now I caught the expression—Cecile hit me in the chest, saying ‘Go away, I can’t see the birdies’. And when I came home [to her hosts’ house] aching to lie down on the bed, I had tea with them instead because after all it isn’t done to live there and not spending any time with my hosts.

By contrast the discomforts of a desert painting trip were brushed aside in the happiness of discovery. In July 1960, Judy hired a jeep and with her friends Des and Mona Byrnes, who knew the region, she camped under the stars. They grilled steak and drank beer, found soft sand on which to place their sleeping bags. Judy fell asleep under the widest, clearest sky she had ever seen and woke to the ‘incredible peace’ of the dawn. As before she took home riches: fourteen paintings, some sketches, extraordinary visual impressions, memories of easy companionship and kindness. Back in Sydney life was more complex and less creative. The

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high point was Peter’s Bar Mitzvah, at which he looked so fragile and sang so exquisitely that Judy was moved to tears. The low point was a visit from John Reed, director of the Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne, who came to look at Judy’s paintings, talked down to her (‘as if I were a bloody beginner’), asking in patronising tones why she painted and what was it she thought she had to say that no other painter had already said. He left her in deepest gloom. ‘The shit’, said Jancsi consolingly. Waiting for the summons to come back to London and complete the portrait of Alexandra and her brothers, Judy hastily prepared two portraits for entry in the next Archibald Prize. Actor Cyril Ritchard was a difficult, self-important sitter, and she was not happy with the result. Fellow artist Stan Rapotec, standing, hands on chest, in browns, blacks and blues, came to swaggering life. Judy had no real hope of the Archibald contest, which she had entered every year for nine years. After the 1960 announcement she had told a reporter that a woman would never win the prize again (Nora Heysen having had the only success in the forty years of the award) and that the ‘fuddy-duddy judges’ were hopelessly fixated on oldfashioned realism. This uncharacteristically forthright statement appeared on the front page of the Sydney Sun beside a photograph of a bright-eyed, confident Judy in a low-cut dress, looking more like a fashion model than the stereotypical wispy and unworldly female artist. The double provocation of words and image, together with the Buckingham Palace publicity, might well annoy the judges, most of whom would be the same as in the previous year. Meanwhile, there was London, and another heady brew of royal ceremony, rich patrons, brilliant theatres and concerts, and galleries where the Archibald Prize was as unknown as supercilious John Reed. The portrait of the three young Kents was tricky. No sooner had Judy satisfied herself with the two brothers than she found

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herself fumbling and overworking Alexandra’s face. Princess Marina dropped in and remarked that her daughter’s head was too big, out of proportion with the boys’. One more sitting: it seemed to be better. Late one night, peering anxiously at her work, Judy was horrified to realise that she had made the features close in and concentrate on the mouth, so that the pretty princess looked like a goat. This was still a worry, with more work needed to redeem the problem, when Judy turned to her next royal commission, the Princess Marina. Alone of the royal duchesses of the older generation, Marina was known for her classic beauty. Not for her the feathered hats and pastel ‘costumes’ of the Queen Mother; Marina’s image was one of tragic dignity and uncluttered elegance. Born in Athens, daughter of Prince George of Greece and Denmark, she was chosen from a list of suitable European princesses for an arranged marriage with the dissolute Duke of Kent, whose short life was shadowed by scandalous affairs with men and women, rumours of drug addiction and blackmailing attempts from London’s low life. After he was killed in a plane crash in 1942, Marina found a place in London’s cultural circles, with actors, painters and musicians among her friends. Rumoured to have described her sisters-in-law, the then Duchess of York (later Queen Elizabeth, wife of George VI) and the Duchess of Gloucester, as ‘those common little Scottish girls’, she had a sharp tongue and a low tolerance for anything second rate in life or in art.To please her with a portrait was a formidable task, made harder by the fact that the duchess was an amateur painter. ‘Paint her beautiful’, Jancsi advised Judy.That was all very well, but Judy did not want a mask-like travesty of 55-year-old Marina. But how to show the marks of time and sadness as well as the beauty which remained in the eyes and bone structure? In her determination not to ruin a wonderful subject, Judy first made Marina look old, hard and brittle. Oskar Kokoschka, whose portraits

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Judy revered, would not have made concessions, and it was with regret that Judy softened the expression. But ‘at least the bitterness is there, the ruins of her beauty, the elegance, the half-smile. I hope, oh I hope it’s really good’. Apart from objecting to the mouth being lop-sided (which in life it was) Marina approved the portrait. She even commissioned Judy to return and paint her daughter-in-law, the newly married Duchess of Kent, in November 1961. This was an unqualified success in which an abstract underpainting suggested the freshness of the English countryside, green grass, the gold of cornfields, lightness and air and youth. Both Kent portraits were exhibited at the Royal Academy in March 1962. Although their acceptance meant more publicity, Judy’s pleasure was spoiled by an embarrassing wrangle between the Palace and the Women’s Weekly which had breached copyright and protocol to publish photographs of them. She was also beginning to question the value of the royal connections.To be famous for painting famous people was not what she wanted. She did not see herself just as a portraitist—certainly not a ‘society portraitist’—nor did she want to drop portraits for abstracts. She wanted to be a good painter and not to be categorised. In Sydney, Cassab the portraitist came under the spotlight in January 1961 when she won the Archibald Prize. The study of Stanislaus Rapotec, which she had fitted in between her London visits to paint Alexandra and Marina, had cost her less time and worry than the royal paintings, and it was a stronger piece of work. Her win brought a great deal of publicity. Too much of it focused on Judy’s home and family life. ‘Housewife’s Art Win’ was probably the most annoying headline, with ‘Archibald Prize to Woman’ and ‘Woman wins the Archibald’ suggesting a ‘man bites dog’ reversal of the natural order. This was a perennial problem. As late as 1990 the appointment of Betty Churcher as Director of the National Gallery of Australia was greeted with ‘Mother of Four gets Top Job’.

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Speaking for the Archibald judges, the president of the board of trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Professor Waterhouse, described the portrait as ‘a good piece of expressionism’: ‘The head is full of character and is a good likeness of the subject. Judy Cassab’s colour scheme is subdued yet harmonious. The portrait has none of the superficial qualities of the commercial portrait manufacturer’. Did he need to add that it was ‘powerfully painted, especially for a woman artist’? Not so much had changed, it seems, since Nora Heysen’s 1938 success and Meldrum’s notions about ‘manly courage’. Nevertheless, the Cassab win was an important landmark in the history of Australia’s best known and most contentious art prize: the Melbourne Cup of the art world, as it was often described. Founded in 1921 by a bequest from the Bulletin editor, J. F. Archibald, this prize for the best portrait of the year always drew public attention. Although the terms of the bequest were vague, certain rules were established in an ad hoc way: the judges must be the trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales; the successful artist must be resident in Australia; the painting must be done from life and the subject must be someone prominent in Australian public life. All these provisions caused trouble. The conservative choices of the first ten years, in which W. B. McInnes won the prize six times, may have been compounded by the fact that the trustees were then appointed for life. But even when life tenure was changed to renewable four-year terms, the cautious choices continued. Modernists need not apply and women were unthinkable. Grace Crowley’s modernist entry of 1930 (now in the Art Gallery of South Australia) did not deflect the judges from the faithfully rendered tartan scarf and silver buckles of Drum-Major Harry McLelland, by W. B. McInnes. When Nora Heysen made her astonishing breakthrough all ten trustees were men. One or two artists in the group of solid, dark-suited businessmen and barristers

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scarcely altered the unadventurous choices. But if the judgements were lacklustre for the most part, the public interest was passionate. While modernist and postmodern painting often left its viewers alienated and bewildered, there remained a satisfying certainty in the assessment of a portrait. Anyone could voice an opinion: and if (as often happened) the subject of the Archibald winner was well known from photographs or public appearances, then the question of the likeness was open to all. Sir John Longstaff ’s portrait of New South Wales Premier W. A. Holman was described in the Bulletin as ‘about as much like Holman as a strawberry icecream soda’. The prize money (£700 in 1960, $35 000 from 1998) has always been substantial enough to tempt well known painters. This in turn gave the award prestige. Indeed the list of contestants includes many big names: Olsen, Connor, Williams, Dobell, Whiteley. In the early years all the entries were hung. As numbers grew it became necessary to separate sheep from goats. The sheep were to be seen in an exhibition which toured the state capitals and as public interest grew it was found worthwhile to hang the goats in a salon des refusés, where, it was often argued, a more worthy winner might be found. A massive media coverage, huge crowds (90 000 in 1944, the controversial year of William Dobell’s win, dropping to 50 000 in 1945) and very often a first class row—all these elements made the Archibald Prize a national event. There was always something in the Archibald exhibition to save it from predictability. The winner might be a safe choice—a suit or uniform painted by a suit—but somewhere among the other contestants there would be the making of controversy. The big year for outrage was 1944, when the choice of Dobell’s portrait of fellow artist Joshua Smith led to a legal battle in which it was alleged that the judges had breached the award conditions by choosing a caricature rather than a likeness. The whole question of what constituted portraiture was argued in the Equity Court of

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New South Wales. Donald Friend, who thought the portrait a superb piece of work, gleefully collected press cuttings: ‘Someone commented, “expectant mothers should not be allowed to see it”. Another—“A vile caricature—it looks like a praying mantis”. And “I could not sleep all night after seeing that nightmare picture”.’ The defendants won the case but Dobell and Joshua Smith suffered from media attention in which ridicule for the artist and an embarrassing concentration on Smith’s facial features and anatomy predominated over serious consideration of the art of portraiture. In the following year Smith himself won the Archibald in what was seen as a way of consoling the victim. Then the William Dargie–Ivor Hele ascendancy reclaimed the prize for conservatism with six wins for Dargie (who had already won twice) and five for Hele between 1945 and 1957.With Dobell’s Margaret Olley (1948) ‘a beam of light with a gorgeous yellow tone lit up the prize’. Most art critics applauded its exuberance as a welcome contrast with the ‘genteel nonentities’ of recent years but dissenters, including some fellow painters, revived the charge of caricature. Dobell won again in 1959 with the less confronting Dr Edward McMahon. The battlelines between supporters of Dobell and Dargie were still drawn in 1960 when Judy Cassab’s Stanislaus Rapotec was the judges’ choice. Not as daring as Dobell, more stylish and contemporary in idiom than Dargie, it was seen as a compromise. Judy enjoyed the excitement of her win, the flowers, telegrams, letters, media appearances. Reading the reviews she summed up calmly: ‘I had a few bad reviews. They write that the Rapotec is a compromise which is true.Thirty years routine is at my fingertips, it comes so easily, it can’t be good’. She resolved to take the moderate expressionist style of the Rapotec painting as the norm for her commissioned works, making them less academic, and to be more adventurous in non-commissioned portraits. She could not experiment with other people’s money (‘and a saint I am not, to

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refuse commissions’) but by choosing friends and fellow artists as sitters she could paint freely and develop a style of her own. Although the Central Australian paintings were now what she most valued, she would not be pushed into giving up portraiture. The meaning of her choice—or rather, her refusal to choose— was suggested by John Olsen and James Gleeson, both of whom reviewed her exhibition of abstracts at the Macquarie Galleries soon after the Archibald win. Olsen praised the Central Australian paintings at the expense of the portraits: Though the greater part of [Cassab’s] international reputation has been won by her portraits, most artists and critics consider them the chink in her artistic armor. It is as though her love of people and objects is at odds with her formal sense . . . Like Nolan and Drysdale she has become imbued with a sense of the fantastic and exotic the landscape generates . . . In her drought-ridden story image Bush and in one of her most successful works Mirage she has felt the deep and resonant melodies of contours of undulating desert, where the sky hangs with oppressive heaviness over all.

In the same spirit Gleeson sniffed at the Rapotec portrait (‘great technical ingenuity but rather shallow values’) before saluting Cassab as a painter of sensitivity and imagination with an ‘authentic and perceptive vision of the Australian landscape’ and a feeling for its blazing earthy colours and rough textures. The Bulletin took the same line, rating her below Dobell in portraiture but well above the standard ‘official’ painters. Her work was for those who wanted something more than a photographic likeness—and would pay two hundred guineas for it. The conflict between portraits and abstracts, between popular success and critical acclaim, between London and Sydney, left Judy undaunted but self-critical, planning her future with undiminished

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energy, pondering ways to resolve her problems. With four major awards for portraiture, culminating in the Archibald Prize, more commissions than she had time to fulfil, three solo exhibitions at the Macquarie Galleries, and a second London show scheduled for the autumn of 1961, did Judy remember a dejected diary entry in which she had predicted that hateful Sydney and unproductive household chores would swallow up her life as an artist, leaving no trace? Sitting on the stairs at the Bondi boarding house of 1951 she did not foresee such achievements, nor the struggles inseparable from success. When she set out again for London in October 1961 she had gained in confidence but she was not complacent; there was so much more that she wanted to do and be.

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C h a p t e r Te n T H E

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‘My chameleon self. My con-man self. My adventurer self.’ So

Judy Cassab mused about the divisions in her life whose extremes were Sèvres and silver on a Buckingham Palace tea-table and a cold beer drunk from a bottle outside the pub in Alice Springs. So too at home in Sydney; she had to be adaptable enough to turn from housewife and mother into artist, and back again, a dozen times a day. A room of her own came late into Judy Cassab’s life. In the Weeroona Avenue flat which was the family’s first Australian home there was no separate space for her painting. She had to tidy up and put her paints away every afternoon and to set up the easel again next morning after packing lunch boxes and driving the children to school and Jancsi to work. In the two-storey house in Victoria Avenue, Bellevue Hill, which they bought in 1963, she had the luxury of a studio on the upper floor, with vertical and horizontal

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racks for paintings, shelves for books, shelves for paints, easels, a chair for the sitter, a stool for Judy: all functional and professional. Yet there was never a green baize door or any other barrier to shut out the world. Judy’s life changed with her travels but the pattern and pace of life at home was much the same. In some ways it was a strength but it was also a weakness—at least in an artist whose time was limited—that she found it hard to refuse anything that was asked of her, even the most trivial and intrusive requests from people with small claim on her time. In compensation she was exceptionally quick, decisive and well disciplined. Her Beregszász grandmother would have approved the order of the Kämpfners’ house. When the Kämpfners moved into the Bellevue Hill house, Johnny was a 17-year-old at Sydney Boys High School. Peter, also at Sydney High, was nearly fifteen.The new house had a separate wing and its own entrance, so that in theory at least, the boys could have their friends come and go without disturbing the parents. In fact, there was none of the detachment that the separate quarters might imply. If their sons were late home from a party, Jancsi would pace up and down, lean out of the window listening for their return, and wake up Judy to share his worry.The main living room belonged to them all. Although Judy’s artist’s eye created a living space that was itself a work of art, the effect was comfortable and welcoming. Persian rugs were beautiful and valuable but they did not show the dusty marks of schoolboy shoes. The sofas were inviting, their fabrics durable: a teenage John or Peter could flop on one of them as readily as on the floor. The walls of every room, in Victoria Avenue and in the Kämpfners’ subsequent home in Double Bay, were brilliant with colour in an arrangement of paintings and drawings which was never static. Each year a painting by one of Judy’s friends would be added: often in exchange for a portrait. A splendid Charles Blackman came as a gift after Judy painted

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Blackman’s first wife Barbara. Judy’s charcoal drawing of her grandmother, done when she was only twelve, hung in the studio. A montage of little sketches of her Beregszász classmates (retrieved after many years) hung close to a large painting by Yosl Bergner which the Kämpfners bought ‘because we couldn’t resist it’. As always, the dominant visual image was Judy’s full-size copy of the Brueghel painting Peasant Dance from which she had learned about colour and composition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1949. A large coffee table with ceramic tiles in subtle, vibrant colours was commissioned by the Kämpfners from the Dutch sculptor, Gerard Havekes. Although the table was a thing of beauty in its own right as well as a place for precious objects, it was so strongly made as to be almost indestructible. If the boys put their feet on it while watching television no harm would be done. Elegant but tough, it had the qualities which characterised Judy herself. Some saw only the elegance, but the record of her life, from her wartime endurance to the physical and emotional demands of her daily life in Sydney, showed exceptional strength and resilience. Judy learned to build domestic and social interruptions into her working day in the studio, which began after she had taken the boys to school and done her household shopping. Except when she had a sitter in the studio, she answered telephone calls herself rather than ask the housekeeper to do so. This was partly because the housekeepers were migrant women with limited English but it was also an attitude of mind: she thought it wrong to block access to her world. If her aunt Ami wanted Judy to take her cat to the vet, Judy would not refuse, though her irritation would overflow into the diary. Love and guilt made her more accessible to her sons than most mothers would be. Because she was away from them for months at a time, she tried to compensate at home by being responsive, never rejecting them, never showing impatience. Moreover, she drew her model of childhood from the Beregszász

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house where she had grown up among adults whose voices were never raised. Whether or not Jancsi was more inclined to play stern parent because Judy needed to be gentle, the two were often locked into the opposing roles of disciplinarian father and protective mother. As the boys reached adolescence, they were often baffled as to how to deal with the contrasting styles of parenting. Their son John, articulate and rebellious in his teens, summed up his parents: Dad is silent, seething underneath and only explodes occasionally when a hundred little things accumulate and then everything gets out of proportion. I wouldn’t mind him telling me off each time. If only he would praise me if I was good. And you, Mum, because you know very well Dad’s inability to praise, you are always smiling and praising—it’s not a normal family pattern and I’m confused.

The boys, too, seemed to choose opposing roles within the family, with John openly aggressive, creating chaos, losing and breaking possessions, and Peter more compliant and considerate, offering his pocket money to help the family finances. Both were highly intelligent, charming and courteous to the outside world, combative with one another, generous with everyone else. Both had artistic gifts. Unprompted, John took up sculpture and produced remarkably mature work. He was also exceptionally good at maths, and was attracted to computer science which was becoming a popular career choice in the 1960s. Peter performed brilliantly in school plays, wrote scripts with an unfailing comic sense, loved music and theatre. John could have made his life’s work in architecture or sculpture; Peter could have been an actor. It was not to be so simple for either of them to focus on a career. Judy and Jancsi hoped that both would go to Sydney University. Like most migrant parents they found it impossible to forget their own

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deprivations and they would have been happy to have their sons enter one of the professions. Parallel with the wish for security was the love of the arts: sculpture and the stage, for all their risks, would have had compensations. What both parents found hard to accept was a lack of direction in their gifted sons, but in the affluent 1960s this was not uncommon. In their late teens and early twenties, however, first John and later Peter suffered from depression. When Judy anxiously pondered the possible causes, she thought first of her many absences in Europe. She also thought that Jancsi had been too old for fatherhood, his optimistic spirit depleted by war and migration. In 1964, when John was eighteen and Peter sixteen, Jancsi was sixtytwo, close to the normal retirement age. In a sense both boys could be said to have lost their lively, loving, responsive father when they all left Austria. Judy had many memories of Jancsi playing with his sons in Salzburg, reading to them, delighting in them as they grew from babyhood. John could not have had clear memories of this time. Peter might have had none at all; and if so his would have been the greater deprivation. The boys lost something, too, with the lack of a common language. Judy often regretted the fact that they never knew how brilliant their father was: so much of his quick wit and his comic sense was lost in translation. The companionship between Judy and Jancsi was closer because the shared language was theirs alone. Away from home, Judy used her diary (which until the 1970s she still wrote in Hungarian) far more than when she had Jancsi to talk to. Even the small change of domestic routine took on meaning because of his responsiveness: He says he loves to come home at the end of a dull and uneventful day and listen to all the interesting things which keep happening to me. He loves the small sensations, like how I talked myself out of being booked for parking wrongly or that I

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discovered the best greengrocer in Rose Bay. Or how I had a nap with Cassy [their boxer puppy] on the yellow blanket beside me. How painting doesn’t work well. Why I dare not start André Malraux’s Voices of Silence, how my resolutions of digging deeper into the intellect go up in smoke as usual.

For some years after their migration Judy thought of Jancsi’s sombre moods primarily as her own problem, but she had eventually to recognise that they affected the boys as well. John saw his father as severe and exacting. Peter found him remote, ‘always behind his newspaper’. Later, prompted by John himself, Judy looked into her own past to recall that she had conceived her first child immediately after the discovery that her own mother had been killed in Auschwitz. She was still homeless, grieving and malnourished when Peter was born. Her breakdown of 1952, when she could not rouse herself to care for them, would have had its effect on the children, then six and four years old. In spite of the love and care of their upbringing in placid Sydney the boys were shadowed by the Holocaust as surely as if they had stayed in Hungary. It would be small consolation to learn that anxiety and depression touched the lives of many children of Holocaust survivors. In 1962 Judy’s worries about John, then in his second-last year at school, kept her from taking her usual two months in Europe. She cancelled her London exhibition and refused an invitation to go to Thailand to paint a portrait of Queen Sirikit. Prime Minister Robert Menzies wanted it as a goodwill gift to King Phumiphon who visited Canberra in August 1962. Judy refused the offer because it would take her away from Sydney while John was doing his exams.The boys heard her take the telephone call and persuaded her to reconsider. Jancsi too said it was ‘a must’. Judy flew to Canberra, met Queen Sirikit, and agreed to make the journey to Bangkok at the end of October. She would be away only a week,

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and much of the preparation was done in Sydney, with a very slender model to pose for preliminary sketches. As soon as she saw Sirikit in the royal palace setting she realised that it would not be so easy. For one thing, Sirikit’s delicate bone structure made the Sydney model seem quite hefty. Another unwelcome surprise was to find that the German magazine Der Stern had permission to film the first sitting. The degree of formality made Buckingham Palace seem cosy and domestic. Here everything was ritualised: The lady-in-waiting announced that the time had come and ushered me into the other room . . . Lovely little Sirikit extended her hand. While I curtsied flashlights popped . . . Two servants entered, this time on their knees. Then she led the way to the studio. Up she led me on a staircase, past a gilded gong, gilded drum, while on both sides people fell on their knees. She kept her head straight up, not noticing anyone. The door was opened by a servant on his knees.

Judy took note of the studio lighting, and realised that everything was the wrong way round. In Sirikit’s absence she asked helpful Prince Tula to sit on the dais so as to make sure that no shadow would spoil the composition. He clapped his hands for servants to bring another chair: even a prince could not sit on the same chair as the queen. Sirikit entered, wearing gold silk, her hair piled up high and on it a tiara with diamonds the size of walnuts.This upset Judy’s calculations.The tall hairstyle and Sirikit’s standing pose would leave no space at the top of the picture. Sirikit wanted to listen to the radio but good-humouredly accepted Judy’s veto. Conversation was difficult. It was a help to find that Sirikit was interested in the young Duchess of Kent. Meanwhile the King, who had been peeping through a window from the corridor, sent a message that his wife’s eyes must not be painted so as to look Chinese. Judy asked

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him not to peep any more. By the time the sitting ended her knees were shaking, and later that night she had the diarrhoea that so often accompanied anxiety. ‘Will I ever grow up? It upsets me to paint on Government money.’ Having been shown other royal portraits in the palace collection she realised that her work would seem strange and western. It was a relief when the King approved it. It was unlike anything their court painter had done, he said, but it was a likeness. It almost talked; it had a smile; and yet it was dignified. Back in Sydney Jancsi stood beside Judy as she completed the portrait. She felt at times that she was an extension of his mind: coaxing, dictating, driving, praising, he worked with her in ‘a magical collaboration’ from which the fable of the portrait was born. Judy composed a letter to the Queen, explaining how her own way of expression and her impressions on the visit were blended in the colours of the portrait, how the blue suggested leaf patterns of tropical flowers; how the gold evoked the gold leaf from the temple. In his official capacity as a member of the art advisory board Russell Drysdale came to see the portrait. He found ‘a wonderful painting’ with extraordinary sculptural qualities. Prime Minister Menzies, delighted with his choice, said, ‘If the nation is giving such a gift the nation should jolly well be able to see it’. By his wish it went on display in the King’s Hall of Parliament House, Canberra, before being flown to Bangkok. Jancsi’s help in the difficult last stages of Sirikit’s portrait shows how closely intertwined the roles of husband and wife remained. He had an excellent eye for a painting and he could often tell at a glance what needed to be done to remedy a fault or complete a composition. Judy’s artist friends valued his opinion; and although he avoided exhibition openings where intrusive journalists and cameramen lurked he visited galleries and knew exactly what was happening on the art scene. Only on a superficial reading could the

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Kämpfner marriage suggest a conventional division of roles: a businessman and a painter, his money and her creativity. His factories and investments were not enough to engage Jancsi’s intellectual energies. One revealing remark was prompted by a comment on Judy’s creative gifts. ‘Yes’, Jancsi said, ‘Judy is creative. And Judy is my creation’. Within the marriage a delicate balance of power was maintained. There was always a risk of its tilting too far in one direction or the other. With the high fees Judy’s portraits commanded in the 1960s, she was becoming financially independent. In her early forties, attractive and assured, she could outshine— and perhaps outgrow—an elderly husband with an unglamorous factory background. As the boys grew up, Jancsi’s role as househusband was bound to dwindle. By giving his formidable intelligence to Judy’s career Jancsi made sure that she could not do without him. Judy’s phrase ‘a magical collaboration’ was an apt one. In the paradox of their marriage, Jancsi, like Prospero, was the magician on whom Judy continued to depend for the free exercise of her art. For all her success, there were many times when Judy doubted her powers. Paul Haefliger moved to Majorca in the 1960s but continued to stir her fear of superficiality in long, didactic letters. Why, Haefliger asked, did she not take more risks in her painting? Why did she persist in portraiture? Why didn’t she plumb the depths of her war experience? Why not read Zen philosophy? In reply, Judy conceded some points, and in her own defence argued that she had come a long distance from the pinks and blues and sweetness of her first years in Sydney. She knew that she had more to learn. She would find her way; she did not care if she was seventy years old when it happened. His advice that she should make her mind a blank and return to childhood could not be applied like a recipe. Haefliger should also take into account the experience of migration, a setback from which it took many years to recover. He did not consider her duties and responsibilities as a

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mother. When Peter broke his arm, painting took second place. All the same, when she read Zen in the Art of Archery, she found that there was something in Haefliger’s advice. With ‘Don’t paint. Let it paint’, she then adapted the Zen master’s precept of ‘Don’t shoot. Let it shoot’. Judy’s success with the Archibald Prize was followed by a guarded and sometimes imperceptive response to her exhibition of abstracts at the Macquarie Galleries in April 1961. Some critics insisted on using their limited space to relate the abstracts to the portraits. The deflating word ‘charming’ reappeared. James Gleeson saw ‘a collection of charming abstracts’ in which Cassab’s European style was skilfully adapted to a new environment. John Olsen was more perceptive. Cassab’s abstract interpretations of the Central Australian landscape, Olsen said, expressed its ‘essential aloofness and defiance’. Her 1964 exhibition, in the newly established Rudy Komon Gallery, was a disaster. The ebullient Komon did her no favour by advertising her as ‘winner of the Archibald Prize and many top shows . . .’ which an indignant Judy said made her sound like a pop star. A postal strike held up the invitations to the opening. Her prizes and the royal portraits were called in evidence against her in patronising reviews of her abstracts. James Gleeson thought that her ability to get a likeness was an anachronism, while her attempts to change her natural talents to suit the times were disappointing. Was it any use to reply to Gleeson, pointing out that in 1961 he had called the very same paintings ‘brilliant essays’? On a flight to London immediately after the failed exhibition, Judy composed a protest letter in her head. Contesting the assumption that the gift for setting down a likeness had become worthless, she repeated her lifelong belief that there was something in the interaction of painter and sitter for which no camera could be a substititute. She did not send the letter but it made her feel better to have put the argument to herself.

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In London in the summer of 1964 Judy earned £5000 in ‘the portrait factory’ within the space of six weeks, but felt lonely and depressed. As one sitter succeeded another, she felt as if she were a dentist, saying ‘next, please’. She refused an offer of a 1965 show in the gallery of Jacques O’Hana, whose clients, she thought, merely wanted interior decoration, not art. She approached two other galleries whose directors promptly refused her. Humiliated, she looked again at the Queensland paintings she had shown them and saw that they were not good enough.Then, on cue (she laughed but she could have cried), a telegram came from Jancsi to tell her that she had won the Perth Prize again, this time for a portrait of painter Oscar Edwards. Was it possible that she could succeed only in portraiture? With the sense of failure still acute Judy turned to her diary in a passionate outburst of self-scrutiny: I know, of course, that my whole way of life should be changed. That I never really shut the studio door except in theory. It’s not drawing or painting I should work on now. I have to work on my inside which is shallow and superficial . . . Only from a valley which I have to dig deeper in the self, can come painting with something to say.With more aim than to please. Others or myself. God knows I have been in more abysses than most. I have been torn away from my husband, whom I loved, for years when I was so young. I suffered, not knowing where he is, how cold or hungry he is in the snows of Russia. I was an outcast with my maid’s identity, persecuted, hiding, alert for my life. I went through the unspeakable agony of knowing my mother burnt in the ovens of Auschwitz and burnt were the whole family, and my childhood with them. I lost my home three times, I starved like a pariah. And I floated above all this horror with dulled innocence to be able to survive without going insane. I kept [the] sense of adventure of the young, retained anecdotal details of the

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holocaust without daring to file it into its historical, sociological, psychological entity. I would be strongly tempted to submit to analysis to search for lost trauma, dig them up to make a better artist if I wouldn’t be scared of the exact opposite. Of having finally all in the conscious mind and not to be able to paint at all. The discrepancy of the situation. I am not really involved in the art world. I am an onlooker. Not too passionate either. I belong to a migrant, Jewish middleclass ... I rub shoulders with the great, with Royalty, Governors, ministers, hating my image of fashionable portraitist. The only real value in me is that I am a good wife and mother. And even there I must have made mistakes. In this whole mess, Jancsi emerges—balding, ageing, bespectacled as he is—as the anchor, the selfless love, security, wisdom and the only balancer of values I know.

In reproaching herself for never shutting the studio door, and then identifying her only real value in the role of wife and mother, Judy was left with a contradiction she could not resolve, and which was probably best left in its creative tension.Would she have been a better painter if she had shut out the world? If that meant shutting out her husband and children, then it was hardly a question: it would have been a denial of her self. Jancsi was, as she said, the core of her being. Her sons preoccupied her more, not less, as they grew up. Their high school and university problems, successes and failures in exams, their girlfriends, their ambitions and uncertain career directions, were not within her power to solve but she rejoiced and suffered with John and Peter all the way, as page after page of her diary attests. She could have been more ruthless in restricting the demands of friends. But there she faced a moral issue and a personal need as well as her own innate sociability.The Hungarian friends needed her and

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she needed them. She and Jancsi had resolved that they would never turn away from the displaced and bewildered migrants whose predicament they had themselves experienced. Even when these people were settled and prosperous in Sydney, there was still the emotional tug at the heart which no Australian friend could satisfy. It worked both ways; Judy had many new friends but she often said that she was truly at home only with those who shared her past, especially her Beregszász past. She was aghast and self-reproachful when one of the close-knit Hungarian group, Juliska Totis, accused her of failing to pay enough attention when Juliska’s husband died. When Judy’s aunt Ami was in hospital after surgery for breast cancer, Judy visited her every day. Back in Hungary, there was Jancsi’s protector Kati, to whom parcels and money were regularly sent. In Beregszász, now part of the Soviet Union, Judy’s rescuer Mária Koperdák was struggling to bring up her family. In Budapest, Judy’s father’s wife Lili was also in need. And there were others whom the Kämpfners were able to help. It all took time—painting time. There were such strict regulations on what could be sent that Judy spent many hours packing parcels and filling in forms before taking the gifts to the only place in Sydney from which they could be despatched. In the role of ‘celebrity painter’ which Judy believed was doing her harm among serious artists, she did have a choice. Yet the temptations did not stop with the money she could earn from the rich and famous. She enjoyed the glimpses of other lives. Links with power, links with history: someone as intellectually curious as Judy could not resist these open doors. She enjoyed seeing beautiful houses, paintings and furniture, and being welcomed by their owners as a friend. One example from her 1962 visit to Britain was a painting stay at Hever Castle, where the sitters were Gavin Astor, chairman of the London Times, and his wife, Lady Irene, daughter of Field Marshal Haig. On her way to breakfast Judy passed portraits of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, painted by Holbein when

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Hever was a royal residence. At the dinner table, over roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, a Delacroix and a Renoir added to the pleasure of being part of the conversation with the Colonial Secretary, Lord Lansdowne. Judy walked in the Italian garden among pillars brought from Rome and Etruscan urns filled with flowers. In Anne Boleyn’s garden the shrubs were still trimmed in the shapes of the figures from a chess board. All this was seductive. So too in Australia Judy relished being invited to Canberra to paint the daughters of Viscount de L’Isle. ‘Miss Judy Cassab has arrived at Government House’, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Lord de L’Isle became a friend: Judy gave him painting lessons; she was invited to his daughter’s wedding, and when he came to her studio to have his own portrait painted, her neighbours were treated to the spectacle of the police escort for the Rolls Royce with the gold crown on it. There were more prizes for portraits. Judy won her second Helena Rubinstein award in 1965 and her second Archibald prize in 1968. Although there was the predictable media interest in a woman artist’s win, of the ‘doing her housework as usual’ variety, the critics were unexpectedly benign, at least so far as Judy’s portrait was concerned. Even the Melbourne Age critic Patrick McCaughey, whose reviews of earlier Archibald exhibitions had been witty exercises in demolition, contented himself with ‘retro and safe’. Others responded to Judy’s success in integrating an abstract background into the portrait of artist Margo Lewers. The likeness was there, but the composition was unmistakably Cassab, and of its time. It did not flatter. Lewers’ fierce look was confronting: ‘an unwavering scrutiny with almost basilisk power’ as Elwyn Lynn described it in the Bulletin. Although some critics were slow to notice it, the Archibald entries were becoming more adventurous. When G. R. Lansell, writing in the Sydney Telegraph, remarked that Australia’s major artists would not lower themselves by entering the competition he

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was quite mistaken. Rather than entering the commissioned portraits of the great and good, the best artists were painting one another for the Archibald, as Judy Cassab had done for a decade or more. 1969 saw Andrew Sibley‘s John Brack and Clifton Pugh’s John Olsen. John Brack’s Barry Humphries ‘shriek[ed] in cerise and green’ as Edna Everage. The winner, Ray Crooke’s George Johnston, pallid and tense in dull green and brown, with bony fingers tautly held, had a certain gloomy authority. As John Olsen said: Most professional artists sneer about the Archibald and its associated prizes [the Wynne and Sulman awards] but deep in their ambitious little hearts they would love to win, because there’s money in it and because the media turn their transfiguring gaze upon the event ... When I was a student, the Archibald Prize was used as a bulwark against modernism: it was a conscious challenge to it . . . In those days, the portraits weren’t of pop stars and models: the subjects all had faces like sirloin steaks and were dressed in so many medals their chests looked like switchboards.

Unfair to some extent—what about Max Meldrum’s bare-chested self-portrait in 1949?—Olsen’s comments draw attention to the Archibald as a forum for debates between modernists and realists. It was also an entertainment for the masses. Because there were only one or two artists among the trustees who judged the award, the Archibald could be seen as a reflection of popular taste or, as Olsen put it, a chook raffle. Yet for all the talk about the portrait being an outmoded form, Australian painters of the highest reputation continued to send in their entries—and to complain, as Olsen did, when they did not win. Judy’s commitment to the portrait never wavered. She concentrated on finding her own style. She continued to take

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commissions, enjoying most of them, bored and impatient with some. Her portraits of the public figures of this period are sometimes smooth and automatic, without real distinction. Her policy of doing uncommissioned portraits for which she chose her own sitters, usually among her artist friends, meant freedom from the pressure to please. If the sitter liked the result, that was well and good; and it often led to an exchange of paintings; otherwise the canvas went into Judy’s garage, having served its purpose as a learning experience. One brilliant success, which was bought by the Queensland Art Gallery, was her study of the British actor Robert Morley, ‘a mixture of caricature, public face and a certain sadness’. It was not generally understood, however, that portraits occupied far less of Judy’s time than her other work, which in the 1960s was mainly abstracts. Her Archibald win of 1968 followed her most successful exhibition of abstract works, in the Rudy Komon Gallery in July 1967. This time, the same critics who had been dismissive about her 1964 show of abstracts gave almost unqualified praise for a new personal style in which ‘an undercurrent of firmness and sharpness gives character to the immediate allure’. With her abstracts and portraits flourishing in the late 1960s Judy was proved right in resisting pressures to choose one or the other. Her early experience in Hungary, when politics decided what was in and what was out, had strengthened her will to disregard fashion. Sitters became friends; friends became sitters. Portraiture suited Judy’s sociable self. While the sitters responded to her warmth and interest in their lives, her intuitive grasp of personality brought stronger insights to the portraits. As for the studio door, it never closed.

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C h a p t e r E l e ve n T H E

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‘They got three flies with one sweep’, Judy Cassab said: ‘a woman,

an artist and a migrant’. In the Queen’s Birthday Honours list of 1969 she was awarded a CBE. She was in London when she heard the news in an unofficial phone call from Government House, Canberra. She telephoned Jancsi in Sydney. ‘CBE? What’s that?’ ‘Commander of the British Empire.’ ‘Ajvé!’ exclaimed Jancsi. Judy laughed. ‘I won’t command you.’ It was not until she was back in Sydney that she realised how much the quaint title meant. She had to engage a secretary to deal with letters of congratulation from the Governor-General, the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the Premier and other state politicians, all the Jewish organisations, dozens of friends and former sitters. Because the award was reported in the London Times, airmail letters, including one from Princess Alexandra, soon followed. Having her photograph in the newspapers

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was nothing new for Judy, but this was a context very different from the art world. There were seven photographs, side by side on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. Six men in dark suits, honoured for their contributions to public life in New South Wales, in politics, the police, dentistry, medicine, radio and the law. In the centre, Judy Cassab broke the solemn uniformity of image. Looking younger than the rest, informally posed, her hair cut in the new urchin style, she hardly seemed to belong to this assembly. As the second woman to win the Archibald Prize and the only woman to win it twice, she was used to being an anomaly among artists. Now in a wider world she would be even more obviously an exception. She was shrewd enough to see the economy of a choice which simultaneously gestured towards women, artists and migrants: three categories which were grossly under-represented in Australian public life. She also knew that she was a safe choice: not a radical feminist, not outspoken on political matters, not living in bohemian artist style. Yet it was an honour, and she was pleased. Becoming a representative woman meant invitations of every kind. Judy was asked to make speeches, open exhibitions, support causes, give to charities, sign petitions. She found it hard to refuse any request. For self-preservation she was forced to learn fast. More important: she had to sort out her own beliefs so that she would not become entangled in causes which were alien to her. She was uncomfortable with the idea of making special efforts on behalf of women artists. With the exception of the Women’s Weekly prize (which at least was international) she had won her awards in open competition. She refused to submit a painting to the Portia Geach award for Australian women artists, saying that it belittled a woman artist’s work to segregate it in this way. ‘You might as well have an award for painters with red hair’, she remarked. Such a brisk dismissal suggested a lack of awareness, perhaps a lack of tact, which

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must have annoyed less successful women. In fact, Judy thought that women painters, in Australia even more than in Europe, had special difficulties, and before her own work had broken the barrier she had spoken out about the reluctance of the Archibald Prize judges to accept women portrait painters on equal terms with men. Her remedy was only that they must work harder in order to outperform their male counterparts but she did not deny the problem. She recorded a comic and revealing exchange with Sydney gallery director Barry Stern: Ilse Tauber’s exhibition at Barry Stern’s didn’t go well at all. The critics were unkind and sales dropped. Barry assured me he will never show a woman-painter again. He looked at me and suddenly realised I am a woman, so he said ‘Sorry’. As if I would chase him round a table with a show. ‘Of course,’ he said, adding injury, ‘I still sell them in the back room.’

Judy responded readily to appeals from Jewish welfare groups, and she gave permission for a painting to be reproduced on the jacket of Nancy Keesing’s Shalom, a collection of short stories by Australian Jewish writers. On the other hand she was adamant in refusing to have anything to do with a proposal to found the Ben Uri Gallery in Melbourne which would show only paintings by Jews. She did not reply to a letter from the Ben Uri sponsors and when approached at her own exhibition in Melbourne, and asked if she would at least visit the new gallery, she spoke with unusual asperity. Reporters and photographers who were within earshot heard a new Judy Cassab: Madame. The reason I left Hungary is identical with what you want to do. I found your letter revolting. No artist in this country was rejected because of being Jewish. If he was rejected it was

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because he was a bad painter. I have not heard of a Roman Catholic gallery, neither did I hear of an Italian or Dutch gallery, where only Roman Catholics or Italians or Dutch may exhibit. What you propose is criminal from every point of view, be it on religious grounds or racial. Being Jewish I still exhibited in the Blake Prize. My painting was purchased by a monastery in Adelaide. Jews bought one of my paintings from the New Testament, an Old Testament painting was bought by Catholics. I do not believe in segregation and I don’t exhibit in a gallery which wants to shut out any kind of people.

That issue of divisiveness was clear. A rather different case presented itself when Clifton Pugh was commissioned by an Australian Jewish community organisation to paint a portrait of Golda Meir, the first woman prime minister of Israel. Judy was affronted. It was not just that she believed herself to be a better portraitist than Pugh. She thought she deserved better from a community to which she had given so much. As well as many donations of money, she had given paintings, time after time, to be auctioned in aid of such causes as the Hebrew University, the Jewish National Fund and the Trees for Israel Appeal. ‘Then somebody sent Pugh [to Israel] instead of me. I shall never find out who’, she wrote irritably. She was right in thinking that being a woman and Jewish as well as an Archibald Prize winner should have guaranteed her the Meir commission, but perhaps it was inconsistent to be so angry. There were other occasions when Judy felt excluded from the male network of Sydney artists and gallery owners. Sometimes she blamed the publicity that came with her royal portraits. When she was omitted from the list of Australian painters chosen to have their work shown at the Tate Gallery in 1962, she sent sharp letters of protest to the organisers, even though she knew it would make no

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difference. Adding to her indignation, Jancsi pointed to one of her recent press photographs and said unsympathetically, ‘It’s because you are like Zsa Zsa Gabor’. The comparison with the nine-timesmarried Hungarian-born Hollywood film star was unflattering: Gabor, who was Miss Budapest 1936, kept the gossip columns busy for decades, but not for her acting. There were other irritations for Judy, such as her exclusion from the pubs where male artists gathered. She welcomed John Olsen’s invitations to his Bakery School where students and established artists met once a month to talk informally. A delicious lunch, cooked on the premises by Olsen and his students, was eaten in the walled courtyard of the old building in Paddington. She was pleased and amused when Rudy Komon, who gave her a solo exhibition in 1964, broke with custom by inviting her to celebrate with Andrew Sibley and Jon Molvig who had helped to hang her paintings: It was on that day—the first time since I live in Sydney—I was invited to have a drink in the pub. I always complained that artpolitics are made in pubs where women aren’t supposed to go . . . so for my sake the men came into the saloon. There was a notice, ‘Gentlemen may enter only if accompanied by a lady.’

As Judy’s fame grew, it was inevitable that she would be claimed by the Hungarian community. Jancsi’s hatred of publicity saved her from becoming entangled in community politics; she usually consulted him before committing herself.When she was included in a newspaper article which celebrated successful Hungarian migrants, he was annoyed. What was she doing sandwiched in among those millionaires? He did not want her to speak for Sydney’s Hungarians; as he reminded her, some of them were Nazis. Yet the stories kept coming: he could not block them all. Her exotic background made an appealing story; and at times the truth became

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blurred in journalistic clichés. Everyone in those Cold War years knew about Communism; some had forgotten Nazism. It embarrassed Judy and enraged Jancsi when the advance publicity for an ABC television interview described them both as victims of Communist persecution. He insisted that the ABC withdraw the paragraph and to make sure that no newspaper printed it. It was false and misleading to describe Judy as having ‘escaped Red terror’. Many had suffered under Communism, and had risked their lives in escaping. The Kämpfners had left Budapest with permission, taking possessions with them. They did not want to trivialise the sufferings of others, which they had not shared, nor to draw the attention of the current Hungarian government. They had friends in Hungary with whom they kept in touch; they might want to revisit the country. Jancsi’s fury worked—up to a point. The ABC apologised, regretted, withdrew. None of the daily newspapers made use of ‘Red victim’ in publicising Judy’s interview. But to the Kämpfners’ dismay, the forgetful ABC did not remove the phrase from its own program guide. There were more headlines and radio announcements in 1974 when Judy was appointed to the Governor-General’s advisory council on the Australian honours list. The British system of imperial honours, under which Judy’s CBE was awarded, had been discarded by the Whitlam Labor Government, and a new set of honours was being devised. Once more Judy was the only woman, the only migrant and the only artist. To be a member of the inaugural committee which would shape policies for the new awards was itself an honour. It brought Judy more media attention than the Archibald Prize, as well as Commonwealth cars, first class flights to Canberra, the best hotel, meetings and lunches with twelve influential men. The chairman was the Chief Justice, Sir Garfield Barwick; the others were politicians or former politicians, and industrialists. A list of candidates was circulated before the first

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meeting. Judy asked if it was permissible for her to make further nominations. Barwick ruled that it was not; but the council as a whole might adopt her recommendation. Reflecting that she was the only person at the long table who would speak up for artists, Judy suggested Sidney Nolan: on a list which included Joan Sutherland and Patrick White, it was ‘an incredible omission. In the ‘50s when Australia exported nothing but sport and beef he was our only ambassador’. The meeting assented, and Nolan was chosen for an Order of Australia. Judy had more to say. She had put forward six names, for contributions to art, music, theatre and migrant cultural activities, before Sir Garfield Barwick ‘looked at me sideways and remarked: “You are a very persuasive lady’.” After an exhilarating first day, with the council adopting six of her seven suggestions, Judy was ready next morning to debate the choice of emblem on the new awards. No kangaroos, emus or koalas, she urged: ‘it should not look like a souvenir for tourists’. She was appalled when someone suggested a boomerang; and relieved when another member pointed out that the boomerang was a weapon; and that it would look odd to take an Aboriginal symbol when ‘we didn’t give them a single honour’. Judy served on the Governor-General’s committee through the storms of Sir John Kerr’s dismisssal of the Whitlam Government in November 1975, into the peaceful days of Sir Zelman Cowen, whose wit and wisdom she admired. Her diaries are noncommittal about Kerr’s personality, but she believed he was forced to act because of the stubbornness of two irreconcilable men. She was sharply critical of Whitlam’s ‘uncontrolled, perhaps uncontrollable vindictiveness’ which set a bad example for the ‘immoderate elements who thrive on raw passion’. She deplored the ‘histrionics’ in Federal Parliament in which Fraser and Whitlam accused one another of ruining democracy. Criticised by her columnist friend Andrea for having accepted the invitation to serve on the honours

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committee of a Labor government, Judy said it was non-political. She agreed to serve on the Sydney Lord Mayor’s art advisory committee, but refused to accompany Jim Barraclough, the state minister for Cultural Activities in the Liberal Government, on an official visit to Wagga Wagga, because it looked party political. She was not invited to join an Artists for Labor festival during the election campaign that followed the Whitlam government’s dismissal, but she would have refused. She applauded Charles Blackman’s refusal to take sides. Finding that both parties were using his name as a donor to a fund-raising art sale, Blackman sawed a painting in half and offered to toss a coin for Labor and Liberal to choose ‘heads or tails’ for an 8-foot nude. Judy’s experiences in Hungary had made her resistant to any involvement in party politics. ‘Congratulations, Solomon couldn’t have done it better’, she wrote to Blackman. Avoiding politics was a principle, but Judy was never indifferent to the political. Although she believed in keeping art and politics apart, she was not one for the ivory tower or the secluded studio. She and Jancsi always followed world events and Australian politics very closely. It was one of the small grievances of their marriage that she had to wait until he had finished the newspaper which, after his attentive reading of every section, would be crumpled, its pages out of order. Having lived under Fascism and Communism she was wary of excess of any kind. Passionate commitment to left or right was frightening: it could lead to hatred and violence. Fearing the uncontrolled anger that followed the Whitlam Government’s dismissal she was comforted to go to an honours council meeting a few weeks afterwards and find the Labor and Liberal members ‘chummy’, with no obvious tension. At this second meeting, in December 1975, she found only two artists on the recommended list: Grace Crowley and Grace Cossington Smith. Both were over eighty-five, and had been given

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scant recognition for a lifetime of unswerving dedication to their art. ‘If I’m not sitting there not even those two would have got in’, Judy said. She completed her term in 1978, still the only woman to sit at the long table of council members. Even the two secretaries were men. Did it irritate her when Barwick addressed the meeting as: ‘Lady and Gentlemen—or should I rather say “My Fair Lady?”’ Probably not: she was enjoying her powers of persuasion. Such pleasantries, with their reference to the musical comedy version of Shaw’s Pygmalion (‘Her English is so perfect . . . it clearly indicates that she was born Hungarian’) were so frequent as to be taken for granted. Judy was appointed a trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in June 1980. She was the second woman artist to be chosen. Mary Alice Evatt, wife of Labor leader Herbert Evatt, a talented painter and an outspoken committee member, had served from 1943 to 1970. Women trustees were few, and those who were appointed were most likely to be the wives of the very rich, with a philanthropic interest in cultural matters. Mary, Lady Fairfax, was one of these. Male artists, too, were under-represented. The appointment of William Dobell in 1944 delighted many painters and art students. This hero and victim of the Joshua Smith case seemed likely to be a strong voice for modernism in the acquisition of paintings. By temperament, however, Dobell was the wrong man. Hal Missingham, gallery director from 1945 until 1971, could remember only one occasion on which Dobell offered an opinion. He resigned after only four years, having hated every meeting: Bill was an extremely sensitive person, very easily upset, hardly capable of saying ‘no’ to anyone asking a favour of him, in case it might lead to argument or difference of opinion. When the regular monthly meetings came round, he could only bring himself to attend after well fortifying himself with brandy.

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He would always have three or four in the back bar of the Carlton Hotel, or in the long bar of the Australia, on his way to meetings. There he would sit, silently observing his fellows but, as he often said to me, overcome with horror at the thought that by sitting at the same table he was automatically a temporary colleague.

In the gallery’s first six decades (1899–1958), trustees were appointed for life. Several of them served more than thirty years. This policy of semi-permanence was modified in 1958 when a new Act provided that trustees should serve only four-year terms, renewable for another four years. Even then, age ruled.The first president after the 1958 reform was 81-year-old former Chief Librarian, W. H. Ifould, followed by Professor E. G. Waterhouse, who was seventyseven. The Minister for Education made the nominations. These included the Director-General of Education, or his deputy, and twelve others, of whom ‘not less than two shall be knowledgeable and experienced in the visual arts’. There was no requirement that the other eleven trustees should know anything about art, though most of them quickly learned to have opinions. It was the trustees, not the director, who decided on acquisitions until 1945, when Missingham won a concession. He was allowed a small annual sum to buy one or two paintings of his own choice. When he spent nearly half of his 1949 allowance on two Sidney Nolans (Carrot Plains for sixty-four guineas and Pretty Polly Mine for forty-five guineas) the trustees were so horrified that they revoked his permission to purchase. The trustees judged the entries for the Archibald Prize, by a process which Missingham described as ‘deliriously haphazard’. The balance of power shifted during Missingham’s last years as director. The building was re-shaped and extended; and the rule of the Department of Education yielded place to the newly formed Ministry of Cultural Activities.The gallery re-opened in May 1972,

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transformed in every way, with generous exhibition spaces and a magnificent, paved outdoor sculpture court with harbour views. Missingham had battled for better status and conditions for professional staff. The design of the new building reflected that improvement. Their offices rose from basement squalor to the splendour of floor-to-ceiling windows. John Olsen, newly appointed as a trustee in December 1975, applauded the creation of ‘the most agreeable [gallery] in Australia’, but had some sharp words to say about the curators who ‘want the collection to reflect their tastes only’. Olsen’s strategy was to make the rounds of the commercial galleries, urging them to keep in close touch with gallery staff members and tell them about important paintings they should see. At the same time he rallied the trustees against the curators. If this lobbying brought ‘bitchy memos’ from the new Director, Peter Laverty, Olsen was not bothered. When Judy Cassab took up her appointment as a gallery trustee, John Olsen was in his last year. Her style would not be the combative one of Olsen, whom some described as ‘a difficult and irascible committee member’. Still less would she be the silent, unhappy and ineffectual presence Dobell had been. She had expected to be shy at her first meeting, but she was caught up in the interest of the business at hand and enjoyed it all. Before the second meeting she impulsively wrote a submission questioning the purchasing priorities by which it seemed to her that the allocation for Australian art was being plundered in order to secure an enticing but expensive Picasso and a Henry Moore. Before the meeting, the director, Edmund Capon, and the chairman, Charles Lloyd Jones, took her aside to explain that she had made a mistake: there was no allocation for Australian art. The gallery was free to spend all its money on Australian paintings in one year, and in another year it might all go elsewhere. Judy’s motion lapsed for want of a seconder. Olsen, who might have defended the spirit of her submission,

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was absent (for the second time in succession, Judy noted disapprovingly) and she went home feeling foolish. Accepting money was sometimes as difficult for the trustees as spending it. One tangled issue was an offer from their former colleague, Lady Fairfax, to endow an award for a portrait photograph, which would be administered with the Archibald Prize and share in the annual exhibition. The amount was niggardly: only $1000. One trustee wanted a firm refusal: he thought it was an impertinence to fasten such a trivial award to the Archibald, and thus share in the publicity. A more diplomatic trustee suggested testing Lady Fairfax: offer her another time and place and see whether her enthusiasm lasted. The director was primed to break the news gently and the matter seemed to be settled. A few weeks later the advertisement for the Archibald appeared, and with it the Lady Fairfax photography prize. ‘Why the hell do they need the bloody trustees?’ Judy exclaimed. Only Jancsi heard her; only her diary recorded the outburst. In meetings her language was always decorous. Edmund Capon was astonished, years later, to learn from her published Diaries how passionately Judy felt about the questions debated at gallery meetings: he had not seen past her calm and temperate style. There were other complexities in being artist as well as trustee, and she had to learn silence and discretion under pressure: Rudy [Komon] rang me today, asking jovially, ‘and how is my trustee?’, wanting information. It is painfully embarrassing as I am ‘his’ artist and, still, as trustee I am bound to secrecy. Difficult. When he appeared to have all the inside information including prices of the Moore and the Picasso, plus when he asked where are we buying the Fred Williams from?

After a year on the board Judy was more confident and outspoken at meetings. She could be passionate in argument, but she was not

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confrontational. Her humour and directness served her well. There were difficulties about the 1981–82 sponsorship for the exhibition of the Archibald Prize, and its associated awards, the Wynne Prize for landscape and the Sulman Prize for genre painting.Westfield offered $100 000 a year for three years sponsorship, provided the exhibition was held in the Westfield shopping mall. Judy’s response was to tell the joke about the time the President of Coca-Cola made a huge offer to the Pope, provided he would have every priest say ‘CocaCola’ instead of ‘Amen’. The gallery, however, was in such financial straits that the offer had to be considered.The trustees debated ways to make the shopping mall exhibition appear ‘dignified’. Judy and painter Kevin Connor, who had replaced Olsen, were indignant; Connor drafted a letter of protest which he and Judy signed. The matter was never put to the vote. Westfield withdrew its offer and rescue came from Joe Brender, one of the businessmen on the board of trustees, who offered $100 000 a year for five years, with no conditions of any kind, no publicity for himself or the private company he owned. Judy was jubilant, not only because the Archibald portraits and the supermarket trolleys would be kept apart, but because Brender was a Jew and she was proud of his generosity. At trustees’ meetings Judy’s quick humour and sense of proportion often relaxed a tense situation. Small setbacks did not trouble her. When one of her paintings was stolen on its way from the gallery to the New South Wales Agent-General’s office in New York, she responded ‘At least someone liked it’. Jim Spigelman, who broke the bad news to her, was amused. ‘A real Hungarian reaction’, he said. While she could brush aside such small matters, which affected only herself, she took her responsibilities as a trustee very seriously. Judging the Archibald Prize took time and thought; and because she had experienced winning and losing she felt for the rejected painters. Gone were the days when, as Missingham described the scene, the trustees gathered after a leisurely lunch to

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pick out anything that took their fancy, assembled fifteen or so possible choices and then by a show of hands eliminated the least favoured. Voting by elimination sometimes led to confusion, as with ‘dear old Howard Hinton often finding that he had voted for a painting he detested’. Judy was disappointed that John Olsen, whom she liked and admired, did not become a close friend when they worked together on the Gallery council. Perhaps, she conjectured, he was one of the many Australians whose friendships flourish only in the all-male pub culture. In later years she and Olsen came to know one another better. With Kevin Connor she felt immediate rapport, as she did with his wife Margaret. When they discovered that they shared a birthday, Judy and Connor made 15 August a day of joint celebration: her house one year, his the next, often with an exchange of paintings as birthday gifts. At the gallery the two artists worked well together, and their occasional disagreements were amiable. It was just as well they made a good team: the annual judging was always strenuous and often troublesome. An increase in prize money to $10 000 for the 1982 Archibald Prize brought back many major artists who had been disdaining the contest. Eric Smith’s portrait of Rudy Komon was an easy choice for the Archibald, but Cassab and Connor who had also to judge the Wynne Prize, returned every day for four days to assess the claims of Brett Whiteley, Lloyd Rees, Brian Dunlop, Elwyn Lynn, Colin Lanceley and David Voight, before giving the Wynne to Voight. Having settled on the two winners, they then had to sort out those that would be exhibited: We had a thousand entries on selection day, stayed from 9 until 7 pm and even that was too quick.We kept in some bad paintings (out of respect: a Dargie, a Hinder), kicked out Joshua Smith, Charles Bush simply because there was no space. Agonising decisions.

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The Archibald verdict took an unexpected twist. Eric Smith’s win was challenged for failing to meet the requirement of being painted from life. Smith’s work was easily matched with a press photograph. Seated, leaning forward and smiling, tilted champagne glass in hand, Komon held the same pose in portrait and photograph. Even the striped tie was the same. A court case was threatened. Press controversy raged about the ethics of painting from photographs. Someone wondered whether Leonardo da Vinci would have kept La Giaconda sitting so long if he had had a camera handy. Judy was woken at 10 p.m. to comment for Channel 10. She defended Smith, although she conceded that the issue was not simple. Komon was Smith’s dealer; Smith knew him well and therefore his painting, which made use of a photograph as well as much observation, was ‘from life’. She also felt that much of the discussion was missing the point, forgetting the indefinable connection between sitter and artist which the camera cannot supply. Smith’s award was upheld, and the gallery bought the portrait. Half way through her first term as New South Wales Gallery trustee, Judy was invited to join the council of the recently completed National Gallery in Canberra, which was to be opened by the Queen late in 1982. Trustees were paid $3000 a year and expenses. Rivalry between the new gallery and the long-established, badly funded, state galleries was strong. Victoria’s future gallery director Patrick McCaughey wrote longingly of the glamour of Canberra’s acquisitions: ‘James Mollison and the National Gallery of Australia were making the running, buying twentieth century masterworks and promising an exciting new era’. Starting with the acquisition of Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles in August 1973 and fuelled by an acquisition budget the size of which ($4m) no other Australian art museum had ever seen, Mollison had made a series of brilliant, yea, breathtaking purchases

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of twentieth century art, thus laying the basis for the country’s only major collection of modern art.

Judy was tempted; she would have relished flying back and forth between Canberra and Sydney in the heady first days of the newly opened institution, but her attachment to the Sydney gallery held firm: ‘It wouldn’t be loyal to leave for something better in midterm’. When she drove into the car park, where as trustee she had her own space, she felt a sense of belonging mingled with astonishment: ‘that old feeling of looking at myself with Beregszász eyes’. She refused the Canberra offer and accepted a second term at the New South Wales Gallery, and served until December 1987. She was on excellent terms with Barry Pearce, Curator of Australian Paintings, and only occasionally disputed with the director, Edmund Capon. She disapproved of Capon’s break with custom in giving Brett Whiteley a solo exhibition in the gallery, but when she saw the exhibition she admitted she had been wrong: precedent or no precedent, it was brilliant. Constantly in the public eye, Judy Cassab never faltered. More and more honours would come to her. In 1988 she was given an Order of Australia. If the imperial system had lasted a little longer she might have become Dame Judy. Perhaps it was just as well: Jancsi would have shuddered at ‘Dame Judy Cassab and Mr John Kämpfner’. An honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Sydney pleased them both, but she did not use the title. She appeared at public functions, usually without Jancsi. She judged painting awards, advised on art acquisitions, spoke at charity luncheons, was interviewed on radio and television. Several TV programs centred on her life and art, where she performed brilliantly, with only a slight hesitation to betray her nervousness. Always prepared, elegantly dressed, jewels in harmony, her hair shining and perfectly shaped by Alexander of Double Bay,

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fingernails polished to perfection, she moved across the stage of public life with the assurance of an actor, which to some extent she was. Yet it was part of her charm that she was never stiff in manner. Any impression of formality was dispelled by her warmth and her capacity to listen. If a friend called unexpectedly to find Judy cooking or cleaning, there would be no dishevelment: her aprons and dusters, pots and pans, were as neatly disposed as if she were playing the maid’s part on stage; and even at inconvenient moments her welcome seemed unforced.The Judy Cassab persona was an armour which defended the private self, the woman whom Jancsi knew. Very few others—perhaps only old friends of Beregszász days— would glimpse another Judy. Where was the woman who had known isolation and loss, fear and danger? Judy had held her pose as Mária Koperdák in a Budapest factory; she had starved and shivered in a cellar while bombs fell. Now she was the public woman, selfpossessed and smiling, confident among the famous and powerful. Who was she when she was alone?

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C h a p t e r Tw e l ve T H E

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‘A ll my life I put something on a page or on canvas. If I don’t I

feel as though I wouldn’t have lived that day. That’s me.’ For Judy Cassab, the diary which she kept from the age of twelve was as much an affirmation of self as her art. Not that she thought of herself as a writer: she was astonished when her published Diaries of 1995 won a major prize as well as much praise for their literary qualities. Just as every brushstroke on a canvas was an assertion of her being, so was her diary. In recording her days, with their events, large and small, and her reflections on their meaning, she gave a kind of unity to a complex and often fragmented existence. As painter, wife and mother, friend, public woman, manager of a household and a career, traveller and exile, she seemed to those who knew her best to play her varied parts almost without effort. The diaries show the strain as well as the achievement. In admitting to doubts and despairing moments, they testify to her strength.

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The diary is the most private form of writing, in which the self speaks to the self alone. There may be many motives for a diarist. Perhaps for Judy the need was constant, even though the circumstances changed. As a child in her grandmother’s house, the focus of affection in a household of adults, she needed a space of her own. As a terrified young woman in wartime Budapest, playing the part of Mária Koperdák, factory worker, Judy risked discovery by continuing her diary, using toilet paper because she had nothing else. She was not behind barbed wire, but like men and women in wartime prison camps, she needed to tell herself that she was alive. In her new life in Sydney the diary played many roles. There she struggled with ideas about art, scrutinised her own work in progress, exulted in the physical act of painting, pondered on criticism from fellow artists, responded happily to success and praise. In the diary—but never in public—she admitted the stresses in her marriage and her worries about her sons. Letting go in the diary entries, she expressed the anger and disappointment that the public woman Judy Cassab kept to herself. At times passionately selfjustifying, she was her own witness and counsel for the defence. When her world seemed to consist of an overwhelming series of demands she listed them all, sometimes characterising herself as the mouse who has to eat its way to freedom through a mountain of rice. At other times she took the prosecutor’s role, accusing herself of getting her priorities wrong, not attending to her sons’ needs, being too absorbed in her art to give time to old friends. The diaries are the light and the dark of Judy Cassab’s life. They show the joys as well as the sorrows. Few women have written more movingly about married love, maternal love, and the pleasures of friendship.The diaries show Cassab the social observer. A shrewd judge of other people, she is nearly always tolerant, but there are some devastating moments of sharp-edged assessment. Few painters are as articulate as Cassab in celebrating the sensual delights of

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colour and texture, recalling in words the moments when the paintbrush seems an extension of the self. Few can convey as she does the satisfaction of getting it right. The natural world is seen again as if newly created.The moment becomes a sketch; the sketch is developed into a painting; the painting and the diary entry which describes it are part of an apparently seamless process. The diaries are the more remarkable because they also show Judy making herself at home in the English language. By translating the early volumes, with a dictionary beside her, she became as fluent in written English as she was in the spoken word. Judy began to translate her diaries in 1972. By that time she had recorded thirty-eight years of experience, beginning in Budapest in April 1944. Re-reading them, she relived the terrifying months that culminated in the siege of Budapest, the shock of returning to ghostly Beregszász, the birth of her two sons, the two years of waiting in Austria, the arrival in Sydney, the new life and the artist’s career. Turning them into English was a huge task; and she might never have undertaken it if her sons had not asked her to open this doorway into the past. Even without the unspoken taboo on anyone’s reading her diaries, John and Peter were excluded; they did not know enough Hungarian to make out more than a few words. In 1972 both John and Peter, then aged twenty-six and twenty-four, were unhappy, adrift and not yet sure of the way they wanted to direct their lives. For all their intellectual and social gifts, they had not fitted into the professional roles their parents would have liked.They had not found the right path at university, nor were they committed artists. John had done some impressive work in sculpture, but he was more intent on learning how to live than on making a living. Peter, in whom Judy discerned an artistic sensibility like her father’s, seemed to be going against the grain to make himself a businessman. This should have pleased Jancsi, but it did not. In spite of—or perhaps because of—his own risk-taking

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temperament, he consistently deflated and discouraged Peter, greeting every hard-won achievement with a gloomy warning. John, who had married at twenty-one, was separated from his English wife Shan, and living with the young American Greta who would become the mother of his only child. Peter, not yet seriously in love, had a succession of beautiful girlfriends, in each of whom Judy hopefully discerned a permanent commitment. John, a child of the 1960s counter-culture, had some experience of encounter groups. Returning to Sydney after several years in London and some time in San Francisco, he looked at his family life afresh. He had read widely in philosophy and psychology. He had explored the drug scene in London. He was powerfully influenced by anti-materialist currents of the time. R. D. Laing’s work on the nuclear family as the source of personal constraint was one text he recommended to Judy, who dutifully read it, as she read everything he listed for her. ‘I am learning to understand the young and their rebellions’, she wrote. Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Desires was a revelation to her: it illuminated her younger self. Like Jung she remembered the exhilaration of discovering at the age of twelve that an ‘I’ exists. John suggested monthly meetings at which the four Kämpfners would talk openly about past and present, giving expression to the feelings of love, anger and anxiety which had never been voiced in their household. Judy’s instinct to make the best of things, and Jancsi’s retreat into silence, had not been an easy combination for their sons. John’s urge to understand the past, and Judy’s willingness to expose it through her diaries, made a new beginning. The first family meeting found Peter wary and Jancsi buttoned up. After initial hesitations Judy felt a degree of openness she had never known before. Each of them surprised the others with a new perspective, new knowledge. Judy had never thought of her sons’ finding her difficult (surely Jancsi was the difficult one) and she listened, astonished, to John’s analysis of her as mother:

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I irritate him. Because I want to be constantly ‘in it’. I say (if I have to go out of the room while they are talking) ‘wait for me’ as if I couldn’t bear to be left out. I am swallowing them, with the result that he withdraws. This is one of the reasons only why he withdraws. The other is that in this family aggression, quarrelling, shouting was always stamped out—a thing which ‘isn’t done’. If [John] could be so aggressive with me it would be over in ten minutes and no blockage would remain.

Peter, who usually opposed John as a matter of course, had a similar view of Judy. Always loving, yet always intruding, tidying up his room, coming into the bathroom ‘when I felt, I’m a man, how can she? As if there was nobody in there’. He agreed that Judy was ‘too loving’, but said he had always felt that John was the favourite son: that John was always the problem while ‘Peter is easy, he’ll be alright’. Jancsi then embarrassed Judy with his ‘your mother is a wonderful woman’ speech for the defence. But he too was enthusiastic about using her diaries as a way back into the past from which they could all gain understanding. So, every fourth Monday, Judy, a new Scheherazade, held her husband and sons enthralled with her reading of the translated diaries. She worked hard to produce eight typewritten pages from the wartime period for the first session. At first she censored the ‘sentimental, self-pitying, praying parts’ of her 24-year-old self during the siege of Budapest but John and Peter insisted that she was wrong; they wanted every word as it was first written, not her grown-up version. Month by month Judy gave her reading from the diaries, laboriously translated and typed. Her sons were aghast at the wartime ordeals of both parents; somehow they had never imagined such a world of pain and loss. They heard about Judy’s struggles to find food and clothing before John’s birth; and about Jancsi’s reckless taxi ride to Beregszász with his sackful of money for the

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survivors from the camps. It was made plain to them that as babies they were intensely loved and welcomed. Equally clear, for the first time, was the darkness of the postwar world into which they had been born. It was not then widely understood that the children of Holocaust survivors carried burdens too. No matter how securely their parents guarded them, there was no way of shutting out the wartime experience. The protective silence which most parents thought best was in fact damaging, because it gave survivors’ children no means of understanding why anxiety and depression shadowed them even in sunny Australia. Predictably, a major theme was the rivalry between the brothers. Peter’s resentment of John’s aggression was discussed. It seemed to them both that because the older son chose the role of the demanding, troublesome one, his younger brother could compete only by self-denial. Resentment of Jancsi’s bleak moods and his lack of faith in his sons came under scrutiny. Was there a sense in which he set them up to fail? What blend of pride in their abilities and envy of their freedom made him so inconsistent: a generous father one day and a grudging one the next? The meetings confronted Judy in ways she had not expected. She recalled her 17-year-old self, competing for success at school, devastated to be accused by a clever classmate of hiding behind her talents, ‘being a non-person’: I also said that I worry about my smile. How I catch my smile in the car mirror with nothing and no one to smile about. It was the first time we had talked about me. And whereas they seemed to have discovered their father, who used to seem to them aloof and authoritative, this was the first time they seemed to discover me. My charm, John said, and my vulnerability, Peter said.

The Monday night meetings, at which Judy read her translated

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passages, and each family member took it in turns to claim the spotlight, continued over the years. Because all four travelled a great deal, there were long interruptions. It would be claiming too much to say that all problems were solved, but there was a new openness in family relationships which made Judy happy, even though she was taken aback to see herself through the loving but critical eyes of her sons. ‘It’s like a whodunit where the killer is somebody nobody thought of ’, she said. As she worked through the period of the boys’ childhood and adolescence, it was a shock to see how much time she had spent away from them: ‘there I am with my drive and thirst and trips to London’. Yet it does not seem that they blamed her for that, nor that they doubted her love for them both. The diaries revealed Judy’s priorities, past and present, as those of wife and mother as much as painter. When there was an obvious and immediate conflict, the claims of her family came first. Judy’s commitment to family was strikingly demonstrated in February 1968, when her portrait of Margo Lewers won her second Archibald Prize.This was a big moment in her career. Interviews for the press, on radio and TV; congratulations from her friends, flowers, hundreds of telegrams—all these made it one of the great days of her life. Yet when she made her diary entry she gave only two sentences to the award before adding ‘I would swap the Archibald Prize for a small job for Peter’. Peter, then nineteen, had dropped out of university; and because he had no specific qualifications he was struggling in the job market.To see him go off each day in his new grey suit for an interview, and later to witness his dejected return, made her own triumph seem unimportant. Judy always hoped for a closer bond between her two sons, but they were contrasts in personality and their lives were moving in quite different directions. John in his early twenties was impulsive, idealistic, searching, attuned to the counter-culture, exploring Buddhism, meditation, communal living, psychedelic drugs. This

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barefoot son, with long unkempt black beard, long hair, dressed so as to affront convention, came into the orderly Kämpfner house like a hurricane. It was a wonder to Judy how someone with so few possessions could take up so much space. Peter was untidy in his own way, but he was always impeccably dressed, considerate of others, guaranteed to be charming and courteous to Judy’s friends, while John might not even notice their presence. Both sons would find their way, though not without a struggle and not in the ways their parents would have chosen. John was to become a much respected ecologist, an intellectual leader, founding member of an experiment in communal living at Nimbin, New South Wales, lecturer and world authority on conservation. Peter, who remained based in Sydney, made a brilliant career in real estate and property development. His risk-taking temperament ensured that Judy could never say, as she longed to do, that this son, at least was ‘settled’. His enterprises included a city restaurant, a hotel in Bali, another in Brisbane, a share in a racehorse. Judy applauded his aesthetic judgement—all his ventures showed flair for the new and elegant—but remained uneasy at the degree of risk. They were an oddly assorted group as they sat down to dinner together in the Kämpfners’ Bellevue Hill house. John in flowing robes (none too clean, Judy noted), his beautiful American girlfriend, Greta, her long hair, like John’s, uncombed, emerged from the bedroom which they had transformed with candles and incense. Peter brought Vicki Raymond, who had succeeded the celebrated Abigail in playing the central role of sex symbol Bev Houghton in the TV soap Number 96. How did she and Jancsi produce such a divergent pair? The family meetings, which continued for years on Monday nights, focused on the relationships between father and sons, mother and sons and between the two brothers. They did not explore the marriage, except indirectly. And yet there was much in Judy’s diaries to show the complex blend of feelings in which love and loyalty

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battled with anger and resentment, year after year. Jancsi had sometimes said that he might have to pay a high price for marrying a girl half his age, but the threat presented itself in terms of sexual rivalry. Judy might tire of her elderly husband, he thought, and leave him for another man. But when the marriage came under strain, sex was not the issue. In fact, as Judy reflected when Jancsi passed his seventieth birthday, their love-making had never been better. In an image she often used for the changing moods of their marriage: ‘at night he was the prince, it was by day he turned into a frog’. The real issue was power. Jancsi’s work had never satisfied him, but it was something to make a success of Elasco, the factory which continued to turn out such unglamorous items as elastic stockings and knee pads. Although his passion for security was never quite appeased, his property investments were well judged, and by the early 1970s it was clear that he could afford to sell Elasco and retire. Travelling with Judy deferred the decision; they went to New Guinea and New Zealand in 1973, and in August 1974, after Jancsi worked himself to exhaustion with stocktaking at Elasco, in preparation for its sale, they set off for a long holiday in Europe. It should have been a wonderful time of freedom for them both, but it was a disaster. Vienna was bleak with bright interludes, like the weather. A family reunion with Judy’s uncle Gyuszi, his wife Manyi, and their son, known as ‘little Gyuszi’, was grotesque: ‘grand guignol’, Judy said. Gyuszi had always been eccentric. Miserly by temperament, he was now beyond reason. His past generosity to Judy, and Manyi’s courage in wartime Budapest, could not be forgotten, but it was hard to find his former self in this dirty, dishevelled, crazy old man, obsessively collecting pieces of silver foil from garbage tins, while his angry wife, full of complaints and repetitions, talked about taxes and death. Lunch with Count Schönborn at Sacher’s was smooth and happy, even though for Jancsi this reunion brought reminders of

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his own best creative years, before the war.The Kämpfners had a day in the Semmering, and left Vienna for Switzerland, ready to live in the moment, with memories put aside: ‘We were so happy, starting on our journey in Switzerland. Everything went like a dream . . . Jancsi was as young as twenty years ago’. Driving to Zurich, planning to stop when they pleased overnight, they picnicked on smoked trout and raspberries, enjoying a Swiss summer idyll. Jancsi said, ‘Now I am feeling happy’.They drove on, looking for a place to stay. The villages became poorer and less welcoming, and as the road curved higher and higher, Judy felt a certain threat in the mountain pass. She stopped the car to look at a majestic view: Jancsi got out, took a step backwards and fell into a shallow ravine. Judy heard him cry out, and turned to see him lying on his back, his leg twisted into an unnatural angle. From then on it was a nightmare of roadside rescue and emergency treatment before Jancsi was taken by ambulance to Chur, recommended because of its place in the ski world, where specialists in broken bones were easy to find.The verdict at Chur was grim: it was such a bad break that Jancsi would need at least four weeks in hospital before he could be flown back to Sydney. Judy found a nearby hotel and settled in to a routine, spending her days in the hospital before and after the operation. Physiotherapy for the smashed leg was going well when the next disaster struck. Prostate trouble meant that Jancsi could not be flown home without a catheter; and once in Sydney he would need another operation. And as the weeks passed, Judy fretted about her London commissions, which included painting a copy of her 1960 portrait of the Duchess of Kent: I could spit at my selfishness. There is only one priority: what is best for Jancsi? So I cancel bloody London. So I take him home with the catheter. If God doesn’t want me to get this week in London so be it ... The minute I relinquish hope in what I want,

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the terrible pull and impotent want which is tearing me to pieces (complicated by guilt) must abate. Dear God, please help Jancsi. The catheter—4 weeks now—is a foreign body in him and could cause an infection. I am terrified of the trip home anyway ... Jancsi progresses painfully on the crutches. In between I exercise the leg with him, massage him, pamper him, he is so grateful and so sad and at night he parts from me with a ‘God bless you my darling’.

The Chur doctors (‘cold fish’, Judy thought) gave grave warnings about kidney disease and no reassurance as to whether Jancsi could travel safely home. In desperation Judy turned for help to their old friend, Sándor Mandel, who had been the Kont family doctor in Beregszász and was now a leading specialist in Budapest. He suggested that Judy and Jancsi fly to Budapest, where he would arrange for an orthopedic surgeon and a urologist to take over the case. With his support, and the hospitable welcome of Kati Timár, the friend and protector who hid Jancsi from the Nazis during the war, Judy’s panic subsided. While Jancsi convalesced in Budapest she was able to make a quick visit to London to carry out her painting commissions. Surprisingly, her copy of the Duchess of Kent’s portrait insisted on showing a softer, more serene expression than the original. Perhaps Judy’s relief at being among old friends in Budapest, after the acute anxiety at Chur, had its effect on the painting. Back in Sydney Jancsi had to face more surgery. The accident left no major physical damage, but the psychological effect of his loss of independence was troubling. It may have contributed to a series of conflicts with Peter, whose financial ventures Jancsi consistently undermined. Judy wanted to advance money which they could well afford so that Peter could set up his own business. Jancsi sometimes gave notional assent, but his mistrust of his

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younger son’s judgement always came to the surface. He was more tolerant of John’s life-changes, even though these included sculpture, computer science at IBM in London, time in a Buddhist monastery, a return to sculpture, communal living at Nimbin, and then buying one hundred and forty acres in the co-operative of Bodhi Farm, of which only twenty were suitable for agriculture. By entering the business world at a time when Jancsi’s power was declining it may be that Peter presented too direct a challenge. Accusing Judy of siding with Peter against him by encouraging risky business ventures, Jancsi retreated into brooding silence. Judy despaired of talking, and ‘in my blood and tears and guts’ wrote a three-page letter: Jancsi, my love, my friend, my world is dark when I don’t feel you in the same belonging, that strong link which always existed in me and which still exists now. Is this my Jancsi who does not understand that I’m a mother too? That it hurts immensely when you accuse Peter out of all proportions? I must stop here for a moment. I don’t—as a rule—like it when you bring up past crimes, Peter’s spending, his way of life, the shares, speculation, gambling. I have to do it though—now—to illuminate the fact (which you dismiss with a flick of the wrist) that—out of the 36 years of our marriage you have been a gambler for 33. You answer ‘That was my money.’ Was it important at the time that it was your money when you kept arriving home at 6 a.m at Munkács? That was your parent who then paced up and down in my room, wailing ‘I can see his shattered body’ and ‘Why do you rent that expensive piano if even that can’t keep him home with you?’. . . Shall I remind you, that when we had babies, you arrived in Szentendre after a night of gambling and I said ‘Do you want coffee?’

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Jancsi, this is not to protect Peter. But could you be only a fraction as tolerant as I used to be then? Could you believe in Peter just a fraction of how I believed in you and your essential goodness? . . . Don’t prophesy gloom and disaster. Get detached and let go.

With no response from an unforgiving Jancsi, and acutely aware of Peter’s unhappiness, Judy considered going to a psychiatrist, not because she hoped for a solution, but because medication might help. Her diary, more than ever, was her release and relief. Page after page put her case and Peter’s case, examined her own financial state, worried about the lack of portrait commissions, and in anger, despair and a reluctant compassion, relived the nights when Jancsi woke her at 3 a.m., talked of killing himself, reduced Judy to tears—and then went back to sleep. This crisis ended when Jancsi went to hospital for the surgery which had been postponed in Europe, after his accident. Peter took over at Elasco, working day and night, producing knee pads (‘klickety-klick, round and round, poor Dad’) and Judy felt the return of love, her anger laid aside. After convalescence and a holiday in New Zealand, Jancsi scaled down his work to half time, and enjoyed the novelty of coming home early, not too tired, as he had often been in recent years, to enjoy a walk with Judy and their dog Cassy at the end of the day. Eventually, in mid-1977, Elasco was sold; and at seventy-five Jancsi was officially retired. Judy, however, at fifty-seven, was reaching the height of her powers as an artist. She was a celebrity, a public figure, for whom invitations came every day and the telephone never ceased to ring. A gentler, more compliant Jancsi decided to take over the shopping. It troubled Judy that there was no better outlet for his intelligence than comparing grocery prices at Woolworths, and supervising the housekeeper. Travelling to Europe once more in 1977 was happy and companionable: it put

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aside the question of whether or not his retirement could be anything more than a quiet domestic routine, enlivened by a weekly game of cards. In April 1978 Jancsi accompanied Judy on one of her painting trips to the outback. There in that desert landscape, of dazzling shapes and colours and crystal air, they were happier than they had been for many months. No one competed for Judy’s attention. Away from his daily newspaper-reading, released from worry about investments, forgetful of whatever John and Peter might be doing, he was in the best of spirits, delighted that Judy was finding inspiration. At Tennant Creek, overwhelmed by her first sight of the Devil’s Marbles, she felt an extraordinary creative renewal: Not a human being all week. Only sweet birdsong and the wonder of this outcrop: where sculptured round orange giants balance on top of each other like frozen dancers. There was blinding contrast between light and deep, dark shadows. The marvel of nature seemed to be taking my hand and leading it, dipping it in strong colours.

In less than a week Judy had twenty-six pictures ready to take back to Sydney, and her creative mood was unbroken. Having set up her desert ‘studio’ at Stanley Chasm, with Jancsi sitting on a canvas chair nearby, she was absorbed in her work when she heard a faint cry: ‘Come here!’ Annoyed at the interruption, she put down her gear and went to look for him. Having stumbled and fallen, he was sitting awkwardly, his arm bent at a strange angle. Except that it was a less serious injury, this was a re-run of their experience in Switzerland, even down to the fact that Jancsi had said that morning, as he had on the Swiss mountain road: ‘Now I feel happy’. To make Jancsi happy again was beyond Judy’s powers, but after his recovery from the broken arm she gave eager support to an idea

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which he had been considering for some time. As a businessman who knew the art world, why not become a dealer? Judy often called him her ‘better eyes’, and her artist friends respected his judgement. Everything soon fell into place. With two partners to share the investment, Jancsi became a director of Gallery One, in Hargrave Street, Paddington. Judy immersed herself in plans for a grand opening in November 1978. All her painter friends agreed to send in works for a dazzling exhibition. Three from James Gleeson, five from John Coburn: three Brett Whiteleys, a Lloyd Rees, a Guy Warren: Judy listed them all triumphantly in her diary. Although she did not see it at the time, Jancsi’s gallery opening became hers too— more hers than his. He must have known it. Yet there is nothing in her diary to temper her optimism, as she records calling in Orban for advice on hanging the paintings, supervising the invitations and the catering for opening night. She greeted the guests with the smile that Sydney photographers waited for. She even risked Jancsi’s anger by posing for one of the tabloids. ‘No Cassab, no photo’, the columnist said, when Judy tried to extricate herself from a group which included the painter George Olszanski and his wife. As a party for Sydney’s artists and celebrities, the opening of Gallery One in November 1978 was a huge success. Nearly seven hundred people came and went within three hours. But only five sales were made, and these were not the expensive items. As Jancsi was quick to point out, it was their friends who bought. The opening was a Judy Cassab triumph; but as an outlet for Jancsi’s energies, the gallery was doomed from the start. Jancsi went to work as if to spend a day in prison. Judy blamed the gallery’s situation: it did not get passers-by. Sardonically, Jancsi began to tell people: ‘We live in such a busy house. When I want to be alone I go to the gallery’. Faced with the pressure of planning a new exhibition every month he became depressed, refusing to discuss his plans, delaying such matters as printing the catalogues till the last

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moment, and then becoming distressed at the need for haste.Within six months the doors closed at Hargrave Street and Gallery One’s brief history ended. Judy had high hopes for this venture. She knew Jancsi’s distaste for public occasions, but she thought that as a gallery director he would be happy to enter the art world which had been her domain. His habitual reluctance to appear as a Cassab appendage was understandable. As her businessman husband with the boring factory, he could easily be stereotyped. It was time for a new Jancsi to emerge. She had only to think of other gallery owners, including the recently established Rudy Komon with whom she exhibited her own work, to know that Jancsi was better qualified than most. He had lived and breathed painting with her for more than thirty years. His artistic judgement was shrewd and informed. When he was at ease—as he surely would be in his own gallery—he was warm, witty and charming. He could nurture new talent with some of the sympathy and intuition he had brought to Judy’s career. His business acumen was beyond question; and he had all the eloquence and tact needed to deal with a hesitant client. Why then did his venture fail—and fail so quickly and completely? Looking back, Judy was inclined to see Jancsi’s hatred of formality as the main reason. Every month there would be an opening, with speeches and champagne and celebrities and newspaper columns and new artists to promote. Everything he had evaded in their Sydney years was there in his new job description. The real mystery, however, is the failure, on his part and on Judy’s, to see how little pleasure he would have in his new role. Perhaps neither of them had discerned what it was in Judy’s world that Jancsi coveted. It may be that shrugging off the burden of Elasco and becoming an entrepreneur made little difference. She remained the creator; he was still the salesman. Her studio was the real centre of power. She wanted separate spheres: he did not.

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Accustomed to being alone in her studio, she would have liked to have him happily engaged at the gallery, talking at the end of the day about her work and his, closely matched as never before in their interests, but still separate and self-determining. Perhaps it was not until the gallery opening, so much Judy’s occasion, that Jancsi understood what he had chosen. He did not want the public woman Judy Cassab; he wanted the private, creative self. Gallery One was the shadow; her studio held the substance.

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Chapter Thirteen E C H O E S

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Storm and calm, rage and frustration, loving companionship.

Sunny days and lightning flashes across a suddenly darkened sky. That was the Cassab marriage after forty years. Not the serenity of growing old together but the tensions of a relationship whose balance was tilting dangerously. On a rare holiday alone in the winter of 1979, recovering in the sun at Surfers Paradise from persistent bronchitis, Judy was lonely. When she strolled in the late afternoon sunlight or sat alone at dinner in a restaurant, she missed Jancsi acutely: this was the time they always talked about the day’s events, shared jokes, exchanged ideas, discussed the news of the world. Without him her hotel room felt like a prison; its upholstered luxury made no difference. Yet their marriage was shaken by Jancsi’s retirement and the failure of his gallery venture. At seventy-seven Jancsi was still a powerful personality. Quick and sharp, well-read

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and up to the minute in his grasp of ideas and world affairs, his comic sense undiminished, he seemed to his friends to show little sign of ageing. Although his physical vulnerability showed in the mishaps in Switzerland and Central Australia, he refused to slow down: wherever Judy walked or climbed on her painting trips he would not be left behind.With his factory sold, and his brief time as an art dealer best forgotten, he had nothing left to claim his energy except Judy and her art, his two sons and the supervision of his shares and property investments. In 1979 the big house at Bellevue Hill was sold, and the Kämpfners moved to a light-filled modern flat, high on the hill in Ocean Avenue, Double Bay. Two of the three bedrooms became Judy’s studio domain. There was a large living room with a high ceiling, ample wallspace there and in the hallway to hang their paintings, and a large bedroom in which Judy’s secretaire, where her diaries were securely locked away, and Jancsi’s armchair fitted easily. Although it lacked the spectacular harbour views of their Bellevue Hill house, the flat looked over trees and gardens, and it was only a few minutes walk down the hill to the beach front where little boats rocked gently with the tide and the ferries from Circular Quay slipped quietly in and out. Best of all, Judy thought, was that their flat was within easy walking distance of the Double Bay shops, the Cosmopolitan Centre, the bridge clubs and a favourite Knox Street restaurant, the 21. She had seen nothing else in Sydney which so resembled the life of Budapest or Vienna; and in hopeful spirit she pictured Jancsi sitting down at one of the street cafés for coffee, meeting friends, reading his newspapers, while at home she got on with her painting—alone. Jancsi’s days, however, were not so easily filled. Judy was the centre of his universe. In forty years of marriage he had supported her career as an artist, making it possible for her to be wife, mother and painter. Although they had quarrelled over her celebrity status

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he had never trivialised her commitment to her work: in fact he had always urged her to do more, try harder, aim higher. Retirement narrowed his focus.With his own world diminished it was inevitable that he would invade hers. He had sometimes done this at Bellevue Hill. In the flat, with its more limited space and his increased leisure, such scenes would recur: He came into the studio with me, sat down behind me, and on went a running commentary all the time, disturbing my concentration. He was telling me—before I even started and was squeezing out paint—‘I would take that rock out. I would cut that image with darks. I would . . .’ Or, ‘Tell me, do you want to leave that blue?’ It was an irritation and I felt inhibited. ‘Jancsi, this is like giving birth. I don’t know and I don’t want to know what I’m going to do in the next minute. The picture has to tell me, not you. Two of us can’t paint. Never did anyone stand behind me while I painted.’ He was hurt.‘While you worked’ I told him, ‘I painted alone. I could hardly wait for you to come home and discuss it. This has not changed!’

The contest over Judy’s need for a private space was only just beginning when the Kämpfners moved into the flat at Ocean Avenue. It was Jancsi who raised the stakes when Judy was offered a solo exhibition at the Australian Embassy in Paris. This was a great honour. It placed her with Sidney Nolan whose years as an expatriate had given him an exceptional degree of fame in Europe. The art world of Paris had a special magic for Judy, beyond anything London could offer. Of course she would go to Paris. It would mean a year’s hard work but she knew that she had the makings of a distinctive exhibition in her desert paintings. She did not expect Jancsi to go with her: he had never been to any of her

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exhibitions. But she had always counted on his support, generously given when the children were small, when she spent weeks away from home. It was a shock when the Paris invitation brought icy displeasure and a series of discouraging arguments. She was not ready; she could not take a ‘hodge-podge’ to Paris; her London exhibitions had not meant much; there were better painters in Australia who had never shown in Paris. Standing at the studio door, watching as she worked, Jancsi would remark: ‘Well, that one won’t go to Paris, for sure’. All this Judy might have resisted. His opposition to the Paris venture, however, was more passionate, more persistent and less rational than anything she had known. The grounds of opposition shifted; the resentment remained. He would be in the way if he came with her to Paris, he said, pressing her to admit that she did not need him, that there was nothing he could do for her. Unspoken between them was the knowledge that if he stayed behind his days would be empty. It was no use for her to say that she loved him and wanted him with her in Paris: he was too deep in depression to hear. Some of his arguments could be challenged, and when he said that having shown her work in London she had no need for a Paris exhibition she responded sharply. ‘Would Richard Bonynge tell Joan Sutherland that having sung Lucia di Lammermoor once she need not sing the part again?’ Judy’s analogy was apt but it may have underlined Jancsi’s sense of inadequacy. Bonynge might take the secondary role in his marriage, but he was an artist in his own right, as Jancsi could never be. The battle went on for months, sometimes in argument, more often in silent resentment. There were many days when Judy would have been relieved to cancel Paris. Wavering, she was supported by her sons, by Elwyn Lynn, and finally by the psychiatrist who was treating Jancsi for depression and Judy for anxiety. Her son John accused her of not having grown beyond

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the dependent child she had been at the time of her marriage. ‘You are sixty now’, he said. ‘Be sixty.’ Lynn was angry. Like Nolan and Fred Williams before her Judy was being invited to represent Australian painters in Europe; it was her professional duty to accept an honour which was offered to very few. Australia had treated her well; this was a way to repay a debt to her adopted country. Judy knew that Lynn was right. She also knew that Jancsi’s obsession would grow. If she gave in to his wishes about Paris, she would face other battles, equally irrational. The psychiatrist’s view was uncompromising: As I hear, you married him when you were 18, a child. He must have been a father figure to you, and you relied and leaned on him, always. You have to face reality. He is 78, a great age, and slowly you must stand firmer on your feet and let him lean on you. And he must face the fact that you are an adult and not a possession . . . If you would succumb to his pressure you would resent it and he would feel guilt which he then would change into other negative emotions.

The advice was sound, but not easy to put into practice. ‘Well, if prestige means more to you than our relationship...’ Jancsi remarked, announcing that he was cancelling his next appointment with the psychiatrist. ‘That’s blackmail’, Judy said. The next stage was frightening. For two days Jancsi refused to eat anything, retreated into silence, and against all custom went out in the evening without saying where he was going. ‘I want to die’, was his only response to Judy’s panic. Next day, as suddenly as the ‘hunger strike’ had begun, it was over. Promising his wholehearted support for Paris, he said ‘if I am unreasonable, please think of me as a sick man’. That night, ‘wondrous thing’ Judy wrote, ‘the chemistry works as it always did and we became lovers when night fell’.

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A victory for Judy? Not quite. As compensation she accepted Jancsi’s presence in her studio, which he said was the best possible therapy for him. To share her painting life in practical matters, like priming her canvases, was the easy part of the bargain. Having him stand behind her as she painted became tolerable, because the empty waste of his day was being happily filled. But when he advanced even further, she became angry and fearful that he might transform the passion of her life into a chore. In the mornings, he would be waiting in the studio before she was ready, calling to her to hurry. Sometimes he had ideas of his own: On the easel stands the orange painting we worked on yesterday. ‘You could paint this oval of the swamp [from a sketch done in Tasmania] on this orange painting,’ says Jancsi and proceeds to tell me what to do. I surprise myself with the violent resentment I feel. The first impulse is to snatch the bloody painting off the easel and shove it in the rack. My stomach starts contracting and I almost cry. I exercise amazing selfcontrol in not raising my voice when I tell Jancsi that—no, I don’t want the swamp on the orange painting and that he is interfering with the creative process by suggesting even which painting I should do.

With so much emotion committed to the Paris exhibition, Judy was dismayed to discover how expensive it would be. Airfares, advertisements, photography, catalogue, posters and many international phone calls were all her responsibility, not the Australian Embassy’s. At the same time she began to doubt her own work for this show. Had she hurried it too much? Did it have the unity it needed? When Jeff Smart, arriving from Italy, asked for the use of her studio to finish two paintings for an exhibition, she readily consented but found it unsettling to see his certainty and the unifying vision of his work. His arrows, highways, posters, trucks,

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garages, exquisitely painted, showed his aims unchanged in thirty years, while her own seemed by comparison unsure, perhaps too varied. She knew her gouaches of Australian desert shapes were good, but did her Bali scenes with figures fit in with them? Did her Mother and Child on rice paper belong in this exhibition? Should there be figures in the Australian landscapes to make a link? Working seven days a week to bring the sixty paintings to a standard that satisfied her, Judy could not think of Paris as anything but an ordeal which she had paid a high price to endure. She knew that Jancsi was still resentful and depressed.Thinking of other painters and their spouses, she asked herself why such relationships were so often difficult. Did painting suck the artist’s lifeblood like a vampire? Sidney Nolan’s wife Cynthia had killed herself; so had Stanislaus Rapotec’s wife Andrée and Russell Drysdale’s wife Bonnie. Yet Judy was sure that she had always put Jancsi first. As a mother she was less certain: she had left her sons too often, and for that she did feel guilty. Her diaries of this period of crisis are often angry and defensive so far as Jancsi is concerned, although they always return to an affirmation of love. While the Paris exhibition put up barriers between the two of them, an isolated Judy needed her diary more than ever.The imbalance in their marriage, in age and creativity, is a recurring theme. Yet there may have been another element in Jancsi’s furious resistance to Judy’s leaving him for a short stay in Paris. He would be alone as never before. During her early absences he had his two young sons; later he had the daily routine of his factory. One line in Judy’s 1957 diary may be relevant. Why, during that first absence, did Jancsi sleep in the same room as the boys? Judy recorded the fact without comment, and it could stand as a sign of fatherly concern. Yet, considering the ages of the boys— John was eleven, Peter was nine—it seems excessive. It suggests that it was Jancsi who needed his sons’ breathing presences close by. And in 1979 it may be that feelings of abandonment in wartime

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Budapest returned. The nights he had to spend alone in Kati’s apartment, while bombs fell and the others went to the basement air-raid shelter, must have had a powerful effect, reinforcing his need for Judy in the succeeding years. Her own image of herself in Paris in 1957 was that of a stray cat, abandoned in a strange place. She was comforted then by letters from Jancsi and by her work. Perhaps, only so long as Judy was the fearful one, Jancsi could submerge night terrors of his own. There were other echoes of the past for Judy in 1980 as she thought about herself as wife and mother. Reading an article about the ‘children of the Holocaust’, the generation of her own sons, she wondered how much their heritage might account for their unhappiness in adolescence, and their difficulty in making fulfilling lives. At thirty-four John had found a strong sense of direction in the environmental movement. Living in the commune at Bodhi Farm, near Lismore, with his partner Greta, he was reaching towards his uncompromising dream of a life devoid of pretence or creature comforts. Seeing her intellectually gifted son expend his energies in heavy manual work, Judy felt a sense of waste, which was balanced by the great delight of her life: her first and only grandchild, Bodhi, born in 1978. She worried about Peter too. Working for the development company, L. J. Hooker, he was becoming known as a brilliant salesman, with sound judgement in investment properties and all the charm and persuasiveness to carry out his ideas. But, as Judy discerned, it was a harsh, competitive environment; and she often questioned whether it was the right one for her gentle, thoughtful younger son. Were there echoes of the Holocaust in her sons’ lives? Judy’s reading left her to question how responsive she and Jancsi had been to their needs. Both boys had won university places; neither had wanted the kind of life Judy and Jancsi expected, in the professions or the arts. Although Judy was proud of their achievements, she knew they had been hard won. She had felt John’s

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anger at parental pressure towards a conventional middle-class life; and with difficulty she had accepted his decision to change his surname from Kämpfner to Seed. It could be rationalised as his rejection of the meaning of Kämpfner, which translates from the German as ‘struggler’ or ‘fighter’ and is forever associated with Hitler’s notorious text Mein Kampf. But it took time for her to adjust to saying ‘my son, John Seed’. For Jancsi it must have been even harder. All this was in Judy’s consciousness in 1979 as she copied into her diary some thoughts on survivor children: Children pick up from their parents a sense of danger, distrust and the fragility of life. The parents often tend to view the very existence of their offspring as a final triumph over Hitler and antisemitism. But for the child it can mean an overwhelming pressure to compensate for the dead relatives and justify the parents’ lives. . . One way to rebel against that kind of expectation is to fail at school or work. A more common reaction is to overachieve, with little sense of accomplishment or pleasure. Either way the survivor child is likely to feel isolated.

There was no escaping history, no matter how much Judy and Jancsi might wish to forget it. It was there in their sons’ lives. It was there too in many of their friends whose successful adaptation to Australia often masked deep depression. In 1980 the adult survivors were growing old. ‘Death is weeding close in our garden’, Judy wrote, before going to the funeral service for one of their Hungarian circle. Some survivors, in Europe and in Sydney, died by suicide. Others, like Judy’s stepmother Lili and Jancsi’s rescuer Kati, still in Budapest, were growing old in poverty. Every year Judy’s diaries record regular gifts of money and clothing, as much as they were allowed to send, to Lili and Kati, to Mária Koperdák in Beregszász, and to any other old friends whom the war and the Communist

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regime had rendered needy. Sometimes Judy and Jancsi rebelled against reminders of the past. To visit Budapest, as they did on most of their European travels, was to be silently reproached, or to reproach themselves, for affluence. At the cinema in Sydney, having watched Vittorio de Sica’s 1971 film adaptation of Giorgio Bassani’s tragic story of Italian Jews in wartime Italy, The Garden of the FinziContini, they felt resentful at having to relive ‘our unhappy history’ again and again. At the same time they did not want that history to be forgotten. Years later, Judy would choose to see Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, with its echoes of Jancsi’s experience of being hidden from the Nazis, because ‘one has to remember’. There were more echoes of her past when the Vietnamese boat people began to arrive on Australian shores, having sold everything to risk their lives in overcrowded leaky vessels. They were ‘the new Jews’, she wrote; no one wanted them. She was relieved when the Australian Government, under Malcolm Fraser, accepted more than 2000 Vietnamese refugees in the late 1970s. She noted also that the ‘Polish Pope’, as she called Pope John Paul II, belatedly appealed to the conscience of the world, ‘a gesture his predecessor, Pius, didn’t make in Hitlerian times’. In the 1990s new images of displaced people would haunt Judy. Australia put up every kind of physical and legal barrier to keep out refugees from Afghanistan and the Middle East. Reminders of her refugee years came in another way early in 1981, when Elwyn Lynn needed biographical material for his book, Judy Cassab: Places, Faces, Fantasies. Judy re-read her early diaries and tried to trace paintings from her Budapest, Vienna and Salzburg days which Lynn could reproduce. Some of these works, like Péter in the Garden, painted in Szentendre, took her on a sentimental journey. Others, like the photographs of her mother, and her own schoolgirl drawings of the interior of the family house at Beregszász, stirred memories of loss.

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At the same time, packing for Paris in April 1981, she continued to worry about leaving Jancsi. His fear of being alone was tacitly conceded when John and Peter volunteered to take her place. Peter, who lived nearby, would call in every day, and in Peter’s absence John would come from Lismore to stay with his father. After all Jancsi’s anger and the tears Judy shed over Paris, the exhibition was an anticlimax. Welcomed by her artist cousins, Vera Szekely, who lived in Paris, and Zsuzsi Roboz, who came from London to give help and support, she supervised the hanging of her paintings in the Embassy’s ‘cavernous hall’. In her own view, it was an uneven exhibition, redeemed by twenty-two Rainbow Valley gouaches which satisfied her exacting eye. Paris was cold and wet; and as always she missed Jancsi. Having wished for more time alone in Sydney, now she had too much of it. ‘This is medicine and bitter it is.’ The best distraction was to be found in the galleries. There was always something to learn, from the softness of Gainsborough’s ‘tired pink’ underpainting, or the deceptive simplicity of a Modigliani. After a few weeks at home, recovering from the tensions of Paris, Judy set out again, this time with Jancsi, for travels which would be mainly holiday but would take in the London showing of the Paris exhibition.With Jancsi it was sunshine again, their quarrels forgotten. Even the luxury of the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong brought no protest. It was the sort of hotel Judy loved, and Jancsi always disliked because of its patrician atmosphere and the oldworld colonial deference it showed to its guests. This time, determined not to spoil her pleasure, he ‘travel[ed] backwards in the time machine to his old, young self, being charming and tender and tolerating the luxury for my sake’. From Hong Kong they flew to Athens to join a cruise in the Greek islands: a ‘blissful, unreal, cloudless time. Jancsi, I think is really happy on the cruise as there is nothing and no one I could turn my attention to’.

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More echoes of the past in London, where their Hungarian friends overwhelmed the Kämpfners with kindness. Judy’s cousin, Zsuszi Roboz and her husband Teddy took them to the theatre and to a Hungarian restaurant in Soho. Vera Káldor, mother of textile designer John Káldor suggested that Judy get in touch with the widow of Miki Sekers; and with some hesitation she did so. In the last years of Sekers’ life the friendship had lapsed; it seemed to Judy that he had lost interest. Yet no one had done so much for her when she most needed a patron. She could not forget the early London portrait commissions of Gaitskell and others, and the letter to Charles Lloyd Jones in Sydney which had set her Australian career in motion. So she visited Ági Sekers and heard the sad story of the wreck of the Sekers empire through family dissension and betrayal. After London the Kämpfners went to Hungary, which they had thought of as a holiday. It was nothing of the kind. Old friends were sick, decrepit, poorly housed. Visiting them felt like doing missionary work, or like taking up a psychiatrist’s burden of unhappy stories. Only Kati, serene in old age and poverty, seemed exempt from the collective depression of Budapest. At Szentendre, and perhaps only there, Judy felt nostalgia. She walked along the road to the market, on the shores of the Danube, where she had pushed the pram with her two sun-tanned babies and the week’s vegetables, and thought of her younger self. The buzz of the artist’s colony was gone; Szentendre was a shrine now, with museums for Czóbel and Kmetty, her former teachers. Yet it was a lovingly constructed shrine and for that Judy was thankful. In Vienna, there were more reminders of the war years. Manyi, widow of Judy’s uncle Gyuszi Kont, was old and unhappy, at odds with her son. The Kämpfners tried to sort out the tangle of resentments, but could do no more than listen to painful stories which made Judy think she was living in an Ibsen play. For Count Schönborn, whom they visited at his estate outside Vienna, time

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was running out: it was an effort for him to meet the Kämpfners, according to custom, at the little railway station and it was the countess—his second wife—who now drove the car. There were signs of the times at Schönborn too. The castle was unused, except by a German film company, then shooting some interior scenes in a few of the three hundred rooms.The Count lived in what was once a gardener’s house: palatial by most standards, but no longer in his former princely style. The family album, with its images of blond, blue-eyed Schönborns, included photographs of five black grandchildren, sons and daughters of Elisabeth von Schönborn who had studied medicine in the United States and married a black American. With so many people to see in Vienna, Judy had time for only one gallery visit. She chose the Kunsthistorisches Museum for the Brueghel which she had copied so many years ago, when her children were small and Australia a place unknown. Then, tired out, emotionally and physically, she was relieved to go home again. Ambivalent as she was about Sydney, it was the centre of her real life, her family and her work. The eight weeks absence had given her back ‘the old Jancsi’, friend and lover, interested in everything, energetic, witty and wise. Together, they had enjoyed the kind of holiday any prosperous elderly couple might choose. Their photographs of the time show Judy, trim, vivacious, beautifully dressed: Jancsi alert and humorous, with an air of distinction. For all the age difference, they look well enough matched. Yet they were not an average couple, and never would be. As Judy’s sixty-first birthday was celebrated with orchids and her favourite chocolates, and loving messages from Jancsi and her sons, she was already immersed in planning a trip to New Zealand, where portrait commissions waited, and in choosing transparencies of her paintings for Elwyn Lynn’s study of her art. She had no intention of retiring. Reassured by examples of enduring creativity, she mused on the late

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years of many great painters: Titian and Turner, who renewed their art in old age; and close at hand, her friend and mentor Orban, nearly blind, but still painting at ninety-nine. A belated response to her Paris exhibition was published in 1982 by Edward Lucie-Smith, who had seen the exhibition in London at the New Art Centre in July 1981. Writing in Art International, Lucie-Smith reflected on the different ways in which the Cassab paintings would have been seen by French or English eyes. In Paris, Cassab’s desert shapes might have suggested affinities with Tanguy’s surrealism, and with pittura metafisica. In London an apt comparison was with Graham Sutherland’s Welsh landscapes and thorn studies, with here and there a hint of the more theatrical romanticism of John Piper. With a Sutherland retrospective due at the Tate Gallery in 1982, ‘few exhibitions from abroad can have arrived so entirely àpropos’. Summing up, Lucie-Smith also took note of the Australian context: ‘Judy Cassab is now one of the most distinguished Australian painters, finding her own terms for the experience of the Australian landscape like the late Russell Drysdale, and like Sidney Nolan immediately before her’. In the 1980s more possibilities were open to Judy Cassab than to most painters of her age, or to most women of any age. She was well known and much loved in Sydney, where one of the very few dissenting voices complained that Cassab ‘doesn’t have admirers; she has a fan club’. She could have concentrated on portraits. Her fee in 1989 was $12 000, a substantial sum at the time, which she did not have to share with a dealer or gallery owner because the commissions came to her directly. Making pleasing likenesses of the rich and famous was the easy option, and the most profitable. Mistrusting her own facility, however, she was ready for experiments in portraiture, and like Dobell, she would more and more often choose her sitters rather than be chosen by them. In landscape painting she had her heartland of Central Australia to return to,

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with the knowledge that her own distinctive style and vision had been recognised and praised in Europe as well as in Australia. Here too she had ideas to develop. She was also a public figure, much in demand. She overcame her nervousness in public speaking to become a brilliant performer on television and radio. And in her own private world, she was wife, mother and grandmother, needed and loved by her family. She collected friends, Jancsi said, as other people collect stamps, and their demands were often overwhelming. To simplify her life, she could have set limits in one sphere or another. She did not do so, although now and then she managed to say no to someone. In her sixties she had her doubts and conflicts, and a wish to please that could have been fatal. She also had an inner certainty about her art that made compromise almost impossible, and a capacity for self-criticism that saved her from drifting into the backwaters of past success.

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Chapter Fourteen M A S K S

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In her Sydney studio, Cassab is expecting a sitter.The sitter may be

early or late; Cassab is always prepared. She places the easel and the canvas in a good light, squeezes paint on the palette, fills a thermos with strong freshly-brewed coffee, and sets out a tray with blue and white Meissen cups and a plate of small sugared biscuits. At an earlier meeting she has gazed long and hard at her subject. From an abstract underpainting, prepared in advance, its colours chosen to express the essential self, a likeness will emerge. She starts with the eyes, but within a few minutes begins to see the whole face within the mottled texture of the underpainting, as a sculptor might see it in marble. Conversation is part of the artistic process: it does not wait for the mid-point of the sitting, when painter and sitter have their coffee break. The artist’s sense of the sitter’s personality deepens as the sitter responds to the dialogue. Cassab the artist and

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Cassab the social being create an atmosphere in which stiffness vanishes. Unlike Cézanne who insisted that his subjects sit ‘as still as an apple’, Cassab does not mind a turn of the head or movements of the hands. When the artist is so responsive, not many sitters can resist the chance to talk about themselves. The mask slips; the artist glimpses the secret self: I am passionately interested in people’s childhood, why they chose the path they are on, how they met their spouses, and hundreds of other things. In our age of short attention span, the only other place where one could talk about these things is the psychiatrist’s couch. But for me it’s as if each word lands on the tip of my brush and is then transferred to the canvas.

The gift for getting a likeness, which Judy possessed as an untaught twelve-year-old, was only the beginning. In an age of photography, the portrait has to offer something more. Some modern painters concentrate on pictorial values, with the element of likeness subdued to the composition as a whole. Judy set herself the task of uniting the psychological and the pictorial; her solution came by means of underpainting an abstract. Her belief in the power of the unconscious was vindicated many times, when she painted more than she knew, but never more so than in the case of novelist Morris West. In West’s final sitting a subtle change took place. The expression of the eyes became apprehensive; and as Judy later discovered, West faced open heart surgery in two days’ time. Her brush discerned what her sitter did not disclose. Justice Michael Kirby was fascinated by the rituals of the sittings. In this first session he felt the artist’s ‘intelligent stare’, enjoyed talk and laughter, and watched solid work. Next time Judy was on the move, darting backwards and forwards between sitter and canvas, estimating size and proportions:

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The game of artistic ‘ping pong’ is an extraordinary manoeuvre to watch. Yet by this game the broad outline of the face and hands of the subject takes on a recognisable form, as if by magic. In this way the attempt to transmit human appearance and personality comes to life through the skills of this considerable painter. The recurring sessions stamp a form and order on the encounters. When they are up, it leaves a void which the subject (and, I suspect, the artist) views with sadness.

Very rarely, in special circumstances such as a family bereavement, Judy consented to paint from a photograph. She disapproved of portraitists who did not interact with the sitter, and only very late in her career was persuaded that the photograph might be a useful aid in completing a portrait. She refused to paint Rupert Murdoch, who suggested that she use photographs instead of giving her a sitting. With Murdoch’s mother, it was a different matter. Staying in Dame Elisabeth’s house, with time to talk and listen, Judy caught the spirit as well as the likeness and made a lasting friendship. So long as she was a trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Judy Cassab was not eligible to enter her work in the Archibald or any of the Gallery’s other annual prizes. As a judge, she sharpened her critical skills and enlarged her knowledge of Australian paintings. Unlike the Gallery’s director, Edmund Capon, who was threatened with a court action for his reaction to Vladas Meskenas’ René Rivkin (‘I looked at the picture and thought “Yuk”’), Judy was discreet and diplomatic in public, keeping some sardonic comments for her diary. Her favourites were not the safe choices: her sharpest words were for the bland and boring. ‘So slick you could skate on it’, was one terse summary. She admired Brett Whiteley extravagantly and was not dismayed by his controversial Archibald winners, Self-portrait in the Studio (1976) and his Art, Life and the Other Thing (1978). These two collages, which included such

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objects as glass eyes, cigarette butts, a photograph of Whiteley and a syringe, stretched the Archibald’s definition of the portrait, and were thought by some to be insolently confronting. During her seven years as trustee and judge, Judy made a conscious effort to experiment in portraiture. She had plenty of commissioned work, for which, by 1987, she was charging £10 000. Such commissions, however, were always to some degree constrained. Writing the cheque conferred power. Mayors and judges and vice-chancellors brought their robes of office to the studio. Sometimes the colours of the robes inspired the artist: sometimes they were deadening. Husbands and wives became proprietorial: ‘Yellow just isn’t Harry’, one of them declared, demanding a change in the background. Others disputed the tilt of a head, the curve of a mouth. ‘Wealth made them expert in everything, including art’, Judy said acidly. Judy often painted friends for no fee, as a gift, or as a free choice of her own. In the 1980s she made it a policy to seek out subjects that pleased her. If the sitter wanted to buy the result, well and good. If not, it went into her garage and she would have learned something from the exercise. More often than not, she chose fellow artists. Painting their portraits was a pleasure: interesting as individuals, they were compliant subjects who knew better than to interfere. An expressive face, an attitude, a colour, drew Judy’s acquisitive eye. Her 1982 portrait of a young art curator, Anna Waldmann, was one such choice: This [portrait] is brewing for months. Ever since I got inspired with her violently red hair and shocking pink stockings . . . Anna leans forward, hands dangling, carrot[y] hair escaping in ringlets from being severely pulled into a chignon. . . I gave the couch an ochre-cadmium yellow. When that dried the ochre got a coat of black . . . after these preliminaries I started working on it as on my

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desert gouaches, using thin layers on the oval of the face, half circle of hair, arms, giving a rhythm of light and dark, getting rid, at last, of my routine portrait handling. When Anna came for the sitting, the painting was determined and I more drew than painted the likeness in the face. Anna was stunned. ‘It’s brilliant,’ she said. ‘I know’. It slipped out and we both burst out laughing at my ‘modesty’. It’s a beginning.

It was a beginning of new freedom to explore the art of the portrait. It was also a step on the way to a major exhibition which was shown at the S. H. Ervin Gallery in March 1988 before going on an interstate tour. This was the first time Judy had seen more than two or three of her portraits hanging side by side; and she was relieved to find that they passed the essential tests. Her work did not lapse into sameness; her sitters held their individuality, yet the Cassab style was unmistakable. The curator was Lou Klepac, an experienced art historian and publisher, who became a close friend and adviser to Judy. When she needed to know whether or not an experiment worked, she turned to Klepac—‘my muse’, she called him, not altogether frivolously. Klepac helped to choose sixty-eight portraits for the exhibition, and later brought them together in book form as Judy Cassab: Portraits of Artists and Friends. His introduction was a spirited defence of the art of the portrait as well as a commentary on the Cassab style. Miraculously Jancsi did not resent a new influence on Judy’s art: he liked and respected Klepac who with his wife Brenda became part of the family. Some early Cassab works were included in Artists and Friends, which was in effect a retrospective. From the 1950s and 1960s, portraits of artists Michael Kmit, Elaine Haxton, Stanislaus Rapotec, Oscar Edwards, Margo Lewers and Nancy Borlase were chosen; and from the 1970s, Paul Haefliger, Donald Friend, Charles Blackman, Lloyd Rees. Returning to Rapotec in 1979, nearly twenty years

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after her first portrait of him, tested Cassab’s skill in showing time’s changes, as did the sequence of three strong portraits of Desiderius Orban, nearly blind, yet still a seer at ninety-seven, ninety-eight and one hundred and one years. Kevin Connor, Elwyn Lynn, Robert Juniper, John Coburn, Robert Klippel and Rosemary Madigan and Margaret Olley were among the painter-sitters of 1986–87. There were other artists: musician Peter Sculthorpe, writers Morris West and Elizabeth Riddell, gallery directors and curators Edmund Capon, Barry Pearce, Lou Klepac. Under ‘Friends’, Judy was able to smuggle in a 1986 portrait of Jancsi, an early study of her father and stepmother, and her son John, painted in Hungary in 1947. She also exhibited the charcoal sketch of her grandmother with which, aged twelve, she had astonished the Beregszász family. Artists and Friends was a bravura performance. It showed Cassab at ease with her talent, painting for pleasure. Some portraits were done at a single sitting—a feat which would have alarmed any sitter who was paying $10 000 for a Cassab. For many of these artists’ portraits Judy left her own studio to paint on their territory, often with a background of their own work. Returning from the Balmain house shared by sculptors Robert Klippel and friend and colleague Rosemary Madigan, she described in wonderment the antithesis of her own ordered studio: Bob extended his body image into his house, his shell. Discarded old washing machines clutter the yard, presumably his raw material for sculpture. Inside is room after room of dishevelment and jumble, or so it seemed to my alien eyes. It’s full of sculptures, hundreds of them on tabletops, window-sills and drums, in cardboard boxes, a perplexity, a network of an artist’s mind.

A few of the artists in the Cassab exhibition were household names but most were not. It drew large crowds in Sydney and on tour,

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demonstrating the enduring popular appeal of the portrait. It also showed new dimensions in Judy’s work: she had found a way to ‘make it new’ while keeping the essentials of the likeness. It did not, however, lead to an informed debate on the art of the portrait in the late twentieth century. The critics stayed away; the gossip columnists identified rich and famous faces at the opening, and Judy was annoyed to find herself described as ‘a charming old lady’. Inevitably, the Archibald Prize beckoned as soon as Judy ended her second term as a gallery trustee. It was still the Melbourne Cup of the art world, with prize money now increased to $20 000 and publicity to match. Television coverage made a huge difference; so did the 1988 innovation of the ‘People’s Choice’ which invited viewers of the line-up to cast a vote. Jancsi thought that Judy should not compete. The odds were against a third success, especially now, when she carried the handicap of being an establishment figure. At sixty-eight years, could she afford to be seen to lose? Judy listened to Jancsi’s forebodings, but could not resist sending in her portrait of Jeffrey Smart to the 1990 Archibald. After all, John Olsen had entered and lost: so had Brett Whiteley, so there was no disgrace. In 1989 Bryan Westwood’s Elwyn Lynn was the winner. Boring photographic realism, Judy thought, though she conceded a strong likeness. Perhaps Judy was unlucky in timing her return. The 1990 Archibald was a carnival in which the racing metaphor was pushed harder than ever, and the line-up of portraits was full of crowdpleasers. Odds were quoted; tips filled the gossip columns: ‘The well-bred Judy Cassab-Jeffrey Smart combo is one of three shortpriced favourites. Cassab, a former trustee of the gallery, has the right connections for the big race’. The trustees, however, were in the mood for something flamboyant to follow their conservative choice of Westwood in the previous year. The winner was Dorothy Hewett by Geoffrey Proud: a huge, cartoon-style head from which,

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as the Gallery’s press release remarked, Hewett’s long, grey-blonde hair flowed like tagliatelle. It was some consolation when Elwyn Lynn, whose reviews of Judy’s work were sometimes morose and deflating, gave the highest praise to her Jeffrey Smart in which ‘an accumulation of subtleties adds up to an ironic, observant and perspicacious character’. The resurgence of portrait painting for Artists and Friends brought more tension between Judy and Jancsi. She could not tolerate any intervention between herself and her sitter; and he could not resist giving advice. It seemed to her that her ‘last nook of privacy’ was being invaded. He did, however, make two large concessions. For the first time in thirty-five years of her career, he agreed to be present at the opening, and he allowed her to exhibit his portrait, painted in 1986. A striking comment on Jancsi, past and present, came from Kati Timár in Budapest, to whom Judy sent a reproduction. Having known and loved the young Jancsi (perhaps loving him still in old age) and having risked her life by hiding him in 1945, Kati was privileged to say what she thought: Jancsi’s portrait of 86 gripped my heart. A painfully handsome man’s face—my youth’s most loved, good-tempered, shining-eyed friend’s moody reflection. The denial—presented with perfection and craft and art—the denial of all that beauty that is his. The turning away from life’s plenitude and joys in a rich and pampering land. Juci’s love is shining from the painting—she raises the figure with such care, such anxious affection. Without idealising it or changing it into a smile she points out his presence and multiplies it.

That wintry portrait of Jancsi in 1986, aged eighty-four, was his Sydney face. When he and Judy travelled together, as they did throughout the 1980s, his younger self reappeared. Paris from April

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to June 1989 was one of their happiest times. Judy was awarded a three months tenancy of a studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts. Administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and named in honour of the Australian painter Moya Dyring, the studio was centrally placed on the Ile de la Cité, within easy walking distance of many of Paris’s main galleries. The Kämpfners, who had enjoyed the luxury of travelling first class from Sydney, found the studio rather spartan, but the visual riches of Paris more than compensated. Jancsi found new energy. He walked for five or six hours every day, often carrying Judy’s painting gear; he shared the shopping and housekeeping, and sat for hours without impatience while Judy sketched. In advance he had asked forgiveness for any outbursts of temper: if a cantankerous old man should speak through her husband, he said, Judy should know that his real self was only temporarily absent. Companionably they walked and gazed; every day they sat over a leisurely lunch of pasta and red wine, went back to rest for an hour in the studio flat and went out again. They explored the Ile St Louis, took a double-decker bus ride on a sunny afternoon, sat on the terrace of the Café de la Paix (with a ‘disgustingly huge icecream’). They had their first experience of doing their washing in a laundromat, and they struggled with the postal service in their mediocre French. They went back to their favourite galleries, the Musée Picasso and the Musée Rodin. Judy was never without her sketchbook, but there were hours when she was content just to look and enjoy the sight and scent of chestnut trees in full bloom against a clear blue sky. The postmodern architecture of the Pompidou Centre, with its colour-coded water pipes, ventilator shafts and electricity lines, all placed on the outside of the building, gave her an idea for saying something new about a city which too many artists had commemorated. A series of paintings was inspired by the surreal juxtaposition of the architecture of old Paris and the

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Pompidou’s white funnel-shaped ventilator shafts, which she called the ‘Ned Kellys’. In a different mood, she went to the Place des Vosges where she could forget the contemporary, revel in the perfect proportions of the square, and indulge her sense of colour in ‘a rhythm of burnt orange and butter stripes, and a variety of windows with and without shutters, curtains, black and white blinds’. It was a risk to paint Notre Dame, but ‘it came out a Cassab’, not a cliché. Paris was galleries, bridges, spires. It was the gateway to Monet’s garden at Giverny; to the Loire Valley, to Chambord where the Kämpfners stayed overnight, where Judy sketched the castle and strolled by the river with Jancsi late in the evening, watching the ducks in the fading light, and the black shadows of poplars. Interrupting their French idyll, they took the train to Vienna, where as always their past pushed its way back into consciousness. The sad, tangled lives of Judy’s aunt, Manyi, her son and his wife, shadowed but did not extinguish the pleasure of the galleries, where there were major exhibitions of Klimt and Schiele at the Leopold Museum, and some wonderful Kokoschkas in the Belvedere. ‘Oh, what a great place it is!’, Judy exclaimed. Then to Budapest, where their past caught them ‘in lion’s teeth’. They could never be tourists in Budapest. Old friends claimed their time, and unloaded miseries and resentments on the Kämpfners, lucky expatriates who had missed the worst of the Communist years. The times were changing. Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost policies were opening Soviet windows to the west. In Budapest, where there had been only one voice, one Communist Party newspaper, there were now many voices, in new weeklies and monthlies. News and opinions from the west were freely quoted. On television Hungarians watched for the first time the story of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Budapest Jews before being captured by the Russians who are

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presumed to have murdered him. For the contemporaries of the Kämpfners, most of them old, sick and depressed, change came too late. They were beyond hoping. Judy’s Communist friend, Magdi, felt the loneliness of the political outcast. A new rich class was emerging, possessors of luxury goods, refrigerators and washing machines which came across the newly opened border from Austria. Judy’s stepmother Lili had paranoid fantasies about being robbed. She did not register the fact that the Kämpfners were sending her an annual allowance of $1500 to subsidise her pension. Only Kati Timár was exempt from the confusion of the times and the bitterness of memories. Helped financially by the Kämpfners, Kati spent her old age in a beautiful old house in Budapest which had been converted into a home for retired actors. Yet no matter what her surroundings, Judy believed, Kati’s inner serenity would have saved her from discontent. It was a relief to the Kämpfners to be back in Paris for the last weeks of their stay. The strains of Budapest showed themselves in Judy’s inability to find either time or energy to paint there. In Paris she worked hard and happily to produce the makings of an exhibition. Counting forty drawings which she would work on in Sydney, she was astonished that ‘poor old painted-to-death Paris’ could yield so much. One of the most satisfying had the giant Pompidou funnels slicing into the sky while down below the Notre Dame was ‘like a fragile domino in pink’. Exhibited at the Holdsworth Gallery in May 1990, the Paris paintings sold well. Even more than the red ‘sold’ stickers, Judy rejoiced in a phone call from Charles Blackman: ‘I can’t forget your Paris paintings. I haven’t loved anything that much for a long time’. Jancsi’s contentment during the Paris months continued even after their return to Sydney, when Judy’s commitments often left him alone or underoccupied. He astonished her by announcing that he wanted to share their income with their sons immediately and

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set up a trust fund for their grandson: ‘I thought that I would rather give you that which is yours in my will with a warm hand rather than a cold one’. This, from the frugal Jancsi, who always doubted his sons’ ability to manage money, was an extraordinary act of trust. It was heroic, Judy said, to overcome his own nature in this way; it was like climbing Mount Everest. He went with her to Perth, for an exhibition of her desert paintings, and on to Bali, which had become one of Judy’s ‘magical regions’. She painted and drew; she swam and walked with Jancsi. They talked with new intimacy about Jancsi’s childhood, long since buried below the debris of war and persecution, as if a mine had collapsed over it. Back in Sydney from Bali in time for the Federal election in March 1990, Jancsi was still mellow enough to joke about the outcome. Having had enough of Hawke and wary of Keating, he disliked the thought of Peacock, the ‘hollow man’. He found an analogy in a story of 1938, when the Hungarians took back the sub-Carpathian region from the Czechs. ‘I had a beautiful dream last night. I dreamed that the Czechs went out and the Hungarians didn’t come in.’ At eighty-eight, he was happier than he had been for many years. Kati Timár was astonished when he added a few lines at the end of Judy’s letter to her, to say: ‘I realise now it was worth while to be born...my séjour on the planet was not in vain’. With Judy, Kati welcomed the rebirth of the buoyant, goodhumoured Jancsi of their youth. Returning to Central Australia, in May 1991, Judy tackled her desert shapes with undiminished zest. She and Jancsi settled down for ten days, away from newspapers and radio, without even a telephone in their hotel room. Jancsi insisted on carrying the heavy painting gear. He set a brisk pace over the rough ground, but showed no impatience at sitting for hours while Judy painted the startling red and white of the rock wall at Ormiston Gorge reflected on blue-grey water. In her turn, she showed none of the

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irritation of previous years when he suggested that she could balance her composition by adding the shadows of tree branches. Simplicity and isolation suited Jancsi: he liked sandwiches and a beer for lunch, no fuss, clear cold desert air and spectacular scenes on every side. Judy was absorbed, happy, certain she was painting well. She took back twenty-four paintings for enlarging in the studio: the makings of another exhibition in which her distinctive vision would be expressed, not in panoramas but in close-up. Analysing her method, art critic and historian Sasha Grishin wrote of the free play between the observed and the imagined: . . . she normally paints the background in a very free-flowing acrylic and when this has dried rediscovers forms in textured oils and suggests a myriad of interconnected shapes. The fantastic landscape of an area like Rainbow Valley, some 80 kilometres from Alice, becomes gradually metamorphosed until the literalness of the original impression has been transferred into harmonic almost musical values.

In Sydney, early in 1992, Judy was working on an Ormiston Gorge painting, with the voice of Kiri Te Kanawa singing Schubert on tape in the studio. She had reason to hope for another win in the Archibald Prize, for which (in a new system of judging) she was shortlisted. She had entered a portrait of Joshua Smith, the unhappy sitter in the long-past Dobell controversy. Much praised in the lineup, it was listed as a short-odds bet by the Sydney tabloids. If a congratulatory phone call from the Gallery did not come during the morning it would mean that she had not won. Kiri Te Kanawa sang on without interruption and by midday Judy gave up hope. She was angry when she heard that the winning portrait was Bryan Westwood’s The Prime Minister. When Westwood won in 1989 with Elwyn Lynn she had conceded its merits; for all its conventional style

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it had ‘a terrific presence, a powerful tension’. The Paul Keating portrait, a full-length celebration of an expensive Italian suit, ‘could be any one of a thousand anonymous commercial academic bores, from Bukarest to Stockholm’. In the following year she was happy to concede the prize to Garry Shead (‘I am delighted about how delighted I am’) and take a place in the Salon des Refusés at the Ervin Gallery. Stubbornly she continued to enter the Archibald Prize. Although she knew the chances of a third win were small, she enjoyed the excitement of the contest and had no intention of retiring. She would never stop trying for more subtle painterly ways to render human nature. Her uncommissioned portraits of fellow artists continued with some finely judged studies in which Charles Blackman (1994) and Margaret Woodward (1995) were outstanding. These and others formed a second Artists and Friends exhibition at the Ervin Gallery in 1998. After her seventieth birthday in 1990, Judy was urged by her friend Bernie Leser of Vogue magazine to consider publishing her diaries. She had often thought of editing the diaries as a task for old age. Now, with astonishment, she had to say ‘I am old’. Re-reading them she could see the complexities of choice. There was no question of publishing the complete diaries, which would have made at least three volumes. The contents as well as the length posed problems.There was the obvious need to remove trivia of the ‘smoked salmon for lunch’ variety. Domestic details gave a sense of her daily life but there was a great deal of repetition. She often transcribed essays, poems and other writings which impressed her; and while readers needed to get a sense of her intellectual range it would not be possible to include page after page of extracts from her reading. Czech president Václav Havel’s Nobel Prize speech was one example. Havel was one of Judy’s heroes, and she wanted to keep every word. Essays on environmental issues, sent by her son John,

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also went into the diaries as she struggled to understand his total commitment to the movement. Some matters were too private to include. Quarrels with Jancsi had to go, even though without them the marriage was idealised and Jancsi’s complex personality diminished. He would never have allowed his prewar and wartime story to be told. Thus, without a sense of his early brilliant career in Hungary, his frustrations in the Elasco factory lost much of their poignancy. Judy had also to respect the privacy of her sons. They would have to read and approve. She resolved also to take out ‘the bitchy bits’ about friends and acquaintances, or in some cases to change the names so that no one would be hurt. Having done her own editing, she turned the project over to her friend the poet Elizabeth Riddell whose brief was to select a balanced volume for the general reader in which Judy’s personality and her parallel worlds as wife, mother, painter and social being would be represented. Riddell was not a scholarly editor, and it was not her task to identify people, places and situations. But she had a poet’s instinct for the vivid phrase; unerringly she chose passages in which Judy’s voice comes through in vibrant moments of delight and despair. Judy the painter dominates the book. Like fellow artist and diarist John Olsen she excels in conveying the strategies of the studio, the texture of the canvas, the colours and the feel of paint on the brush. And even in these self-censored pages she is a strong presence as wife, mother and friend. Random House published the Judy Cassab Diaries in 1995 with an exhilarating launch by Edmund Capon at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The volume succeeded beyond all expectations. It won a major literary prize: the Nita B. Kibble award for life writing by a woman author. The Diaries are a remarkable feat in anyone’s terms; even more so for someone writing in a language not her own. Occasional struggles with the oddities of English—‘scetching’ for ‘sketching’

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was a persistent mis-spelling—were put right by the editor, but there was no attempt, nor need, to edit Judy’s voice. As an artist’s self-portrait the Diaries are equally remarkable. They give a sense of discipline and dedication—even obsession—without which her life’s work might well have lapsed into amateurism or commercialism. The vivacity and intelligence of Judy the social being appear strongly. The unpublished versions with their repetitions and accumulated trivia are even more revealing. The small rituals of Judy’s day, her exercises, diet, skin care, visits to the hairdresser, all of which show the importance she placed on self-presentation, are understandably given less space in the published work than her painting and public life. Prayer and meditation sustained her, and the spiritual dimension appears in the Diaries, but her anger, tears, anxiety symptoms, illnesses are less evident. Famous names make their mark on the printed text more strongly than the inner circle of Hungarian women—Juliska Totis, Heddy Varga, Ili Kalina—with whom she had intimate lasting friendships, punctuated by irritation and hurt feelings on one side or the other, but always restored. Writing the diaries was a release of emotion, a chance for selfjustification in her tussles with Jancsi, a place to express worries about her sons’ careers and the permissive upbringing of her beloved grandson Bodhi. His punk hairstyle, which he was allowed to dye pink when he was ten, was one of many examples of the collision between Judy’s way of life and that of her son John. In the diaries she could complain about John’s whirlwind visits, when Ocean Avenue became command headquarters for the rainforest campaigns, and Peter’s more moderate claims on her time (‘Mum, could you walk the dog . . .’). Judy judged herself too, perhaps exaggerating her lack of assertiveness: ‘as limp as a washcloth’ was one phrase of self-censure. The so-called grande dame of Australian art never lost her sense of vulnerability, which she expressed most fully in the self-portrait of the unpublished diaries.

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Chapter Fifteen T H E

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A holiday in Surfers Paradise was an annual ritual for the

Kämpfners. Walking barefoot on the beach in May 1993, Reeboks slung over their shoulders, they did not feel old. Jancsi was nearly ninety-one, but he could still stride into the wind ahead of Judy and still make her laugh with his untranslatable and often ribald Hungarian puns. Crossing two busy roads from the hotel to the beach on their last day, Judy pressed the pedestrian button and stood waiting for the green light. She saw with dismay that Jancsi had not waited. Walking against the red signal, he reached the other side before her, and stood grinning triumphantly. They had their walk together: ‘grey clouds under our feet, the surf foaming over them’. Home in Sydney, ten days later, Judy was called to St Vincent’s Hospital. Jancsi was in a wheelchair in Casualty, waiting to be admitted:

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‘I’m sorry, Jucókám,’ he said. ‘It was my fault. I was crossing New South Head Road while the Don’t Walk sign was blinking. A taxi came up the hill and hit me. The driver brought me here’.

The damage was severe: a broken shoulder and a broken leg. Next day, when he was wheeled from the recovery room after surgery, all his family was waiting. Peter and his wife Shayne had driven Judy to the hospital. John and his son Bodhi had come from Lismore early that morning. They sat with Jancsi, stroking and kissing him as he returned to consciousness. His survival was a miracle, they said, and they all wept with relief. The following morning, they found Jancsi sitting up in bed, ‘as bright as a button’, thanking them for the love and concern which made the pain easier to endure. That was his best day. During two more weeks in a public ward at St Vincent’s, Jancsi proved to be a difficult and imperious patient. Recovery was slower than he had expected. A vascular surgeon was called to assess the damage to the veins in the broken leg, and a urologist to advise on bladder trouble. An overworked but tactless young nurse made Jancsi angry by treating him like a delinquent small boy. Worse still, she assumed that he need not know what medication he was taking. Each morning when Judy arrived to spend the day with him she met rage and despair in equal measure. He was not sleeping; the nights were unbearably long; the pain acute. Judy suggested that they employ a special nurse to sit with him all night, but he refused indignantly. Sister Bernice, head of the St Vincent’s Private Hospital, who knew Judy, offered a bed in the orthopedic wing, and after some delays, while doctors deliberated, Jancsi was wheeled into the luxurious ‘Vatican Hilton’, where he had a corner room on the ninth floor with a magnificent view. Now there was a new problem. Instead of the disturbances of the ward Jancsi faced terrifying solitude. Seeing him tense and afraid, Judy again suggested a special night nurse. To her amazement he

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agreed, although he was well aware of the expense.When she reached home after her eight-hour day at his bedside she found a message on the answering machine: ‘I love you, I love you, I love you’. The happy mood lasted all next day. The food was excellent; the room was comfortable; the attention good. He enjoyed the novelty of pressing buttons in this high-tech hospital; he could even draw the curtains from his own control panel.This sunny mood was too good to last. In order to regain the use of his arm, he needed another operation. That meant more time in hospital, more sleepless nights. When Judy prepared to leave, he pleaded and raged to make her stay longer. Persuaded by her sons that she was risking her own health, she managed to set limits: eight hours, no more. He made other demands: ‘Sack the doctor!’ ‘Change the hospital!’ ‘Let me die!’ He could not tolerate a wait-and-see response: whatever he wanted had to be done at once. Judy recognised that while Jancsi the patriarch was as dictatorial as ever, he had also regressed to childhood fears of being left in the dark. Perhaps, too, when he was alone at night, he relived wartime ordeals of being shut inside Kati’s flat during air raids while bombs fell and the others went down to the basement shelter. Judy understood his moods, but that did not make it easier to meet his demands. When he fell asleep during her morning vigil she fretted that he would be awake all night. She passed the time making sketches of Jancsi sleeping in his chair, or a little church she could see from the hospital window. Painting was put aside and all her engagements were cancelled. She noted wryly that Jancsi could respond with his old sparkle when visitors came. The black moods were all for her. Yet just before his second operation he spoke calmly, even with gratitude, about the experience in which his wife, daughter-in-law, sons and grandson had all shown their love: This misfortune was perhaps necessary and important. It made me see how wonderful Peter and Shayne are. Without it I might not

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have known Peter’s real quality, so generous and giving his time and person. He is a jewel. A noble diamond ... I was a fortunate man to have found you. You are a magnificent woman. Your good nature was often mishandled by me but you never thought of revenge.

The see-saw of Jancsi’s mood changes continued after his transfer to the Wolpers War Rehabilitation Hospital. Having gasped for fresh air in overheated St Vincent’s, he felt icy cold at the Wolpers. He missed the luxuries, and nursed his sense of being neglected. One small consolation: even though the patient with whom he shared a room was blind and deaf, it was better than being alone. Gradually, Jancsi began to feed himself, and to use a walking frame, his injured leg still in a splint. A new regime of exercises kept him occupied for four and a half hours a day. Given this respite, Judy felt bewildered; after a month of day-long attendance at the hospital she could paint again. And after a luxurious sleep-in, until 8 a.m. on the first morning, she sent gifts of etchings and paintings to everyone who had helped her at St Vincent’s, before finishing some small works on paper for a Newcastle exhibition. After one more week, Jancsi was allowed to come home. He could now walk up and down stairs, write a little, use a knife to cut food, and undo most buttons on his clothing. He could not take his shoes and socks off, nor undo the splint on his leg. Judy began a regimented life. It took an hour to settle him for the night, and the same time and effort to get him ready for the day. Three days a week a nurse was employed to help with his shower, dress him and take him for what was called his walk but which was more like a shuffle, agonisingly slow. Judy did the best she could with these short respites, regaining equilibrium by working on her hospital sketches, and posing again, after a three-month delay, for a double portrait with Margaret Woodward, which Nora Heysen had

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begun before Jancsi’s accident. Judy gazed with a portraitist’s eye at 83-year-old Heysen ‘whose wrinkles can hardly spoil the beauty of her features and her large blue eyes’. Heysen, whom Judy had once thought remote, had become a close friend, as had Margaret Woodward. They were soon to establish themselves as a monthly sketching group with a young artist, Marina Finlay, as their model. As host and convener, Judy set the dates, made arrangements with Marina, and had coffee and cherry strudel ready for the end of each session. With Jancsi safely within reach in the next room she could enjoy the two-hour escape into work and sociability. The social life Judy had shared with Jancsi dwindled to nothing. She needed her friends more than ever; she needed to go out, but not to come home too tired to give diversion and companionship to Jancsi as well as physical care. Reassessing her life, she arranged for Marina to drive her to exhibitions, and for Panni the housekeeper to extend her ten hours a week to fifteen. Panni, a tall, imperturbably smiling Hungarian, was friend as well as housekeeper. Multi-skilled, she could drive Judy’s car or prepare a canvas as easily as she could polish floors or carry heavy frames from garage to studio. Vi Duffy, the nurse whom Jancsi liked, was another essential member of the household. Panni’s annual holidays in Hungary, like Vi’s days off, were gruelling for Judy; their replacements seldom fitted in so well. Regaining her artist self in the months after Jancsi’s accident, Judy counted her blessings in the friendship of Lou Klepac, her main adviser in her work, Klepac’s wife Brenda, and Kevin and Margaret Connor, all of whom Jancsi liked to see. The convivial monthly ‘Pens and Pencils’ meetings of established and aspiring artists at the Ervin Gallery, arranged by Klepac, gave stimulus and pleasure. Judy painted again for the 1994 Archibald, and was affronted when her Nora Heysen (her exchange for Heysen’s Woodward-Cassab study) was not chosen as one of the contenders. It went into the Salon des

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Refusés in good company with Margaret Woodward’s self-portrait and Robert Juniper’s John Olsen. These, Judy thought, were a thousand times better than some ‘ “cute” or cloying or retardé’ portraits chosen as finalists. A newcomer, Francis Giacco, won the $25 000 prize for a curious genre piece in which Vermeer was a stronger presence than the sitter. In the same set of annual awards, Judy won the less well known but equally competitive Trustees’ Prize for a Rainbow Valley watercolour, and was a finalist with a Rainbow Valley gouache for the Dobell drawing prize. These successes were pleasing in themselves—she had never before won a prize for anything but portraiture—and a good omen for other works based on her Central Australian journeys. Yet, as she had to recognise in mid-1994, her source material for future desert paintings would have to change. Jancsi (‘my sherpa’) would never be able to go to Rainbow Valley again, and she would never leave him. One substitute for travel was a weekly painting expedition with Marina Finlay to Observatory Hill or Bondi Beach. Sydney suddenly revealed itself, in glimpses of beached boats, like whales on dry land, a broken-down swing and two rocking horses in a deserted children’s playground. ‘Things jumped out at me accusingly. We have been here all the time and you haven’t noticed.’ More limited holidays, in easier conditions than their desert safaris, were possible. The Kämpfners went back to Surfers Paradise in April 1994, and again in July. Jancsi walked barefoot on the beach as before, but very slowly, urging Judy to ‘march ahead’ of him. From their room at the Marriott resort hotel they could see the ocean on one side, river and mountains on the other. Enchanted by the pale greens and cinnamon colours of the palm trees, Judy produced half a dozen small watercolours while Jancsi rested and read. As witty and sharp as ever, he showed his age only in the huge effort needed for any physical movement; even the act of chewing took time and concentration.

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Life in Sydney for Jancsi did not offer much. Apart from his visits to the physiotherapist, he went nowhere alone except to the Hakoah Club where he played cards once a week. Judy’s old enemy, his gambling habit, was now her friend. Even that diversion was slipping away as the other cardplayers became too frail to meet. He sat in his armchair, read his newspapers, stood behind Judy in the studio, giving her advice. Forgetful in small things, he was always misplacing his hearing aid or his glasses.‘They sit in the corner and laugh at me’, he said. His judgement on Judy’s career was as shrewd as ever, and he was at his best and most generous when things went wrong for her. In the 1990s, as Jancsi’s strength waned, Judy was as much in the public sphere as ever. She had learned how to refuse invitations so as to be with him, but some were too important to miss. These included an ABC television interview with Andrew Olle which also showed documentary footage of her past: ‘My life interwoven with black and white film of Jews in wagons towards death camps, dead bodies in Auschwitz, flashes of Holocaust’. The conferring of her honorary Doctorate of Letters from Sydney University in 1995 became an ordeal. Walking into the Great Hall in the academic procession, wearing the splendidly coloured robes, would have been a pleasure—if only Judy had not been asked to make the main speech of this large formal occasion, and if Jancsi had not suddenly turned against the idea. Choosing the ten guests allotted to her, Judy nominated Jancsi, Peter and Shayne, Gyuszi and Heddy Varga, Barbara Leser, Eva Klug, Juliska Totis and Ili and Pali Kalina. Ili, the first to be invited, was overwhelmed by being included. ‘You are the only remaining witnesses of Beregszász’, Judy told her, ‘the only ones who knew every member of our family intimately’. Hearing this, Jancsi was enraged and Judy shocked at his reaction: Never ever in my worst scenario was I prepared for the trauma following the joyous news.

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‘You know I don’t like people knowing everything about you, wasn’t the television and everything enough?’ Working himself into the fearful dark rage of a Jancsi thirty years younger he added: ‘You can exclude ME straight away from your guest list because I won’t come.’

The storm passed. Jancsi took his place in the front row to hear Judy’s life story told by the Vice-Chancellor, followed by her own reflections on a painter’s life. In the Great Hall, unknown to her, were her cousin Maya and Maya’s husband George Spitzer. Later she heard that another Hungarian friend, Bandi Svéd, had been present. He asked for a copy of her speech so that he could translate it and have it published in Hungary. Svéd was another witness, Judy reflected. Her choice of guests for this dazzling public occasion is revealing. All of them could reach back and touch her past. Another echo from the past came soon after the degree ceremony. A friend in Budapest wrote to tell the Kämpfners that Jancsi’s wartime rescuer Kati Timár, now in her nineties, was nearly blind. She had three wishes, none of which she would herself reveal. She longed for a ‘reading-machine’, which cost a great deal; a place in the Jewish Home for the Aged, although she was not Jewish; and ‘a great wish’ which was to have a tree planted in her name in Israel. ‘What are friends for?’ said Jancsi, echoing Kati’s own words when she and her husband came to rescue him in 1944. Judy wrote, telephoned and sent money to fulfil all three wishes. She and Jancsi then nominated Kati for a plaque and a tree in the Avenue of Righteous Gentiles in Jerusalem, among memorials to others who saved Jewish lives by risking their own. The past was honoured too by the Kämpfners’ sons. With a miraculous power of persuasion, John succeeded in having Jancsi make a series of taped interviews about his long-buried childhood, his lost family and his time in labour camp in the Soviet Union.

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Peter visited his Kont relations in Vienna—his great-aunt Manyi and her son, the younger Gyuszi Kont. He also renewed the Schönborn link. The old Count welcomed him warmly at the Schönborn estate outside Vienna, telling Peter that he had walked in the woods that morning to pick the finest mushrooms for their lunch, and talking affectionately about Jancsi in prewar days. In Budapest Peter visited Kati, taking gifts of money and delicious food, and any other luxury his generous heart could conjure up. Peter had always longed to meet Mária, the other rescuer in his parents’ story, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union it had become possible to visit Beregszász, so long closed off behind the Soviet borders. Possible, but not prudent. Judy was afraid for Peter’s safety. She had heard that the political changes had brought chaos. Crime flourished; travellers risked theft and even murder on the roads between Budapest and Beregszász. Peter would travel the same road from Budapest as Jancsi had taken in 1945 in a taxi stuffed full of banknotes to set up soup kitchens for the starving revenants from the death camps. Judy could not persuade him that it was too dangerous. He was determined to see Mária and thank her for the saving gift of her identity papers in 1944. In August 1997 Peter telephoned his parents in Sydney. It was 5 a.m. and he was just setting out for Beregszász. It would be a fouror five-hour drive each way. Judy’s fears abated when he said that he was not alone. A Sydney friend, John Charody, now commercial attaché at the Australian Embassy, had offered to escort him, making sure there would be no trouble at the border nor along the way. They were being driven in a car with diplomatic plates, and with a burly uniformed chauffeur at the wheel as an added safeguard. Judy marvelled at the act of friendship; she blessed Charody ‘with a mother’s heart’. It was a long day for Charody—more than eight hours on the road, and several more in Beregszász while Peter visited

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Mária and saw the places that were burned into his memory by Judy’s stories. He saw the former Kont brick factory, where his grandmother and great-grandmother had been held before the cattle trucks took them to Auschwitz. He walked down the main street, where his great-grandmother’s house had become a child-care centre. ‘You could see that it had been a pretty town’, Peter said, ‘but it was run-down, sad’. No wonder that it was sad. Having lost all its Jews, it had lost its heart as well as its economic structures, and under Communism its former prosperity was never restored. Mária, whom he had telephoned from Budapest, was waiting to welcome Peter with tears for the past, and eager questions about Judy. She had married: she had daughters and grandchildren, but her life had been hard. Peter could scarcely believe that she was the same age as his mother. She had ‘a lovely smile’; he could see that she had once been pretty, but she seemed by comparison with Judy to be a worn old woman. Mária wept as she talked to Peter; and at home in Sydney Judy was weeping too as she imagined the meeting between her handsome, charming son, his arms full of gifts, and the friend whom she had last seen in Budapest, more than half a century before. Judy’s stepmother Lili died in 1994. Possessions sent to Sydney brought more memories. A portrait of Imre Kaszab was in bad repair but still had the power to stir Judy’s sense of loss. ‘My father’s eyes look at me through layers of soot and grime.’ There was jewellery too: three rings, a bracelet, a gold chain. None of these meant as much as the brass nameplate from her father’s front door. Judy placed it on the ceramic table in the living room at Ocean Avenue as one of her treasures of time. Later, a nameplate made for Kati Timár was placed beside it. These were reminders but, as Judy often reflected, she and Jancsi were one another’s last witnesses. Each held the other’s memories. As Jancsi’s health declined, Judy needed her sons more than ever. Thoughtful towards Jancsi, they also protected Judy. Reflecting

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on their upbringing, she concluded: ‘We must have done something right’. In career choices, marriages and partnerings they sometimes caused her concern. When they were unhappy she suffered, prayed and hoped, asking herself whether her absences in England had damaged them in childhood. But as they entered their fifties she could see that John the environmentalist and Peter the businessman were making their own choices and using their gifts creatively. The size and scope of Peter’s property deals alarmed her; so did his ownership of a racehorse. This was not the world she understood. Jancsi, who had the gambler’s temperament, had lost confidence with his migration to Australia, and his forebodings left Judy uneasy as to whether Peter was safe against economic climate changes. She worried less about John, whose personal needs were simple, even basic, and was proud of him when he became an international authority on rainforests, much in demand for world-wide lecturing and writing. She would have liked him to live at a higher standard of comfort, and although she was on affectionate terms with his partner Eshana Bragg and his later partner Ruth Rosenhek, she regretted his separation from Greta, the mother of his only child. Similarly she was sad when Peter and his beautiful, brilliant wife Shayne separated and later divorced, but she remained on close, affectionate terms with this ex-daughter-in-law, just as she was with Greta. If it had been necessary to take sides she would have been with her sons, but since they too were without rancour, the ‘Hotel Kämpfner’ at Ocean Avenue expanded to take in ‘daughters-inlove’, as she called Greta and Shayne. ‘My sons always chose well, if too often’, she remarked with just a touch of asperity. Because Greta stayed on near John at Bodhi Farm, even after she remarried, their son Bodhi was never the victim of parental tugs-of-war. His upbringing was unconventional by his grandparents’ standards but his artistic gifts pleased them, and the commune’s culture of sharing with one another was something Judy and Jancsi approved.

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Jancsi had been a difficult father in many ways. Yet in his last years his sons put aside resentments to do everything possible for his comfort and to ease Judy’s burden. For seven years the Ocean Avenue flat was dominated by his illness. The Kämpfners sold their first-floor flat in 1999 and moved to the one below; but even without the hazard of stairs it was a heavy business to help Jancsi to the car for his daily walk on the beach with Judy. Her diary listed the sad daily routine of painkillers, anti-inflammatories, antidepressants, antibiotics, suppositories, catheters, ointments, sedatives. Looking at the array of medications, Jancsi said with bleak humour: ‘If I get better we can always open a second-hand pharmacy’. Struggling to keep control of his situation, he insisted on reading the small print which told of side effects; and he would then denounce the doctors for taking such risks. He complained that his shoes were too heavy. Judy bought a lighter pair—and found him surreptitiously weighing new shoes against old on the kitchen scales. The doona was too heavy: she searched the shops for something light but warm. Jancsi’s little brass bell summoned Judy from the studio at any time, and when she left the flat he had only to press one preset number on his telephone to reach her on her mobile. Against this background, Judy struggled to paint, and to manage her career. Like most painters, she was often displeased with the gallery owners on whom she depended. In Sydney she was happiest with ebullient Rudy Komon. After his death in 1982 she moved to Gisella Scheinberg’s Holdsworth Gallery, with some misgivings. She was annoyed when Scheinberg, who found Judy’s desert paintings hard to sell, pleaded for some more nudes. It was a relief when the Holdsworth closed just as Judy was stiffening her resolve to leave it. Later, she would be equally displeased with Stuart Purves at the Australian Galleries. Her own certainty that her desert paintings were her best work was not matched by public demand. For that she would have to wait.

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Judy’s public face, smiling, responsive, buoyant, was often at odds with the Judy of the diaries in those difficult years. She had recurring and severe back pain; she needed surgery for a prolapse in 1998; and at the same time a frightening numbness in her right hand was diagnosed as carpal tunnel syndrome, which fortunately was improved by surgery. The fear of losing power in her painting hand was matched by a decline in vision.This was due not so much to cataracts, for which surgery was available, but to retina damage (macular degeneration) which might in time cause her to lose her central vision. Eye specialists had no remedy for that: she must wait, hope and try vitamin supplements to slow down the degenerative process. Reflecting on that terrifying possibility, she thought that if she could not see to paint she would not want to live. All through Jancsi’s slow decline and Judy’s ordeal, John, Peter and Bodhi stood by. Peter, who lived near enough to be available at any time, took his father for afternoon walks and helped Judy in innumerable ways. She needed protection from Jancsi’s demands, and reassurance that she was not being selfish in claiming time for her own work, or time to rest. Jancsi’s mind remained agile, but his sense of Judy’s autonomy, never strong, lapsed badly in these later years. After prostate surgery at St Vincent’s Private Hospital in 1997, he airily dismissed the young nurse who was to have helped with his shower. ‘My wife will do it’, he said. Judy, in pain from her chronic ‘bad back’, was angry enough to refuse outright. That was the recurring problem: he wanted Judy and no one else. It was she who kept him alive. When she spent two nights in Melbourne for the opening of her 1996 solo exhibition at the Lyall Burton Gallery in Flinders Street, it was a great concession on Jancsi’s part to have Peter move in to look after him. Later, in order to have his usual holiday with Judy, Jancsi agreed to be taken by wheelchair to and from the plane to Surfers Paradise and by limousine to the hotel. Even so, the holiday was a failure, mainly

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because Jancsi missed his familiar bed and chair and Judy was too tired and anxious to relax. She went alone to Townsville in October 1996 to accept her second literary award for the Diaries, her pleasure in the occasion spoiled by Jancsi’s depressed and reproachful mood. Even though John had come to stay, prepared to give his father fulltime attention, Jancsi refused to get out of bed, pushed breakfast aside and said ‘I want to die!’ After much coaxing he went for a drive to the beach with his son and returned in a sunny mood; it was ‘all love and appreciation’ before Judy’s departure. That was the pattern, as months turned to years. Jancsi in his mid-nineties was as frail as a small, sick bird, but still fierce as an eagle in his anger.There were many days when he would reduce Judy to tears. Then, and it seemed only then, he would revert to his loving self, apologising for having hurt or exploited her: . . . I finished the day sobbing. As ever it lightened his burden. He asked me to forget what he has said. I am the only reason he clings to life, he said. ‘I love you, I always loved you and I shall love you past the grave.’ Then both of us cried.

Concerned about Judy’s health, John and Peter arranged to look after their father while she had a holiday. In 1999 she travelled with a young painter friend, Jan Oliver, to the Warrumbungle National Park, near Coonabarabran and in 2000 Jan took Judy to Fraser Island where they rented a cottage. Bodhi and his future wife Aprile, joining in the Fraser Island trip, added to Judy’s pleasure with exquisite cooking and music. Jan, ‘a sherpa extraordinaire’, took care of all material needs, and cosseted Judy as the eightyyear-old she was not allowed to be at home. Judy the artist revived: At last, oh, at last, I saw what my trips had been for. An inexhaustible treasure cave of twisted or pleated, dotted or striped

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shapes of tender pink to burnt sienna and black ...After lunch we worked some more. Not one solitary soul, no other sound except sweet birdsong.

In the first months of 2001, Jancsi’s ninety-ninth year, Judy was close to a breakdown. Jancsi’s pleading to let him die, and his fury at a world in which an old man was kept alive and suffering to no purpose, alternated with reproaches that she cared for him ‘no more than for an old dog’. His body was failing him in every way and he was sharply aware of his physical indignities. More and more English words slipped away from him, so that Judy had to interpret his furious Hungarian tirades. Friends were worried about Judy’s health. She was urged to get Jancsi a place in the St Luke’s Hospital aged care, which had a high reputation. ‘Perhaps you can place an old parent there’, Judy said, ‘but not a husband’. John told his mother: ‘If you continue as you are now you will be a wreck. You already are a wreck’. But when the end came, on 18 April 2001, Judy and his two sons were with Jancsi and he died at home. Judy lay down beside him, putting her cheek against his for the last time. Only the day before Jancsi had said to her, as he had said many times: ‘Jucókám, if there is an afterlife I shall love you there’. The morning light showed a transformed Jancsi. His face was ‘like polished marble, all his frowns and worries wiped away’. In some ways this was an exile’s death. After fifty years in Australia, Jancsi was still a European. He had not claimed Australia as his homeland, as Judy had done through her vision of the Australian desert. His work did not satisfy his passion to create. He was never at home in the English language. Yet in a close, stormy, loving marriage of sixty-two years, Judy was always his homeland. While she was beside him he was not an exile. By his own wish Jancsi was cremated, thus identifying himself with his family, burnt in the ovens of Auschwitz. It was his wish too

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to have his ashes scattered in the Yallunga rainforest, near where his grandson Bodhi had built his house. Before the journey to Yallunga, friends came to a funeral service in Sydney. Because Jancsi had chosen cremation instead of burial it departed from Jewish custom and was not held in a synagogue, but the service was conducted by a rabbi who spoke and sang in Hebrew. Bodhi and his wife Aprile played guitar and flute very softly from the front row.The rabbi read an obituary, written by John. It told the story which Jancsi had stubbornly kept to himself during his Australian years: the early struggles in poverty, the brilliant successes of the prewar years, the ordeals of forced labour, the months in hiding in Budapest, the risky enterprise to feed survivors of the extermination camps. And it told the story of his marriage to 18-year-old Judy, to whom he had kept his promise that she would always be an artist. For Judy, Jancsi’s death was not an ending. Her diaries show her dazed, shocked, disoriented, but give no sense that her own life was closing down. Her sons were afraid she would be lonely. Peter called in half a dozen times a day at Ocean Avenue. John urged her to pick up the phone at any time of the day or night. For a time she was comforted by a Sydney clairvoyant who brought messages from the spirit world. Judy was at first sceptical yet increasingly persuaded that the messages claimed to be from Jancsi were authentic. With her faith in God and her lifelong habit of prayer she was open to the possibility of communion with the dead. The details seemed convincing: domestic trivia no one else could have known, echoes of their shared past. For some survivors of a long, close marriage, the experience of the clairvoyant’s messages might have been overwhelming. Yet Judy’s diary entries of the period suggest that, while it pleased and excited her to puzzle over the cryptic messages, they changed nothing. It was as if she expected Jancsi to make his presence felt. When she wrote in reply to letters of condolence, ‘Jancsi will always be with us’, she meant it.

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Judy’s days were full; her future wide open.To make up for her constricted life during Jancsi’s last years her sons planned travels for her. Peter took her to Europe in September 2001. John took her to India. Each had his own style of travel. With Peter it was first-class airline travel, five-star hotels, the best restaurants, galleries, music, theatre, and good company. It was time in her favourite galleries in London, Paris and Vienna, time to sketch and paint. Judy revelled in it all. With John, there were ups and downs so far as comfort was concerned, though his concern for Judy never failed. For her sake he booked good hotels but luxury worried him, and in India reminders of poverty were always present. Judy was resilient. She said ‘Hallelujah for a European toilet’ on one of their day trips but did not complain when she dropped briefly from five stars to basic standards. Her travel diaries show unqualified delight in new experiences. As always art came first, whether it was the delight in a Monet she had never seen before or the astonishing colours and faces of India. On 11 September 2001, when news came of the terrorist arrack on the United States, Judy was in London, shocked and dismayed at the television images, but not diverted from a week of gallery visits. The ‘divine Vermeer [was] alive and fresh to one’s eyes as one tried to swim into the painting, breathing it, almost crying with emotion’. Her ability to live in the moment, her hopefulness and her response to pleasure helped her to live creatively in a world without Jancsi. ‘The anchor is gone. I am free and life is threatening’, she wrote a few months after his death.Threatening, but full of promise. Freedom included small things. She enjoyed being free to read the newspapers. Jancsi had always taken them as of right, told her what was in them, and left them crumpled and disordered on the floor at the end of the day. It was exhilarating too to spend money as she pleased; in spite of Jancsi’s generosity he never quite conceded her right to her own earnings. It would have been sentimentality

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to deny that freedom had its pleasures—and Judy was not a sentimentalist. Freedom was the right to accept an invitation to show her paintings in Budapest in November 2003—a rare honour for an expatriate artist. John and Peter helped to make it possible: John by taking on the role of publicist and handling the complex negotiations with Hungarian bureaucracy; Peter by planning a European journey to give Judy pleasure and keep her from being too tired for the exhibition itself. One of her sons was always with her on the journey, as was her grandson Bodhi. Lou Klepac helped to choose the paintings and prepared a handsome catalogue, with text in English and Hungarian. There was great satisfaction in sending the best of her late period work. The desert paintings were pure Cassab, distinctive in vision, style and colour. For Barry Pearce, curator of Australian paintings at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Cassab’s Central Australia, that ‘surreal, purifying space’, was a painter’s journey: Rich impastoes, delicate washes over white canvas or paper, traces of powdery black charcoal, here burning colour, there little colour at all, passages of luminosity, deep shadows embracing the enigma of all images, mystery of paint, mystery of subject, mystery of self.

To take these paintings to Budapest, to exhibit them in the impressive public space of the Vasarely Múzeum, to be honoured by the Hungarian Minister for the Arts and the Australian Ambassador, was surely a defining moment for an 83-year-old whose memories of Hungary included pain, humiliation and loss beyond measure. During her Budapest visit of November 1993, the 90-year-old cousin who tidied up the Kaszab flat after the death of Judy’s stepmother produced a small package. It contained Judy’s birth

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certificate. That too was a defining moment—one of those episodes which often prompted Jancsi to say: ‘It could happen only to you’. Her sense of triumph in the exhibition was undeniable; so was the emotional charge of revisiting the past. But, just as Jancsi’s death had been accepted as part of ongoing life, so too the Budapest exhibition was not a final achievement. An invitation to take the exhibition to Berlin was the next stage in the European journey. ‘I have never been to Berlin’, Judy said. ‘Isn’t it wonderful to be young and adventurous!’

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A F T E R W O R D

‘Where do you get your ideas from?’, that unanswerable

question which novelists constantly face, comes to a biographer in a slightly different form. ‘What made you think of writing that life? Out of all the possible subjects, why did that one catch your imagination?’ Now that Judy Cassab, my fourth full-length biography, is almost completed I want to attempt the question. First of all, I can tell the story of how it happened, and at the same time place myself in relation to my subject. I count myself among Judy Cassab’s friends but we met only eight years ago. I live in Melbourne, she in Sydney. A painter and a writer, we must share something of the cultural life of Australia, but our backgrounds and personal histories are very different.That brilliant British biographer Richard Holmes believes that the people whose lives he has written—Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Coleridge, Stevenson—have

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all taken him unawares; he recognised their presence in his imagination, but did not consciously seek them out. Did Judy find me, or did I find her? Something of both, I think. In October 1996 we were both guest speakers at a seminar held by the National Library of Australia. The subject was ‘Documenting Lives’. I spoke on biography; Judy Cassab on portrait painting. At question time I was asked to comment on the dilemma of the colonial portraitist Georgiana McCrae whose life I had written. McCrae, born in 1804, professionally trained as a portraitist in Regency London, had to give up her art when she married. ‘Left my easel and changed my name’ she wrote ruefully on her wedding day. Andrew McCrae, a man of his time, forbade his wife to paint for money, even when they faced bankruptcy after emigration to Port Phillip. I passed the question to Judy Cassab. I remember vividly the energy and conviction with which she spoke: ‘If my husband would not have let me paint, I would be divorced’. Next morning, Judy and I met again, talked enjoyably over breakfast, and said goodbye. Just as I was checking out, Judy followed me to the reception desk to ask if I would sit to her for a portrait. She explained that each year she did some noncommissioned portraits; she liked to do them because she felt free to experiment when no money was involved. I was surprised but of course flattered, not only because I knew her high reputation and her many famous sitters, but because I was already charmed by her friendliness and impressed by the depth of intelligence and passion she brought to her art. To be chosen as a sitter was an honour I could not refuse. So, next time I was in Sydney I went to her studio in Double Bay for the rich experience of sitting to a fine artist and at the same time making a friend. In between our Canberra meeting and the Sydney sittings I reread the Cassab Diaries. On their publication in 1995, I had found them fascinating. They told the multi-layered life of a dedicated

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artist who was also wife and mother, postwar migrant, Holocaust survivor, celebrated portraitist, and poetic interpreter of the Central Australian desert. She was also a gifted writer with a brilliant turn of phrase—all the more remarkable in someone who learned English as an adult—and a sharp though usually benign observer of the Sydney art scene. As a self-portrait the Cassab Diaries have an enduring appeal. Having one’s portrait painted seems a larger commitment than posing for a photographer. Yet in some ways it is easier because it does not depend on the choice of one moment, frozen in time, to represent the self. In Judy Cassab’s studio I was put at ease by conversation and coffee, beguiled by the artist’s interest in my life story, and deeply curious to see what it was that she was looking for when she chose to paint me. We had talked about what I should wear. Red would be too strong a note, she said. We settled on deep blue but when the portrait was complete the blue was there only as underpainting, showing here and there through silvery and pale gold tones. ‘The blue didn’t want to stay’, she said. I see those choices now as rather like a biographer’s tone and attitude. Biographies are not simply about facts, though these must be respected. The crucial matter is how one sees the subject. And the how and why go together: why did Judy want to paint me; and why, much later, did I decide that I wanted to write her life? I can’t answer the first question; but here is my attempt at the second. I could say that she is one of the most remarkable and surprising human beings I have ever met. That, however, just leads to more questions. Let’s be more precise. When I read her diaries, I was moved, enlightened, shocked. The shock was for what she had endured as a young woman in 1940s Hungary. Her story of coming as a migrant to postwar Sydney, the effects of displacement on her family life, and the ways in which she struggled and triumphed in the art world: all this is absorbing. And yet it left me with two large

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questions. Cassab was born in 1920. The Diaries begin in 1944, just as Judy and her husband Jancsi faced the Nazi terror at its most desperate. I wanted to know more about the young Judy; childhood, parents, early education, choices. What gave her the strength to survive? Equally important: who was Jancsi Kämpfner in prewar days? What emotional and cultural baggage did he bring to Australia? The Diaries show that he nurtured Judy’s career, and that it was a strong and loving marriage. I wanted to see the marriage from his viewpoint as well as hers, and to understand how his Hungarian past interacted with his half-century in Australia. There were good reasons for the gaps in the Diaries. Judy’s early diaries were lost, as was so much of her past, blown away by the hurricane of war. Jancsi’s story was not told, because he so vigorously resisted the limelight. In his lifetime there was much that Judy could not say. Even at the risk of his being seen as an unremarkable businessman rather than a brilliant, witty intellectual, Jancsi had to be left in shadow. Questions about the young Jancsi and the young Judy surfaced as I re-read the Diaries. When I went to the Double Bay studio for sittings and later as a visitor I met Jancsi. A quiet but strong presence, a strikingly expressive face, deep-set eyes, an ironic intelligence: all this was evident. I was sure that he was a man with a history, but one not easily known. In a quite different way Judy too was hard to fathom. Her charm is not in the least superficial; her friendliness and generosity of spirit are as genuine as they are beguiling. But while Judy the social being, Judy the committed artist, are visible to the world there remains the question: who is she when she is alone? And how is it that in old age, when many painters slide into bland or repetitive work, she has been able to experiment and renew herself ? The late portraits are more searching: the late landscapes have added weight and poetic feeling. Of course there are no answers; a biography can explore and suggest possibilities, but mystery remains.

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My portrait was exhibited in Judy’s Artists and Friends exhibition at the Ervin Gallery in May 1998. I went to Sydney for the opening at which a very large number of Judy’s sitters thronged the room, casting surreptitious glances at their likenesses—as I did too. I remember also looking at her gentle portrait of a very frail Jancsi, aged ninety-six, in his armchair, in a red pullover. I thought once more about the marriage. But it was not until four years later that the idea of a Cassab biography surfaced quite suddenly, as if it had been waiting for the right moment. My biography of the Boyd family, published in April 2002, had prompted thoughts about women’s creativity, marriage and careers in the arts. There was another reason. With the Tampa affair of August 2001 and its aftermath, I was one of the many Australians who were forced to think about refugees. Night after night we had watched TV images of leaky boats, heard self-righteous speeches about queue-jumping, worried about detention centres. As parallels with the refugees of the Second World War came to mind, Judy Cassab’s story suddenly presented itself as the biography I wanted to write, not for any single reason but because it insisted on being told. The impulse was so strong that I telephoned Judy. We hadn’t been in touch for at least a year, not since her husband’s death. Her first response was slightly bewildered. She had published her diaries; what more was there to say about her life? I said something about the difference between portrait and self-portrait; asked her just to think about it and promised to write explaining more clearly what I had in mind. As I waited for her reply I had some misgivings. Was it right to ask her to relive her wartime ordeals and losses? Was it presumptuous to think I could write about something so far beyond my own experience? My own background and upbringing were as sheltered as hers were exposed. Born into a middle-class Melbourne family of Irish-Catholic background, I was scarcely touched by the Second World War. My father was in a reserved occupation and my

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brothers were too young for military service. My English-born grandmother took me to see wartime British films like Mrs Miniver and The Way to the Stars; but when scenes of the London bombings became, as my grandmother thought, too much for my 10-year-old eyes, she would urge me not to look. After the war ended I remember my parents’ shock at seeing the newsreel films of Belsen and Buchenwald: everyone should see them, they said. The nightmare images had their effect on me, but what was missing, because I knew so little, was any sense of the individuality of Hitler’s victims, any real understanding of the private worlds that were destroyed. The war, from my schoolgirl’s perspective, was remote; and it was many years before I began to read about the European experience. Judy’s letter came, assenting to the biography and promising as many interviews as I wanted. After our first sessions, in which she talked about her childhood, early years and marriage, she made the tremendous gift of access to her unedited diaries: the ten closely typed bound volumes of the years 1944–2000, and several folders of the more recent years. She made no conditions, imposed no barriers. Since then I have been many times to visit and talk, usually with a tape recorder, sometimes less formally. When I began to write biography I thought that a portrait of a living person was not to be attempted: that was for pop stars and sporting heroes. I believed in distance, detachment. Since then I have found that the distinctions I once made between writing about the living and writing about the dead were too simple. By the time I finished my book on the Boyd family, many of them had become my friends, but no one has said that the chapters on Robin Boyd, whom I never met, is different in tone from the chapters on his cousins Arthur, Guy and David. Empathy, as Richard Holmes says, ‘is the most powerful, the most necessary and the most deceptive of all biographical emotions’. As Holmes demonstrates, his empathy for

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his long-dead subjects—Shelley and Coleridge in particular— stretches across centuries, and is no less powerful for that. If in the last few years, empathy with Judy Cassab has grown with every meeting, and with my close, reflective readings of her private thoughts in her unpublished diaries, it may be no more and no less risky than my imaginative entry into the life of Georgiana McCrae, who died in 1890. When these final pages are written I will send the whole manuscript to Sydney, where Judy can read it at her leisure and tell me where I have made factual errors. As for the reading of personality she will find, I can only hope that she will not find it alien to her own sense of self, though here and there she may be surprised. I think now of the young Judy Cassab, waiting for the verdict of the formidable Duchess of Kent on her just-completed portrait: ‘I hope, oh I do hope it’s good’. SEPTEMBER 2004

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Appendix I S E L E C T E D 1953 1955 1959 1959 1961 1961 1962 1963 1964 1964 1967 1969 1972 1973 1973 1975 1976 1978 1979 1980 1980 1981 1981 1982 1982 1982 1983 1984 1985 1985 1985 1985 1985 1987 1987 1988

S O L O

S H O W S

Macquarie Galleries, Sydney Macquarie Galleries, Sydney Newcastle City Art Gallery Crane Kalman Gallery, London Macquarie Galleries, Sydney Crane Kalman Gallery, London Argus Gallery, Melbourne Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney Georges Gallery, Melbourne Von Bertouch Gallery, Newcastle Skinner Gallery, Perth Skinner Gallery, Perth Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney Skinner Gallery, Perth Reid Gallery, Brisbane Von Bertouch Gallery, Newcastle South Yarra Gallery, Melbourne New Art Centre, London Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney Masterpieces Fine Art, Hobart Verlie Just Town Gallery, Brisbane Australian Embassy, Paris New Art Centre, London Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney Greenhill Gallery, Perth Greenhill Gallery, Adelaide Von Bertouch Gallery, Newcastle Verlie Just Town Gallery, Brisbane Holdsworth Gallery, Sydney Benalla Regional Gallery, Victoria Hamilton Regional Gallery, Victoria Caulfield Arts Centre, Melbourne David Ellis Gallery, Ballarat, Victoria Holdsworth Gallery, Sydney David Ellis Gallery, Ballarat, Victoria S. H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, and Australian Regional Galleries

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1988 1988 1988 1988 1989 1989 1990 1990 1991 1991 1992 1992 1992 1992 1993 1993 1994 1994 1994 1995 1996 1996 1996 1998 1998 1999 1999 1999 2000 2001 2001 2001 2003 2003 2003 2004 2004 2004 2005 2005

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Brisbane City Hall National Library, Canberra Von Bertouch Gallery, Newcastle Solander Gallery, Canberra David Ellis Gallery, Melbourne Verlie Just Town Gallery, Brisbane Festival of Perth, Fremantle Arts Centre Holdsworth Gallery, Sydney David Ellis Gallery, Melbourne Verlie Just Town Gallery, Brisbane Freeman Gallery, Hobart Schubert Gallery, Gold Coast Solander Gallery, Canberra Von Bertouch Gallery, Newcastle Holdsworth Gallery, Sydney Lyall Burton Gallery, Melbourne Town Gallery, Brisbane Solander Gallery, Canberra Schubert Gallery, Gold Coast Riverina Galleries, Wagga Wagga Von Bertouch Gallery, Newcastle Lyall Burton Gallery, Melbourne BMG Gallery, Adelaide S. H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney Australian Galleries, Sydney Stafford Studios, Perth Von Bertouch Gallery, Newcastle University of Sydney Greythorn Gallery, Melbourne Von Bertouch Gallery, Newcastle Solander Gallery, Canberra Australian Galleries, Sydney Vasarely Múzeum, Budapest Australian Embassy, Dublin Australian Embassy, Berlin Charlemagne Building, Brussels Maitland Regional Art Gallery Michael Carr Gallery, Sydney Solander Gallery, Canberra University of Sydney

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Appendix II P R I Z E S

1955 1955 1956 1961 1964 1964 1965 1965 1968 1969 1971 1973 1988 1994

1994 1995 1996 1996

1997 1998 2003 2003

2004

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D I S T I N C T I O N S

The Perth Prize The Australian Women’s Weekly Prize The Australian Women’s Weekly Prize The Archibald Prize Sir Charles Lloyd Jones Memorial Prize The Helena Rubinstein Prize, Perth The Helena Rubinstein Prize, Perth Sir Charles Lloyd Jones Memorial Prize The Archibald Prize Companion of the British Empire Sir Charles Lloyd Jones Memorial Prize Sir Charles Lloyd Jones Memorial Prize Order of Australia The Trustees Watercolour Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales The Pring Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales Honorary Doctorate of Letters, University of Sydney The Nita Kibble Award for Literature, for Diaries Foundation for Australian Literary Studies Award, James Cook University, Townsville The Pring Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales The Pring Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales The Pring Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales The Trustees Watercolour Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales The Painters and Sculptors Association of Australia Medal

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Appendix III R E P R E S E N T A T I O N S

AUSTRALIA

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Art Gallery of New South Wales Power House Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sydney National Gallery of Victoria Queensland Art Gallery Art Gallery of Western Australia Art Gallery of South Australia Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Reserve Bank Collection, Sydney National Portrait Gallery, Canberra The High Court, Canberra Rockhampton City Art Gallery Bendigo City Art Gallery New England Regional Art Gallery Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria Australian National University, Canberra University of Sydney University of New South Wales INTERNATIONAL

Rugby Museum, Rugby, England Nuffield Foundation, Oxford, England National Portrait Gallery, London, England National Gallery, Budapest, Hungary János Pannonius Museum, Pécs, Hungary United Nations Building, Geneva, Switzerland

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N O T E S

E

xcept where otherwise indicated, all quotations in this and subsequent chapters come from my interviews with Judy Cassab recorded in 2002–4, and from the unpublished Cassab Diaries (1944–2004) to which Judy Cassab has allowed me access. The recollections of childhood, family, education and the first years of her marriage come mainly from the interviews with Cassab, whose diaries of 1932–44 were lost. The diaries of the 1944–72 period survive in their original Hungarian version but were later translated by Cassab herself. All later entries were written in English. In 1995 Random House, Australia, published a volume of extracts as Judy Cassab Diaries.These represent only a fraction of the whole, which runs to ten typed folio volumes for the period 1944–2000, with the period to 2004 typed but not yet bound. Volumes 1–10 are held in the National Library of Australia on restricted access; and it is intended that the diaries from April 2000 will be added to the collection. Some volumes of the unpublished diaries are paginated; some are not. When quoting I have used the unpublished version. Where passages in my text are also to be found in the Random House text, readers of both will find slight differences. I have replaced some omitted words and sentences and I have not followed the Random House editorial regularisation of Cassab’s original spelling and punctuation.

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1 THE LOST CHILDHOOD

My account of Beregszász as Judy Cassab knew it owes much to the memoirs of two of her contemporaries, Rabbi Hugo Gryn’s Chasing Shadows and Alexander Szegedy’s Seven Days and Seven Nights. ‘That was the most horrible...believe it yet.’ Shirley Eisenberg, interview with Judy Cassab, 7 December 1995. ‘A man from ... never left Berehovo.’ Gryn, Chasing Shadows, p. 6. Apart from a few officials nobody spoke Czech. Szegedy, Seven Days and Seven Nights, p. 3. ‘a beehive on a balmy summer day.’ Gryn, p. 16. 2 LOVERS AND FRIENDS

A major source for this chapter is the series of interviews with Jancsi Kämpfner recorded by his son John Seed in 1994.The ‘Jancsi Tapes’ tell the story of Jancsi’s childhood and education, and his career as director of the Schönborn estate. They also help to characterise the Count Schönborn and place him in his social and historical context. I am indebted to Judy Cassab for suggesting Sándor Márai’s novel Embers as a means of understanding the Schönborn way of life. ‘By sending me away...a regular cry.’ Judy Cassab, ‘Documenting a Life’, National Library of Australia, 1995. ‘It is a gallery...and Pablo Picasso.’ Elwyn Lynn, Judy Cassab, p.10. ‘It was a cold misty day...yelling crowd.’ Gryn, Chasing Shadows, p. 79. ‘a token Jew...anti-Semitic institution’. ibid., p. 89. 3 IN HIDING

John Seed’s 1994 interviews with his father (the ‘Jancsi Tapes’), complemented by Judy Cassab’s memories, provide much of the material for this chapter. Gryn’s Chasing Shadows and Szegedy’s Seven Days and Seven Nights filled in details of the period, as did Tibor Vajda’s Hope Dies Last. Among many accounts of the siege of Budapest, I found that of Krizstián Ungváry especially helpful. ‘the work started...bread with marmalade.’ John Seed, interview with Jancsi Kämpfner. German troops in Budapest and Eichmann sent to oversee extermination of all Hungary’s Jews. Wiskemann, pp. 212–13. The right papers might save you. Tibor Vajda recalls hearing about the white armband strategy in May 1944 from a member of his forced labour unit whose family had converted at the Terezváros church in Budapest, ‘where the priest tried to help hundreds of Jews by converting them in short courses. They included him with the rest of

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the family, and he was sent a certificate of his conversion. But it made no difference to his fate’. Tibor Vajda, Hope Dies Last, p. 19. Beregszász Jews deported to Auschwitz. Hugo Gryn, Chasing Shadows, pp. 123–72. ‘Don’t worry...calm and cool.’ Judy found and re-read her mother’s letter in February 1946. By the time Soviet troops finally liberated Hungary, more than two-thirds of Hungary’s Jews had been murdered. See Abraham J. Edelheit & Hershel Edelheit, History of the Holocaust. ‘In narrow Kazinczy street ...pieces of wood.’ Irvin Kis, Vallomás és körülméyek (Budapest, 1965), p. 24. Quoted in Krisztián Ungváry, Battle for Budapest, p. 247. 4 UNDER SIEGE

‘Hungary’s fascist rule ended with a 102-day siege of Budapest, one of the bloodiest and least documented confrontations of the Second World War involving ferocious hand to hand fighting, claiming 35,000 civilian lives and leaving the capital in ruins.’ Thomas Land, ‘Bardossy the Bad’, Times Literary Supplement. In Zugló, where Jancsi took refuge, the Arrow Cross is estimated to have killed more than one thousand Jews, between the Szálasi takeover on 15 October 1944 and 11 January 1945 when the Soviet Army occupied this area. See Tibor Vajda, Hope Dies Last, p. 176n. Jews shackled and thrown into the Danube. John Bierman, Righteous Gentile, p. 110. ‘Just a taxi...ten per cent.’ John Seed, interview with Jancsi Kämpfner. 5 DISPLACED PERSONS

‘[Still Life] was... symmetry and balance.’ Elwyn Lynn, Judy Cassab, p. 13. 6 THE OFFSHORE ISLAND

For the context of artistic life in Sydney in the 1950s I am much indebted to John Olsen’s Drawn from Life, Jeffrey Smart’s Not Quite Straight and Bernard Smith’s Australian Painting, 1788–1960. Elwyn Lynn’s Judy Cassab gives a detailed account of the artist’s career in Australia as well as an overview of her European artistic experience. [Bondi Beach] ‘I remember...seagulls flying and drifting over.’ John Olsen, Drawn from Life, p. 4. [Rapotec’s] ‘black angular brushlines...thrown down by Zeus.’ ibid., p. 193. [Judy Cassab] ‘...a true friend.’ Jeffrey Smart, Not Quite Straight, pp. 297, 301. ‘Coming back to the Cross ... East Sydney Technical College.’ Olsen, p. 49.

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‘an international outlook... not experienced before.’ Bernard Smith, Australian Painting, 1788–1960, p. 228. Darwin was not given the status of city until 1959.The Museum of Arts and Sciences (now known as the Museum and Art Gallery) was not established until 1969. Australian Encyclopaedia, vol. 3, p. 201. 7 BRAVE NEW WORLD

For the history of the Archibald Prize and for many perceptive comments on portraiture and the winners and losers in the annual contest, I am especially indebted to Peter Ross’s Let’s Face It. On women artists, Drusilla Modjeska’s Stravinsky’s Lunch and Janine Burke’s Joy Hester added understanding of the context in which Judy Cassab worked. Geoffrey Dutton’s Russell Drysdale provided useful comparisons in career patterns and insight into the Macquarie Galleries in the late 1940s and 1950s. [Nora Heysen] ‘…always a talented daughter of the famous Hans’. ‘Australian artist beats the odds and gains recognition’, 7.30 Report, ABC TV, December 2000. Max Meldrum on the ‘manly qualities’ of artists. Peter Ross, Let’s Face It, p. 31. ‘…always conscious of Ford’s needs and wishes’. Stella Bowen, Drawn from Life, p. 191. ‘John Kämpfner... salt of the earth.’ Daily Telegraph, Sydney, undated newspaper cutting in Cassab Scrapbook, vol. 3, 1955–56. First showing of Drysdale’s Woman in a Landscape. Geoffrey Dutton, Russell Drysdale, pp. 9, 44. The Macquarie Gallery’s support of women painters. Victoria Hammond, A Century of Australian Women Artists, 1840s–1940s, p. 24. Mid-1950s reviews of Cassab exhibitions: James Gleeson, Sun, Sydney, 29 June 1955, W. E. Pidgeon, Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 30 June 1955 and Paul Haefliger, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 June 1955. ‘a bad review...were really sunk.’ John Olsen, Drawn from Life, p. 87. The Sydney group was losing its drive. ibid., p. 89. ‘younger painters... abstract painting.’ Bernard Smith, Australian Painting 1788–1990, p. 331. [Judy Cassab] ‘a serious painter, without pose, conceit or bohemianism.’ People, June 1954. Marriage and the artist. Olsen, p. 13. 9 DESERTS AND PALACES

‘Detail of Ormiston ... full of flux.’ Elwyn Lynn, Judy Cassab, p. 17. The formidable Princess Marina, amateur artist. Christopher Warwick, George and Marina, p. 136.

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‘Mother of Four gets Top Job.’ ‘Betty Churcher’, Australian Biography, dir. Rod Freedman, SBS TV 2003. ‘The head is full of character...commercial portrait manufacturer.’ ‘Archibald Prize Won by Judy Cassab,’ Age, 28 January 1961. ‘about as much like Holman as a strawberry icecream soda.’ Quoted by Peter Ross, Let’s Face It, p. 21. Donald Friend’s press cuttings on Dobell’s 1944 Archibald win. Paul Hetherington, ed., The Diaries of Donald Friend, vol. 2, p. 3. [Dobell’s Margaret Olley] ‘a beam of light ... up the prize.’ Ross, p. 40. [Cassab’s] ‘…deep and resonant melodies’, John Olsen, ‘Judy Cassab in Abstract Mood: Painting of the Week’, Sunday Mirror, 30 April 1961. Cassab’s abstracts. James Gleeson, ‘Cassab Art Earthy’, Daily Mirror (Sydney), 27 April 1961. Cassab as portraitist, Bulletin, 8 February 1961. 10 THE STUDIO DOOR

‘Yes, Judy…is my creation’. Interview with John Seed, 21 March 2003. ‘retro and safe.’ Peter Ross, Let’s Face It, p. 61. Cassab’s portrait of Lewers. Elwyn Lynn, Judy Cassab, p. 117. ‘Most professional artists…looked like switchboards.’ John Olsen, Drawn from Life, p. 260. [Cassab’s Robert Morley] ‘a mixture of caricature…a certain sadness’ Lynn, p. 117. [Cassab’s 1964 abstracts] ‘an undercurrent of firmness…the immediate allure.’ Wallace Thornton, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 July 1967. 11 THE PUBLIC SELF

Hal Missingham’s memoir of his years as Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, They Kill You in the End, has been especially helpful, as have John Olsen’s comments on his time as trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. ‘You might as well have an award for painters with red hair.’ ‘Portrait of a Stolen Heritage’, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September 1994. Nolan refused the honour of an Order of Australia, as did Judith Wright. Between recommending and awarding, the government changed, and the residual bitterness of 1975 may account for their refusal. Patrick White returned his Order of Australia in 1977. Cassab served as a trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales from June 1980 until December 1987. ‘Bill [Dobell] was an extremely sensitive person…a temporary colleague.’ Hal Missingham, They Kill You in the End, p. 36. ‘deliriously haphazard.’ ibid., p. 89.

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‘[Curators] want the collection to reflect their tastes only.’ Olsen, Drawn from Life, p. 123. ‘a difficult and irascible committee member.’ Deborah Hart, John Olsen, p. 149. ‘dear old Howard…painting he detested.’ Missingham, p. 87. James Mollison’s brilliant purchases. Patrick McCaughey, The Bright Shapes and the True Names, p. 183. 13 ECHOES AND HAUNTINGS

‘Children pick up from their parents…feel isolated.’ Judy Cassab’s summary of an unidentified article in Time magazine, c. April 1979, ‘Diaries’, vol. 5, p. 864. ‘Judy Cassab is now one of the most distinguished…before her.’ Edward Lucie-Smith, ‘London Letter’, Art International, January 1982. 14 MASKS AND MIRRORS

‘I am passionately interested…transferred to the canvas.’ Judy Cassab, quoted in Lou Klepac, Portraits of Artists and Friends, 1998, p. 16. ‘The game of artistic ping-pong…views with sadness.’ Michael Kirby, ‘Ping Pong with Judy Cassab, in Klepac, 1998, p. 106. Geoffrey Proud’s Dorothy Hewett. Ross, p. 99. Cassab ‘normally paints the background…almost musical values.’ Sasha Grishin, ‘Cassab Landscapes of Majesty, Mysticism’, Canberra Times, 13 October 1983. 15 THE LAST WITNESS

‘My life interwoven…flashes of Holocaust.’ ‘Judy Cassab: A Life’, ABC TV, January 1994. Meeting with Mária Koperdák, interview with Peter Kämpfner, 1993. ‘Rich impastoes, delicate…mystery of self.’ Barry Pearce, ‘The Spirit of the Place’, in Judy Cassab, Vasarely Múzeum, 2003, p. 10. AFTERWORD

‘Empathy…biographical emotions.’ Richard Holmes, Sidetracks, p. 4.

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B I B L I O G R A P H Y

PRIMARY SOURCES

Cassab, Judy. ‘Diaries’, April 1944– (photocopies in National Library of Australia). Cassab, Judy. ‘Scrapbooks’, 1955–95 (photocopies in National Library of Australia). Seed, John, comp. ‘The Jancsi Tapes’, interviews with Jancsi Kämpfner, 1994. ‘Australian Artist Beats the Odds and Gains Recognition’. 7.30 Report, ABC TV, December 2000. ‘Judy Cassab: A Life’. ABC TV, January 1994. Judy Cassab, ‘Documenting a Life’ speech, 1995 (National Library of Australia). Interviews with John Seed, 2002, 2003 (tapes held by the author). Interviews with Peter Kämpfner, 2003 (tapes held by the author). Interviews with Judy Cassab, 2002–4 (tapes held by the author). Judy Cassab interviewed by Shirley Eisenberg for the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, 7 December 1995 (videotape, Spielberg Foundation). ‘Betty Churcher’, Australian Biography. dir., Rod Freeman, SBS TV, 2003.

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SECONDARY SOURCES

Books Baker, Mark Raphael. The Fiftieth Gate: A Journey Through Memory. Flamingo, HarperCollins Publishers, Sydney, 1997. Bierman, John. Righteous Gentile:The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Missing Hero of the Holocaust. Viking Press, New York, 1981. Bonython, Kym. Modern Australian Painting 1975–1980. Rigby, Adelaide, 1980. Bowen, Stella. Drawn from Life: A Memoir. With an introduction by Julia Loewe. Pan Macmillan, Sydney, 1999. Brasch, Rudolph. Australian Jews of Today and the Part They Have Played. Cassell Australia, Stanmore, NSW, 1977. Cassab, Judy. Diaries. Random House, Milsons Point, NSW, 1995. Clare, George. Last Waltz in Vienna. Pan Books, London, 1982 (first published 1980). Denes, Magda. Castles Burning: A Child’s Life in War. Anchor, London, 1998 (first published 1997). Dutton, Geoffrey. Russell Drysdale. Rev. edn, Thames and Hudson, London, 1969 (World of Art Library). Edelheit, Abraham J. and Hershel Edelheit. History of the Holocaust; A Handbook and Dictionary. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1994. Epstein, Helen. Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1988 (first published 1979). Friend, Donald. Diaries. Vol. 2, ed. by Paul Hetherington. National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2003. Gilbert, Martin. Atlas of the Holocaust. Michael Joseph in association with the Board of Deputies of British Jews, London, 1982. Gleeson, James. Modern Painters, 1931–1970. Lansdowne Press, Dee Why, NSW, 1971. ——William Dobell. Rev. edn, Thames and Hudson, London, 1969 (World of Art Library). Gryn, Hugo with Naomi Gryn. Chasing Shadows. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 2001 (first published 2000). Hammond, Victoria. A Century of Australian Women Artists, 1840s –1940s. Essay. Deutscher Fine Art, Malvern, Vic., 1993. Hart, Deborah. John Olsen. Craftsman House, Roseville East, NSW, 2000. Heathcote, Christopher. A Quiet Revolution:The Rise of Australian Art 1946–1968. Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1995. Holmes, Richard. Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer. HarperCollins Publishers, London, 2000. Klepac, Lou. Judy Cassab: Artists and Friends. Beagle Press, Sydney, 1988.

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——Judy Cassab: Portraits of Artists and Friends. Beagle Press, Sydney, 1998. Kluger, Ruth. Landscapes of Memory: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered. Bloomsbury, London, 2003 (first published 2001). Levai, Jeno. Raoul Wallenberg. Translated by Frank Vadja. Whiteant Occasional Publishing, West Melbourne, 1988. Lynn, Elwyn. The Australian Landscape and its Artists. Bay Books, Rushcutters Bay, NSW, 1977. ——Judy Cassab: Places, Faces and Fantasies. Macmillan, South Melbourne, 1984. McCaughey, Patrick. The Bright Shapes and the True Names: A Memoir. Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2004. Márai, Sándor. Embers. Translated by Carol Brown Janeway. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 2001 (first published 1942). Missingham, Hal. They Kill You in the End. Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1973. Modjeska, Drusilla. Stravinsky’s Lunch. Picador, Sydney, 1999. Molnár, Miklós. A Concise History of Hungary. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001. Olsen, John. Drawn from Life. Sydney, Duffy & Snellgrove, 1997. Quartermaine, Peter. Jeffrey Smart: a Monograph. Gryphon Books, Sydney, 1983. Riemer, Andrew. Inside Outside: Life Between Two Worlds. Angus & Robertson, Pymble, NSW, 1992. Roboz, Zsuzsi, Edward Lucie-Smith and Max Wykes-Joyce. British Art Now: A Personal View. Art Books International, London, 1993 (Modern Masters). Ross, Peter. Let’s Face It:The History of the Archibald Prize. Rev. edn, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2001 (first published 1999). Roth, Joseph. The Radetzky March. Translated by Joachim Neugroschel and with an introduction by Nadine Gordimer. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1995 (first published 1932). Singer, Peter. Pushing Time Away: My Grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna. Fourth Estate, HarperCollins Publishers, Melbourne, 2003. Smart, Jeffrey. Not Quite Straight: a Memoir. William Heinemann Australia, Port Melbourne, 1996. Smith, Bernard. Australian Painting, 1788–1960. Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1962. ——Australian Painting, 1788–1990 with three additional chapters by Terry Smith. 3rd edn, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1991. Snowman, David. The Hitler Emigrés: The Cultural Impact on Britain of Refugees from Nazism. Chatto & Windus, London, 2002.

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Szegedy, Alexander. Seven Days and Seven Nights. 1st Books Library, Bloomington, Indiana, 1999. Ungváry, Krisztián. Battle for Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II. Translated by Ladislaus L¯ob. I.B. Tauris, New York, 2003. Vajda, Tibor. Hope Dies Last: A Story of survival in Fascist Hungary, Scribe Publications, Carlton North, 2000. Warwick, Christopher, George and Marina;The Duke and Duchess of Kent. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1988. Wiskemann, Elizabeth. Europe of the Dictators, 1919–1945. Collins, London, 1966 (Fontana Library of History).

Articles ‘Archibald Prize Won by Judy Cassab’, Age (Melbourne), 28 January 1961. Blackman, Barbara. ‘My Portrait’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 January 1975. Borlase, Nancy. ‘The Abstract Face of Judy Cassab’, Bulletin (Sydney), 22 March 1975. Brezniak, H. ‘Judy Cassab’, The Bridge, January 1973. Brook, Donald. ‘No Beating about the Bush’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 August 1972. Bulletin (Sydney), 11 March 1988. Cassab, Judy. ‘Letter from Paris’, Contemporary Art Society Broadsheet, Sydney, May 1958. —— ‘Art Today’, Daily Telegraph, Sydney, April 1958. —— ‘Portrait of a Stolen Heritage’, an edited version of Cassab’s address to the Portia Geach Society, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September 1994. ‘Judy Cassab’, Bulletin (Sydney), 8 February 1961. Cohen, Lysbeth. ‘Judy Cassab’s One-Woman Exhibition is now in London’, Australian Jewish Times, 9 July 1961. Dare,Tim. ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Migrant’, Australian, 13 September 1973. Eggerking, Kitty. ‘Recognising Home in an Alien Land’, Canberra Times, 3 October 1983. Gleeson, James. ‘Macquarie Galleries Exhibit: Styles Clash’, Sun (Sydney), 29 June 1955. ——‘Cassab Art Earthy’, Daily Mirror, 27 April 1961. ——‘World of Art with James Gleeson’, Sun-Herald, Sydney, 19 January 1969. Grishin, Sasha. ‘Cassab Landscapes of Majesty, Mysticism’, Canberra Times, 13 October 1983. Haefliger, Paul. Sydney Morning Herald, 29 June 1955.

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Hely, Susan. ‘What the Archibald Judges Look for’, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 December 1983. Hetherington, John. ‘Judy Cassab: She Painted on through Stormy Years’, Age (Melbourne), 23 June 1962. ‘Interview with Judy Cassab’, Matters of the Mind: Poems, Essays and Interviews in Honour of Leonie Kramer. Edited by Lee Jobling and Catherine Runcie. University of Sydney, Sydney, 2001, pp. 129–44. Land, Thomas. ‘Bardossy the Bad’, Times Literary Supplement, 11 July 2003. Lee, Kerrie. ‘The Eyes are the Most Important’, Independent Magazine, 19 October 1969. Lee-Lewes, Jacqueline. ‘Certain Women’, TV Times, 10 January 1978. Lucie-Smith, Edward. ‘London Letter’, Art International, January 1982. Lynn, Elwyn. Bulletin (Sydney), 15 July 1967. McPhee, Merome. ‘“Let IT Paint, Not You”: Interview with Judy Cassab’, West Australian, 17 October 1973. Newton, Eric. ‘A Sudden Impulse to Create’, Guardian (Manchester), 7 October 1959. ‘Old World Painter Busy in a New Country’, People, 16 June 1954. Olsen, John. ‘Judy Cassab in Abstract Mood; Painting of the Week’, Sunday Mirror (Sydney), 30 April 1961. Pearce, Barry. ‘The Spirit of the Place’, Judy Cassab: Szivárvány Völgyében a hely szelleme, Rainbow Valley, the Spirit of the Place. Vasarely Múzeum, Budapest, 2003. Pidgeon, W. E. Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 30 June 1955. Porteous, Michael. ‘Art Row over “Photo Finish” Winner’, Sun-Herald (Sydney), 30 May 1976. Reeve, Elizabeth. ‘Judy Cassab’, Vogue Australia, March 1975. Rogers, Frederic. ‘Humanity in Two Showings’, Sunday Mail (Brisbane), 13 April 1980. Ruskin, Pamela. ‘Judy Cassab’, Signature, September–October 1970. Short, Susanna. ‘Cassab Minus Portraits’, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 April 1981. ——‘Judy Cassab’s Desert Shapes’, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 June 1982. Swift, Margaret. ‘Judy Cassab Aims for her Third Archibald Prize’, Woman’s World, 10 October 1979. Thornton, Wallace. ‘New Image for Cassab’, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 July 1967.

Thesis Kunz, Egon. ‘Hungarians in Australia’. MA, University of Sydney, 1967.

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A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

My first and greatest debt is to Judy Cassab. Writing the biography of a

living person is never easy, and if this story had not so strongly caught my imagination I would not have attempted it. The question of control is central to the transaction between writer and subject. Few would understand as Judy Cassab did that the writer, while respecting the individuality of the life, needs the freedom to shape and interpret it. When the time came to show Judy Cassab what I had written, I was almost certain that she would accept it as my portrait of her, even if she had some reservations. Not the only way to tell her story, it was (as she often said) my book, not hers. For nearly two weeks I waited while Judy read carefully, sending progress reports by email, making a few factual corrections.When her verdict came, it was all that I could have wished for. She did not want to change a single brushstroke. For all this, and much more, I thank her. To Judy Cassab’s sons, John and Peter, I am also much indebted for generous co-operation, interviews and help at all stages of the project. Lou Klepac’s insight into Judy Cassab’s career has been invaluable, and I thank him and his wife Brenda for hospitality and unfailing support. Among those who have helped in various aspects of this work, with

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interviews or less formal contributions, I am indebted to Charles Blackman, Yvonne Boyd, Kevin and Margaret Connor, Elaine Crimmins, Alan Davies, State Library of New South Wales, Helen Elliott, Marina Finlay, Paul and Mary Fitzgerald, Beryl Foster, Ili Kalina, Ilus Kertész, Judit Koltai, Leonie Kramer,Tom and Di Magney, Panni Nagy, Jan Oliver, Clare O’Neill, Terry O’Neill, Barry Pearce and the staff of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Graeme Powell and the staff of the National Library of Australia, John Rickard, Zsuzsi Roboz, Philippa Ryan, Veronika Ryan, John Thompson, Philip Thomson, Margaret Woodward, Chris Worth and colleagues in the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, Monash University. I thank John Olsen and his publisher Duffy and Snellgrove for permission to quote from Olsen’s Drawn from Life; and the estate of the late Hugo Gryn and Penguin Books for permission to quote from Gryn’s Chasing Shadows. Judy Cassab’s portraits of Stanislaus Rapotec and Margo Lewers appear by courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales. I owe a special debt to Leslie and Marianna Bodi for sharing their memories of wartime Budapest and prewar Beregszász and adding to my understanding of time and place. It is a great pleasure too to thank Francis and Sarah King, my guides and companions in Budapest, Szentendre, Prague and Vienna in April–May 2004, when we retraced the footsteps of Judy Cassab. For many readings of the manuscript and much else besides I thank my sister Frances O’Neill. Marguerite Hancock’s research assistance was, as always, invaluable. At Allen & Unwin, I am indebted to Clare Emery, whose careful attention to all aspects of editorial and production matters has eased my path; and I thank my publisher Sue Hines for her interest and confidence in the book. That confidence was shared by my agent Fran Bryson to whom I am also indebted. A grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council is gratefully acknowledged.

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I L L U S T R A T I O N

C R E D I T S

ILLUSTRATION SECTION 1

Photographic 1a Main Street, Beregszász, c. 1992. Cassab Papers, National Library of Australia. 1b Imre and Ilus Kaszab with Judy. 1921. Cassab Album. 2a Judy in the garden at Beregszász, 1932. Cassab Album. 2b My Grandmother, 1932. Artist’s collection. 3a Judy and Jancsi Kämpfner, Budapest, 1949. Cassab Album. 3b Jancsi Kämpfner with sons János and Péter, Austria, 1950. Cassab Album. 3c Jancsi Kämpfner (centre) as director of Schönborn estate, with brewery workers, c. 1939. Cassab Album. 4a ‘Woman Wins the Archibald’. Sun, Sydney, 1960. 4b John, Judy, Jancsi and Peter Kämpfner, Sydney, c.1959. Cassab Album. 5a Judy Cassab with Queen Sirikit of Thailand, 1962. Cassab Album. 5b Robert Helpmann, 1961. Cassab Album. 6a John Seed, 1990. Cassab Album. 6b Peter, Judy and Jancsi, c. 1995. Cassab Album. 7a Judy Cassab with Charles Blackman, 2003. Photograph by Barbara Konkolowicz.

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7b Judy Cassab at Szentendre, 2003. Cassab Album. 8 Judy and Jancsi at Surfers Paradise, 1995. Cassab Album. ILLUSTRATION SECTION 2

Paintings 1a 1b 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 16 15

The Salon, Beregszász, 1934. Coloured pencil. Artist’s collection. Mária Koperdák, c. 1936. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Uncle Jacob, 1936. Oil on canvas. Private collection. St Gilgen, 1950. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Paddington, 1952. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Flight into Egypt, 1954. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Opal Remembered, 1966. Acrylic and oil on canvas. Art Bank, Sydney. Night Falls over Rainbow Valley, 1979. Oil on canvas. Artist’s collection. Divided Beach, Byron Bay, 2000. Oil on canvas. Artist’s collection. Organic Weathering,Yellow Sky, 2002. Gouache. Artist’s collection. The Tower, 2002. Gouache. Artist’s collection. Stanislaus Rapotec, 1960. Acrylic and oil on canvas. Art Gallery of New South Wales. Margo Lewers, 1967. Acrylic and oil on canvas. Art Gallery of New South Wales. Paul Haefliger, 1974. Acrylic and oil on canvas. Artist’s collection. Anna Waldmann, 1982. Acrylic and oil on canvas. Artist’s collection. Margaret Woodward, 1995. Acrylic and oil on canvas. Artist’s collection. Jancsi Kämpfner, 1993. Acrylic and oil on canvas. Artist’s collection.

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Abbreviations: JC – Judy Cassab, JK – Jancsi Kämpfner Academy of Art, Prague 27 Agnes (housekeeper) 117–18 Agnew’s Gallery, London 163 Alexander (hairdresser) 204 Alexandra, Princess, of Kent 159–63, 165–7, 189 Altdorfer, Albrecht 28, 34 Anderson, Sir Colin 159 Andrea, pseud. 113, 114, 127, 195 Annigoni, Pietro 151, 161 Anschluss (1938) 21, 40 Archibald Prize, 114, 125, 167–72, 182, 186–8, 194, 212; and women artists, 122–3, 165, 167–8, 190–1; judging process, 198, 200–3, 240–1, 244–5, 250–1, 258 Archibald, J. F. 168 Arias, Dr Roberto 163 Arrau, Claudio 91 Arrow Cross 56, 58, 60 Art Gallery of New South Wales 108, 114, 128, 168, 197–204, 240, 244, 246, 252, 271 Art Gallery of South Australia 125, 128, 168 Art Gallery of Western Australia 128 Artists for Labor 196

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Ashcroft, Peggy 91 Ashton, Julian 111 Asians in Australia 115 Astor, Gavin, 2nd Baron Astor of Hever 185–6 Astor, Lady Irene 186 Attlee, Clement 96 Auschwitz, 18, 50, 67, 70–1, 85, 149; death of JC and JK relatives in, 2, 50, 76, 89, 134, 178, 183, 260, 263, 268 Australian Broadcasting Commission 113, 194, 260 Australian Embassy, Berlin 272 Australian Embassy, Budapest 262 Australian Embassy, Paris 225, 228, 233 Australian Galleries, Sydney 265 Australian Women’s Weekly, 167 see also Women’s Weekly Prize Avenue of Righteous Gentiles, Jerusalem 261 Bakery School, Paddington (NSW) 193 Baldung-Grien, Hans 28 Balson, Ralph 130 Balzac, Honoré de 16 Bán, Frici 27, 59, 61, 70, 78 Barraclough, Jim 196 Barraclough, Judy 128, 144 Bartók, Béla 16

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Barwick, Sir Garfield 195, 197 Bassani, Giorgio 232 Battarbee, Rex 154 Beatty, Lady 144, 162 Beatty, Lord 144 Beckett, Clarice 121–2 Belvedere Palace, Vienna 247 Bellette, Jean 109, 112, 143 Belsen, 278 Ben Uri Gallery, Melbourne 191 Beregovo see Beregszász Beregszász, 32, 34, 41–3, 100, 210; JC’s friends from 1, 28, 58, 66, 103, 105, 119, 149, 175,185, 205, 216, 260; geographic and political 3, 10–15, 24, 29, 72, 262; JC in 1–21 passim, 35, 59, 67, 73, 95, 99, 160, 175, 208, 232, 243; Jews in, 1–2, 12–18, 21, 29–31, 48–51, 54, 65, 67–8, 262–3; Kont family in 1–20 passim, 22, 30, 43, 66, 132–3; Mária Koperdák in 43, 75, 100, 231, 262; postwar 1–2, 67–9, 72, 208, 262; Russians (Soviet) in 55–6, 65, 69, 75, 262 Berehovo see Beregszász Bergner, Yosl 175 Bernát,Tusi 68 Bernáth, Aurél 44, 45, 69, 79, 93–4 Bernice, Sister 255 Bevan, Aneurin 97, 145 Black, Robert 111 Blackman, Barbara 175 Blackman, Charles 137, 146, 174–5, 196, 242, 248, 251 Blake Prize 109, 114, 123, 128, 192 Bocklin, Arnold 34 Boleyn, Anne 185–6 Bonnard, Pierre 94 Bonynge, Richard 226 Borlase, Nancy 242 Bowen, Stella 122–3 Boyd family 277–8 Boyd, Arthur 130, 137, 146, 278 Boyd, David 146, 278 Boyd, Guy 278 Boyd, Robin 278 Brack, John 187 Bragg, Eshana 264 Braque, Georges 79, 143 Brender, Joe 201 British Broadcasting Commission 55, 60, 162 Bronzino, Agnolo 28 Brueghel, Pieter the Elder 28, 34, 85, 87, 141, 175, 235 Buchenwald, 278 Burke, Janine 122–3

Burroughs, Edgar Rice 9 Bush, Charles 202 Byrnes, Des 164 Byrnes, Mona 164 Canaletto 28 Capon, Edmund 199–200, 204, 240, 243, 252 Card,The 97 Carington-Smith, Jack 128–9 Caruso, Enrico 9 Cassab, Judy Background birth, 3, 74, 271–2; in Beregszász 1–21, 35, 43, 44, 59, 95, 160–1, 175, 243; Diary 5, 41, 92–4, 101, 112, 154, 183–4, 275–6, 278; in childhood, 18, 19, in war years, 52; 63; psychological need for 133, 139, 175, 177, 200, 206–8, 229, 266; translation of 208–9; family readings of 209–13; publication of 251–3, 267 Education 2, 4, 10, 16–20, 23, 27, 31, 44–5, 47, 99, 276; studies in Prague 2, 27; copies Brueghel 84–5 Exhibitions in Berlin 272; Budapest 3, 271; London 153, 156–9, 172, 178, 236; Melbourne 96, 266; Newcastle 257; Paris 225–9, 233, 236; Perth 249; Sydney 98, 123, 127, 171–2, 182, 242–3, 248, 277 Health 35, 72, 87, 113, 117–19, 134, 142–3, 160, 178, 257, 266, 268 Honours and Prizes 189–90, 194, 204, 259–61, 267. See also Archibald Prize, Nita Kibble Award, Perth Prize,Women’s Weekly Prize and Appendix II Jewish Identity 13–15, 31–2, 36–8, 47–8, 51–61 passim; 74–8, 85–6, 88–9, 104, 114–16, 135, 184, 191–2, 201, 271 Language 10, 12, 86, 99–100, 103–4, 108–9, 118, 136, 177, 208 Landscape Painting in Europe, 18, 93–4; in Australia 110, 154–9, 164, 171, 219, 225, 229, 236, 249–50, 259, 267–8, 271, 276 Marriage, engagement 22–3, 28–9; wedding ceremony 32; and JK’s gambling 35–6, 217, 260; wartime separation 42–5; quarrels and reconciliation 88–9, 126, 217–18, 261; tensions over JC’s career 124–5, 146, 222–35, 245, 252–3; JC’s dependence on JK; 118–19, 134; JK’s dependence on JC 256–7, 265 Migration 1, 76, 78, 81–105 passim, 116–17, 124, 146, 155, 181, 184–5, 189, 194, 204, 231–2, 247, 268; becomes Australian citizen 135–6

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Political Views 79, 94, 131, 135, 194, 196, 247 Portrait Painting 238–45; in Beregszász 17–18; in St Gilgen 92; in London 96–7, 144–5, 150, 160–4, 166–8, 185, 216; in Australia 106, 113–4, 128, 131, 186, 238–45; in Jaipur 151–2; in Thailand 178–81. See also Archibald Prize as Public Figure 131, 162, 189–205 passim, 207 and Sydney Art Scene 108–12, 120, 123, 130, 145, 153, 171–2, 192–3, 197, 220, 236, 275 Wartime Experience 1–3, 29, 42–7, 50–65, 275, 277; as Mária Koperdák, 19–20, 32, 33, 36–7, 43, 75, 231, 262 Works Andrea 114; Charles Blackman 251;Detail of Ormiston 158–9; Flight into Egypt 114; Grandmother 17, 243; Jeffrey Smart 245, Kerosene Lamp 113; Lady in Green 159; Madonna and Child 114; Margaret Woodward 251; Mirage 171; Mother and Child 80, 229; Mr Justice Maxwell 114: My Father and Lili 93, 243; Nora Heysen 258; Ormiston Gorge 158; Péter in the Garden 80, 93–4, 232; Rainbow Valley 233, 250, 259; Salzburg 94; St Gilgen 94; Stanislaus Rapotec 170; Still Life 94, 114; Still Life with Window 94, The Dining room 17; The Salon, 17;Three Kings 115; Uncle Jacob 17–18 Cecile (sitter) 164 Central School of Arts and Crafts, London 112 Cézanne, Paul 28, 80, 139, 155, 239 Chagall, Marc 28, 140 Chamberlain, Neville 29 Charody, John 262–3 Chekhov, Anton 16 Chopin, Frédéric 16 Churcher, Betty 167 Churchill, Lady 145 Churchill,Winston 99, 144–5 Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris 246 Coburn, John 153, 220, 243 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 273, 279 Connor, Kevin 169, 201–2, 243, 258 Connor, Margaret, 202, 258 Contemporary Arts Society 108, 123–4 Cossington Smith, Grace see Smith, Grace Cossington Counihan, Noel 130 Cowen, Sir Zelman 195 Cranach, Lucas 28, 34, 85 Crane Kalman Gallery, London 149, 156–7, 159 Crivelli, Carlo 34

Crooke, Ray 187 Crowley, Grace 112, 127, 130, 168, 196 Crowning of King George,The 161 Csura (maid) 61, 65 Cuyp, Jacob 34 Czóbel, Béla 78–9, 234

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da Vinci, Leonardo 203 Daddi, Bernardo 28 Dargie,William 114, 170, 202 de Chavannes, Pierre see Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre de Gaulle, General 160 de Kooning,Willem 140 de L’Isle, Viscount 186 de Sica, Vittorio 232 Delacroix, Eugène 186 Derain, André 140 Dior, Christian 144 Dobell Prize 259 Dobell,William 106, 108, 112, 130, 169–71, 197–9, 236, 250 Don Giovanni 92 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 16 Doughtney, Charles 111 Dreher-Hagenmacher Brewery, Budapest 46, 67, 69, 73 Drysdale, Bonnie 111, 229 Drysdale, Russell 111, 127, 130, 158, 171, 180, 229, 236 Duffy, Vi 258 Dufy, Raoul 140 Dunlop, Brian 202 Dürer, Albrecht 28, 34 Dyring, Moya 246 East Sydney Technical College 111 Eden, Anthony 144–5 Edward, Prince, Duke of Kent (b.1935) 162–3, 165–6 Edwards, Oscar 183, 242 Eichmann, Adolf 47, 49, 53, 55 El Greco, 25, 34 Elasco factory 120, 126, 132, 137–8, 152–3, 181, 214, 218, 221, 224, 229, 252 Elizabeth, Queen Mother 166 Elizabeth II, Queen 145, 159, 161, 203 Equity Court, N.S.W. 169–70 Ernst Múzeum, Budapest 80 Ervin Gallery, Sydney 242, 251, 258, 277 Evatt, Herbert 197 Evatt, Mary Alice 197 Everage, Edna see Humphries, Barry Fairfax, Lady (Mary) 197, 200

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Fairfax, Sir Warwick 127 Festival of Britain (1951) 91, 96 Fidelio 141 Fine Arts Academy, Cracow 109 Finlay, Marina 258, 259 Finogenov, K. I. 80 Fizelle, Rah 112 Flaubert, Gustave 16 Flotta Lauro (shipping line) 101 Fonteyn, Margot 162 Forbes, Meriel 97 Ford, Ford Madox 122 Foster, Beryl 154 Franz Joseph, Emperor 12, 81 Fraser, Malcolm 195, 232 Friend, Donald 111–12, 170, 242 Gabor, Zsa Zsa 193 Gainsborough,Thomas 162, 233 Gaitskell family 96, 144 Gaitskell, Dora 97, 147, 150 Gaitskell, Hugh 96–7, 144–6, 150–1, 234 Galerie Charpentier 142 Gallery One, Paddington (NSW) 220–3 Galli-Curci, Amelita 9 Garden of the Finzi-Contini 232 Gauguin, Paul 28, 80 Geiger, Ilus 43–4 Geiger, Pista 43 George VI, King 10, 166 George, Prince of Greece and Denmark 166 George, Prince, Duke of Kent (1902–42) 166 Giacco, Francis 259 Gleeson, James 127, 171, 182, 220 Gleghorn,Tom 153 Gloucester, Duchess of 166 Goalen, Barbara 144 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 16 Gorbachev, Mikhail 247 Gorki, Maxim 16 Goya, Francisco 34 Great Expectations 97 Greeks in Australia 115 Greene, Graham 83 Grieg, Edvard 16 Grishin, Sasha, 250 Gryn, Hugo 13, 29–31, 49 Guardi, Francesco 28 Guinness, Alec 97 Guttman, Manyi see Kont, Manyi (née Guttman) Haefliger, Paul 109, 112–13, 128–31, 143, 181–2, 242

Haig, Field-Marshal 185 Hakoah Club, Sydney 260 Hals, Frans 28 Hartung, Hans 142 Hausman, Ibi 146 Havekes, Gerard 175 Havel, Václav 251 Hawke, Bob 249 Haxton, Elaine 112, 131–2, 136, 242 Hebrew University, Jerusalem 192 Heide, Bulleen, Victoria 121 Hele, Ivor 123, 170 Helena Rubinstein Prize 186 Helga (nanny) 87–8, 95–6 Henry VIII, King 185 Herman, Sali 112 Hester, Joy 121–3 Hewett, Dorothy 244–5 Heysen, Hans 122, 158 Heysen, Nora 111, 122–3, 165, 168, 257–8 Himmler, Heinrich 55 Hinder, Frank 202 Hinton, Howard 202 Hitler, Adolf 2, 22, 29, 31, 36–7, 39–42, 47, 55, 84, 133, 231–2, 278 Hobson, Valerie see Profumo, Valerie (née Hobson) Holbein, Hans 161, 185 Holdsworth Gallery, Sydney 248, 265 Hollingrake, Rosalind 122 Holman,W.A.169 Holmes, Richard 273, 278–9 Holocaust 1–2, 178, 210–11, 230–1, 260, 275. See also Auschwitz, Belsen and Buchenwald Horthy, Miklós (1907–1993) 56 Horthy, Admiral Miklós (1868–1957) 29, 36, 47, 55–6 Hughes, Robert 130 Humphries, Barry 187 Hungarian revolution 132 Hungarians in Australia 101–5, 109, 111, 116, 185, 191–4, 231, 253, 260–1 Huth, Dr 119 Ibsen, Henrik 16, 234 Ifould,W. H. 198 Illés, Béla 66, 70 International Red Cross 69 Italians in Australia 115 Izsák, Ági 44, 50 Izsák, Gabi 58 Jenner, Dorothy see Andrea, pseud. Jewish Home for the Aged, Budapest 261

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Jewish Hospital, Budapest 3 Jewish National Fund 192 Jews 260–1; in Australia, 115–16, 191–2, 201, 231; in Austria, 21–2; in Czech Republic, 12– 13, 15, 22, 29–32; in Europe 21–2; in Hungary 2, 12–13, 15, 21–2, 29–32, 37, 39–41, 45, 47–62, 64–5, 67–73, 247, 263; in Italy, 232 John Paul II, Pope 232 Johnston, George 187 Jones, Charles Lloyd see Lloyd Jones, Charles Jung, Carl 209 Juniper, Robert 243, 259 Káldor, John 91, 234 Káldor, Vera 234 Kalina, Ili 105, 253, 260 Kalina, Pali 105, 260 Kállay, Miklós 47 Kálmán, André 149, 158 Kálmán, Elek 103, 105 Kämpfner, Erzsi 50, 69 Kämpfner, Gisella 27, 31, 33, 37, 50, 68, 100 Kämpfner, Irén (Irénke) 50, 69, 85 Kämpfner, Jancsi (János); 2–3, 22–3, 74–77 Attitudes to JC’s career 98, 114, 124–5, 180–1, 200, 224–5, 245, 253, encourages Judy’s early career 22–3, 32–3, 79; dislikes publicity 125, 128–9, 131, 157, 193, 204, 261; opposes Paris exhibition 225–9, 233 Childhood 24, 249; Education 24, 107 Employment 24, 99, 102–3, 105–8, 113, 118–19, 124, 147; as manager for Schönborn estates 24–7, 31, 35–7, 40–1, 46, 70–1, 98, 120, 252, 262; brewery work 46, 67, 69–70, 73–4, 81, 87, 89, 98, 107, 120; and factories in Sydney 120, 126, 132, 137–8, 147, 152–3, 181, 214, 218, 221, 224, 229, 252; retires 218, 223–4; gallery venture 220–4 Health 215–219, 226, 229; last illness and death 254–69 passim Jewish Identity 24, 36–8, 41–2, 47–8, 51–61 passim, 64, 74–8, 85–6, 88–9, 114–16, 135, 268–9 Language 86, 98–9, 103–4 Marriage, engagement 22–3, 28–9; wedding ceremony 32; and JK’s gambling 35–6, 217, 260; wartime separation 42–5; quarrels and reconciliation 88–9, 126, 261, 217–18; tensions over JC’s career 124–5, 146, 222–35, 245, 252–3; JC’s dependence on JK 118–19; 134; JK’s dependence on JC 256–7, 265

Migration 1, 76, 78, 81–105 passim, 116, 124, 146, 155, 184–5, 194, 231–2, 247, 268; becomes Australian citizen 135–6 Political Views 26, 75–6, 80–2, 193–4, 196 Portrait 243, 245 Wartime experience 3, 40–1, 50–4, 56–9, 62, 64–5, 229–30, 232, 252, 276; forced labour 42–8, 54, 67, 70, 99, 261; in hiding 57–61, 64, 70, 99; loss of relatives 68–9, 100; helps Holocaust survivors 61–72, 99, 262; relives wartime trauma 256 Kämpfner, John (ny) (János) , See also Seed, John artistic gifts, 176, 208; birth 3, 75, 134; care for parents 226–7, 255–6, 262–4, 267–71; career 176–7, 184, 208–9, 212–13, 217; childhood, in Europe 80, 85, 87–8, 90, 92–3, 99–100; in Australia 102–3, 108, 120, 124, 132, 137–8, 141–2, 147–8, adolescence 153–4, 160, 162, 173, 176–8, 229; Jewish identity 77–8, 115–16; language 136; marriage and relationships 209, 264; parents’ wartime experience 87, 177–8, 210–11; portrait, 80, 113, 243 Kämpfner, Öecsi 69, 100 Kämpfner, Peter artistic gifts 176; birth, 3, 77, 134, 178; care for parents 218, 226, 255–6, 263, 266–71; career 176–7, 184, 208–9, 212–13, 217, 230, 264; childhood in Europe 80, 85, 87–8, 90, 92–3, 99–100; in Australia 102–4, 108, 120, 124, 132, 137–8, 141–2, 147–8; adolescence 153–4, 160, 162–3, 165, 173, 176–7, 182; Jewish identity 77–8, 115–16, 165; language 136; marriage and relationships 209; parents’ wartime experience 177–8, 210–11, 231; portrait, 80, 93–4, 232; visit to Beregszász 75, 262–3 Kämpfner, Sándor 27, 50, 68–9, 100 Kämpfner, Shan 209 Kämpfner, Shayne 255–6, 260, 264 Kandinsky,Wassily 140, 143 Kaszab, Ilona (Ilus) (née Kont) 1–20 passim, 22, 28, 34–5, 54, 73–4, 118, 134; deportation and death 2, 50–1, 54, 65, 68–9, 72–3, 75–6, 86, 99–100, 134, 178, 183, 232; marriage to Sándor Ságh 43 Kaszab, Imre 3–6, 14–15, 17, 21–3, 34, 86, 90, 100, 135, 148, 154, 208; Jewish identity 76–7; portrait 93, 263 Kaszab, Judit (Juci) see Cassab, Judy Kaszab, Lili (née Kenéz) 6, 34, 77, 100, 185, 231, 243, 248, 263, 271; portrait 93 Kaszab Klinik, Budapest 3

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Katharine, Duchess of Kent 167, 179 Katz, Elek 18 Katz, Jacob 17, 18 Katz, Rózsi see Mandel, Rózsi (née Katz) Keating, Paul 249–51 Keesing, Nancy 191 Kenéz, Lili, see Kaszab, Lili (née Kenéz) Kent, Duchess of, see Katharine, Duchess of Kent; Marina, Princess, Duchess of Kent Kent, Duke of, see Edward, Duke of Kent (b.1935); George, Prince, Duke of Kent Kent, Princess Alexandra of, see Alexandra, Princess, of Kent Kerr, Sir John 195 Kertész, Ilu (née Mermelstein) 28, 31 Khruschev, Nikita 144 Kind Hearts and Coronets 97 Kirby, Justice Michael 239 Klepac, Brenda 242, 258 Klepac, Lou 123, 242–3, 258, 271 Kletzmeyer family 116 Klimt, Gustav 247 Klippel, Robert 243 Klug, Eva 260 Kmetty, János 78–9, 131, 234 Kmit, Michael 108–9, 114, 123, 127–8, 132, 242 Kodály, Zoltán 16 Kohn, Ami (Amika) (née Kont) 7–10, 43, 132–4, 147, 153, 175, 185 Kohn, Jacques 10, 132–5, 147, 153 Kohn, Maya, see Spitzer, Maya (née Kohn) Kokoschka, Oskar 28, 166–7, 247 Komon Gallery, see Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney Komon, Rudy 182, 193, 200, 202–3, 221, 265 Kont, Ami, see Kohn, Ami (Amika) (née Kont) Kont, Berta, 1–20 passim, 22, 33–4, 37, 43, 54, 73, 174, 207; deportation and death, 50–1, 54, 65, 67–9, 100, 134, 263; portrait 17, 175, 243 Kont, Gyuszi (Gyula) 5–10, 21, 28, 68–9, 73, 84, 86, 100, 140–3, 214, 234; in wartime, 43, 54–7, 63–6, 76 Kont, Gyuszi, (Gyula) (b.1947) 87–8, 142, 214, 234, 247, 262 Kont, Manyi (née Guttman) 43, 69, 84, 86–8, 100, 141, 143, 214, 234, 247, 262; wartime 54–60, 63–4, 78 Kont, Pista (István) 2, 5–9, 50–1, 54, 68, 100, 134; and Mária Koperdák 20, 33, 37, 43 Kont family 1–22, passim, 30, 49, 66, 68 Koperdák, Mária 19, 32, 36–8, 40, 68, 185, 231; and Pista Kont, 20, 33, 37, 43; gives identity to JC 51–5, 58–61, 63, 74, 76, 78, 99–100, 205, 207; Peter’s visit to 75, 262–3

Korláth, Endre 46 Kranach, Lucas, see Cranach, Lucas Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 84–5, 141, 175, 235 L. J. Hooker 230 Laing, R. D. 209 Lanceley, Colin 202 Lansdowne, Lord 186 Lansell, G. R. 186 Laverty, Peter 199 Lean, David 97 Lehár, Franz 38 Leicester’s Gallery, London 149 Leopold Museum, Vienna 247 Leser, Barbara 260 Leser, Bernie 251 Lewers, Margo 186, 212, 242 Lister, Moira 163 Liszt, Franz 4, 16 Lloyd Jones, Charles 98, 106, 108, 199, 234 Longstaff, Sir John 169 Louvre, Paris, see Musée du Louvre, Paris Lucie-Smith, Edward 236 Lyall Burton Gallery, Melbourne 266 Lynn, Elwyn, 94, 158, 186, 202, 226–7, 232, 235, 243–5, 250 Macquarie Galleries, Sydney 123, 127, 171–2, 182 Madigan, Rosemary 243 Maharaja of Jaipur 151–2 Maharani of Jaipur 151–2 Malraux, André 178 Mandel, Marianna 18 Mandel, Rózsi (née Katz) 18 Mandel, Sándor (Sanyi) 14, 119, 216 Manessier, Alfred 142 Manet, Édouard 34 Margaret, Princess 144, 159 Marina, Princess, Duchess of Kent 160–3, 166–7, 215–16, 279 Masaryk,Tomá? 11, 13, 81 Matisse, Henri 78–9, 140 Maxwell, Mr Justice 113, 114 McCaughey, Patrick 186, 203 McCrae, Andrew 274 McCrae, Georgiana 274, 279 McDonald, Sheila 108 McInnes,W. B. 168 McKerihan, Roy 116, 120 McLelland, Harry 168 McMahon, Dr Edward 170 Meadmore, Clem 111

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Mein Kampf 231 Meir, Golda 192 Meldrum, Max 121–2, 168, 187 Memling, Hans 34 Menuhin, Hephzibah 91 Menuhin, Yehudi 91–2 Menzies, Sir Robert 145, 178, 180 Mermelstein, Ilu, see Kertész, Ilu (née Mermelstein) Meskenas, Vladas 240 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 139 Michael, Prince, of Kent 162–3, 165–6 Michelangelo, 15, 140 Miles, Bernard 91 Miller, Godfrey 111 Mills, John 97 Missingham, Hal 112, 197–9, 201 Mistinguette 61 Modigliani, Amadeo 140, 232 Modjeska, Drusilla 122–3 Mollison, James 203 Molnár, Zoltán 68 Molvig, Jon 193 Monet, Claude 34, 108, 139–40, 247, 270 Moore, Henry 199–200 Morley, Robert 188 Mozart,Wolfgang Amadeus 38, 92 Munch, Edvard 28 Munich Agreement (1938) 29, 36 Munkács 24, 27, 34, 41–2, 45, 217; deportations from, 50–1; Russians occupy, 56, 72; postwar, 67–9, 71, 72 Murdoch, Dame Elisabeth 240 Murdoch, Rupert 240 Musée du Louvre, Paris 20, 95 Musée Picasso, Paris 246 Musée Rodin, Paris 246 Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest 33–4 Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 165 Museum of Modern Art, New York 139

New Art Centre, London, 236 New South Wales Art Gallery, see Art Gallery of New South Wales Newton, Eric 158 Nicholson, Ben 149 Nita Kibble Award 252 Nobel Prize for Peace 251 Nolan, Cynthia 229 Nolan, Sidney 130, 146, 158, 171, 195, 198, 225, 227, 229, 236 O’Brien, Justin 110 O’Hana, Jacques 183 Oliver, Jan 267 Olle, Andrew 260 Olley, Margaret 136, 170, 243 Olsen, John 107, 109, 111, 130, 136–7, 169, 171, 199, 201–2, 252, 259; and Archibald Prize, 187, 244; and Bakery School 193; on JC landscapes 171, 182 Olsen, Mary 137 Olszanski, George 220 Operation Barbarossa 42 Orban, Desiderius 108–9, 111, 220, 236, 243 Orcagna, Andrea 28 Oriana (ship) 159, 161 Orient Line 159, 161–2 Ostade, Adriaen van 28

Nagy, Panni 258 Namatjira, Albert 154 Napoleon 42 Nasser, Gamel Abdel, President 132 National Gallery of Australia 167, 203–4 National Gallery of Victoria 128 National Gallery, Prague 28 National Library of Australia 274 National Portrait Gallery, London 97 Nazis 2, 21, 39, 56, 58, 60–2, 64, 74, 90, 103 193, 232 Nazism 194, 276 Nazi-Soviet pact (1940) 36

Painting as a Pastime 99 Pakenham, Lady 150 Passmore, John 111 Peacock, Andrew 249 Pearce, Barry 204, 243, 271 Perceval, John 130, 146 Perth Prize 128, 131–2, 136, 183 PetŒ, Bandi 117 Philip, Prince 159 Phumiphon, King of Thailand 178–80 Pianist,The 232 Picasso, Pablo 28, 78, 140, 143, 149, 199–200 Pidgeon,W.E. 128 Piper, John 149, 236 Pissarro, Camille 28, 34, 108 Pitti Gallery 10 Pius XII, Pope 232 Podhering brewery 32, 35, 40–1, 46 Polanski, Roman 232 Pollock, Jackson 140, 203 Pompidou Centre, Paris 246–8 Portia Geach Memorial Award 190 Pringle, John Douglas 144 Proctor,Thea 127 Profumo, John 97

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Profumo, Valerie (née Hobson) 97 Proud, Geoffrey 244–5 Pugh, Clifton 187, 192 Purves, Stuart 265 Pushkin, Alexander 16 Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre 34 Pygmalion 197 Queensland Art Gallery 128, 188 Rachmaninoff, Sergei, 16 Raphael, 34 Rapotec, Andrée 229 Rapotec, Stanislaus 108–9, 111, 165, 167, 170–1, 229, 242–3 Rassl, Ernst 84 Raymond, Vicki 213 Red Cross, International see International Red Cross Redfern Gallery, London 149 Reed, John 165 Rees, Lloyd 108, 202, 220, 242 Rembrandt 25, 28, 98, 140 René (hairdresser) 144, 149, 151, 163 Renoir, Pierre-Auguste 80, 139, 162, 186 Richardson, Sir Ralph 97 Riddell, Elizabeth 243, 252 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 140 Ritchard, Cyril 165 Rivkin, René 240 Roboz,Teddy 234 Roboz, Zsuzsi 146, 162, 233–4 Roland Browse Gallery, London 149 Rose, Bill 111 Rosehill Theatre 91 Rosenhek, Ruth 264 Rothschild Centre, Vienna 85 Rouault, Georges 78 Royal Academy, London 167 Rozsnyai, Mr 101–3 Rozsnyai, Greta 101, 103 Rubens, Peter Paul 25, 28 Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney 182, 188, 221 Rural Bank 116, 120 S. H. Ervin Gallery, see Ervin Gallery, Sydney Ságh, Ilona (Ilus), see Kaszab, Ilona (Ilus) (née Kont) Ságh, Sándor (Sanyi) 2, 43, 50, 54 Salon des Refusés 169, 251, 258–9 Salzburg Festival 92 Scheinberg, Gisella 265 Schiele, Egon 247 Schönborn, Count, see Schönborn-Buchheim,

Georg Erwin Karl Peter, Count Schönborn, Elisabeth, Countess 37 Schönborn, Elisabeth von 36 Schönborn, Kristina, Countess 26, 235 Schönborn-Buchheim, Georg Erwin Karl Peter, Count, 46, 160; dismisses JK 41; early friendship 25–7, 31–2, 36–8; Hungarian estates 24–7, 40; JK’s work with 46, 70–1, 98, 120; postwar friendship 73–5, 84, 100, 214–15, 234–5, 262 Schubert, Franz 4, 8, 250 Schumann, Robert 8, 16 Schwartz, Emil 105 Schwartz, Médi 103 Sculthorpe, Peter 243 Seed, Aprile 267, 269 Seed, Bodhi 230, 253, 255, 264, 266–7, 269, 271 Seed, Greta 209, 213, 230, 264 Seed, John See also Kämpfner, John (ny) (János) career 230–1, 251–3, 264; care for parents 255–6, 261, 263–4, 266–71 Sekers Silk 97 Sekers, Ági 91–2, 96, 234 Sekers, Miki 91–2, 96–7, 106, 143–4, 234 Servaes,William 159, 161 Seurat, Georges 28, 143 Shakespeare,William 16, 141 Shannon, Michael 110 Shaw, Annette 143 Shaw, Bernard 197 Shead, Garry 251 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 273, 279 Sibley, Andrew 187, 193 Sirikit, Queen, of Thailand 178–80 Smart, Jeffrey 110, 113, 228, 244–5 Smith, Bernard 112, 130 Smith, Edward Lucie-, see Lucie-Smith, Edward Smith, Eric 202–3 Smith, Grace Cossington 122–3, 127, 196 Smith, Jack Carington- see Carington-Smith, Jack Smith, Joshua 169–70, 197, 202, 250 Smith, Matthew 149 Smith,Treania 127 Society of Artists 113 Soós, Magdi 248 Soulages, Pierre 142 Sound of Music,The 90 Spiegel, Dr Simi 68 Spiegel, Gizi 68 Spigelman, Jim 201

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Spitzer, George 261 Spitzer, Maya (née Kohn) 9, 10, 132–3, 261 St Luke’s Hospital, Sydney 268 St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney 254–5 St Vincent’s Private Hospital, Sydney, 255–7, 266 Stalin, Joseph 36, 39, 42 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 140 Steen, Jan 28 Stern, Barry 191 Stevenson, Robert Louis 273 Strauss, Feri 22, 27, 51, 68 Stravinsky’s Lunch 122 Strindberg, August 16 Sulman Prize 187, 201 Sutherland, Graham 145, 149, 158, 236 Sutherland, Joan 195, 226 Svéd, Bandi 261 Swanton, Lucy 127 Sybill (housekeeper) 147 Sydney (ship) 100–1 Sydney Boys High School 148, 174, Sydney Opera House 136 Sydney University see University of Sydney Szálasi, Ferenc 56, 61 Szekely, Vera 233 Sztójay, Döme 47, 55

Uffizi Gallery 10 University of Sydney 176, 204, 260 Van Gogh, Vincent 28, 80, 98, 140 van Ostade, Adriaen 28 Varga, Gyuszi 260 Varga, Heddy 253, 260 Vasarely Múzeum, Budapest 3, 271 Velásquez, Diego 34 Vermeer, Jan 259, 270 Vietnamese in Australia 232 Voight, David 202 von Schönborn, Elisabeth, see Schönborn, Elisabeth von Vozáry, Aladár 69 Vuillard, Édouard 94, 140 Waddington’s Gallery, London 149 Wakelin, Roland 127 Waldmann, Anna 241–2 Wallenberg, Raoul 60, 247 Wallis factory 147, 153 Warren, Guy 220 Waterhouse, E.G. 168, 198 West, Morris 239, 243 Westfield 201 Westminster Art School, London 111–12 Westwood, Bryan 244, 250 White Australia policy 115 White Horse Inn 90 White, Patrick 195 Whiteley, Brett 169, 202, 204, 220, 240–1, 244 Whitlam, Gough 194–6 Williams, Emlyn 91 Williams, Fred 169, 200, 227 Wilmot, Lord 97, 106 Wollstonecraft, Mary 273 Wolpers War Rehabilitation Hospital, Sydney 257 Women artists 112, 121–5, 127–8, 158, 165, 167–8, 186, 189, 190–1, 193 Women’s Weekly Prize 128, 144, 167, 190 Woodward, Margaret 251, 257–9 Wynne Prize 187, 201–2

Tampa (ship) 277 Tanguy, Yves 236 Tarzan of the Apes 9, 16 Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart 128 Tate Gallery, London 192, 236 Tatra Quartet 91 Tauber, Ilse 191 Te Kanawa, Kiri 250 Third Man,The 83 Thomas, Daniel 123 Thorneycroft, Carli 145 Thorneycroft, Peter, Baron 144–5 Thornton,Wallace 127 Timár, Kati 27, 59–61, 65, 70, 78, 185, 216, 230– 1, 245, 256, 263, in old age, 234, 248–9, 261 Tintoretto 34 Titian 141, 236 Totis, Juliska 185, 253, 260 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de 28 Townsend, Peter 159 Treaty of Trianon (1920) 11 Trees for Israel Appeal 192 Tucker, Albert 122, 130 Tula, Prince 179 Turner, J. M.W. 236

Zen in the Art of Archery (Eugen Herrigel and D.T.Suzuki) 182 Zugló 59. 60, 64–5 Zurbarán, Francisco de 34

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C A S S A B :

Yoeli, Ági, see Izsak, Agi York, Duchess of, see Elizabeth, Queen Mother

P O R T R A I T