Giclee, Female, Portrait, Bathing Suit, Art Deco, Female Fashion

Title: “The Adelaide CHRONICLE Christmas 1924” Adelaide.

Technique: Archival Limited Edition Giclee (/350) printed using light-safe fade-resistant inks, and conservation smooth cotton paper, which is lignin-free, therefore acid free.

Size of image = 48 x 32cm (19 1/6 x 12 2/3 inch)

Issued with Archival Limited Edition Certificate

Description: "The South Australian Chronicle" title page was originally published in Photo-lithography of a young lady wearing makeup, in red bathing costume and matching cap, Green Parasol on a sunny, sandy beach under a heavenly blue sky. We may not have had Yuletide Northern hemisphere snow, but this was a grand alternative for celebrating the Festive Season in the new Commonwealth of Australia.

This bathing beauty would have been every bit the new fashion statement, akin to Jean Shrimpton's mini-skirt at Flemington, Melbourne, races in the 1960s.

Published by J. L. Bonython & Co., for the Chronicle, December 1924, Adelaide.

The Paper sold for one shilling.

John Langdon Bonython & his South Australian Newspaper Empire

Sir John Langdon Bonython (1848 – 22 October 1939), editor, newspaper proprietor, philanthropist, Australian politician & journalist, was a Member of the First Australian Parliament, & editor of, for 35 years.Bonython had avoided local politics, but after Australia Federated in 1901 he was nominated to represent the single statewide Division of South Australia as a Protectionist in the Australian House of Representatives at the 1901 election. Among his many civic contributions, Bonython joined the council of the University of Adelaide in 1916, and donated over £50,000 for the construction of a hall, the same Bonython Hall we enjoy today.  From 1916 to 1926, Bonython was also the deputy chairman of the South Australian advisory council of education. He donated £100,000 towards the construction of Parliament House in Adelaide, finished in 1939. Also, sick of looking at the missing civic clock in the Town Hall Bell tower, up the road from his Advertiser offices, in 1933 he donated the three faced clock that we enjoy showing us the time today. The original clock, brought out by the first colonists, was used in Trinity Church, one of the first stone buildings in the the colony, begun in 1838-1845. In a world where owning a clock that showed an accurate time was not affordable to everyone, a public clock was essential to the colonists struggling with this new "Topsy Turvy" of the Southern Hemisphere. On Colonial William Lights Survey of Adelaide, Lot 9 was dedicated to the first Anglican Church of the new freely settled Colony of South Australia. The Town Hall was not completed until 1875.

 The Great War, Women in Society & the Art Deco Era

During the Great War many radical changes took place in societies as the hierarchical institutions were vanquished and women took up the challenge to cover for the men-folk at war. This illustration of a young lady, wearing makeup, a figure hugging bathing costume, digging her naked toes into the soft sand 1924 heralded the radical changes formally introduced a year later. No longer were women satisfied with corset and neck to ankle garments. Fashion was reflecting the growing confidence of women in society. By the mid-1920s leading French artists and designers exhibited their work in the famous ‘Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes’, in Paris, 1925.This Art Deco revolution included, fine art movements, interior design, architecture, and fashion.