When Christabel Blackman’s mother Barbara turned 90, they celebrated by sifting through Barbara’s old documents. There were diaries, photos, manuscripts (Barbara is a talented writer)  – and a fragile old folder, tied with a ribbon. This held letters from a love long past between Christabel’s parents.

That cache of correspondence was a portal into a decade of art and love between Charles and Barbara Blackman. Set against the burgeoning cultural art scene of 1950s Melbourne, among the soon-to-become legendary artists of the Heide group, Christabel Blackman weaves the story of Charles and Barbara and the influence they had on each other, and on the Australian art world.

This story is told beautifully in Christabel’s book Charles & Barbara Blackman: A Decade of Art and Love, a gorgeous hardback that is an artwork in itself. The handwritten letters are reproduced along with photos and sketches and paintings by Charles Blackman, who died in 2018 and is well and truly in the pantheon of Australian art.

Christabel is a visual artist and fine art conservator. At a young age she was a studio assistant for her father, who taught her painting techniques, composition and the symbolic language of the emotions expressed in art. Charles and Barbara had three children – Auguste, Christabel and Barnaby, all of whom became artists.

Barbara is now 95. I had the pleasure of interviewing her after the publication of her book All My Januaries: Pleasures of Life and Other Essays, which was published by UQP in 2016. I rang her in Canberra after writing my story to do a fact check. A gentleman answered the phone and announced that she was busy hosting “a soiree”. I loved that. I explained that I would call again the following day.

The year before I had met Auguste Blackman at the launch of the exhibition Lure of the Sun: Charles Blackman in Queensland at Queensland Art Gallery. The curator of that exhibition, Michael Hawker, wrote that “the time Charles Blackman spent in Queensland in the late 1950s, late 1960s and the 1980s – and the friendships he made there – were central to his development as one of the most important Australian artists of his generation”.

That exhibition made me aware of the Brisbane connection. Of course, in the south they sometimes airbrush out Queensland when they write about art but Christabel Blackman has accentuated the local connections, as important as they are.

I have yet to meet Christabel but I feel I know her through this beautifully personal book, which is an epistolary love story on the one hand but also an interesting and rigorously researched historical work about the most exciting time in Australian art.

The Blackmans’ time in Melbourne, mixing with the likes of John and Sunday Reed, John Perceval, Georges and Mirka Mora and other artists makes for fascinating reading. This was the formative era of the artists who formed The Antipodeans group. It is fascinating to read about this from a Blackman family member.

And as I have suggested, it’s not just a Melbourne story. For us it’s also a very Queensland story. Barbara was from Brisbane (she went to Brisbane State High) and the couple met and fell in love here. Charles loved wintering here and the Blackmans lived at times in Spring Hill, Indooroopilly and St Lucia.

In fact when Barbara was still in Brisbane, with Charles trying to make his way in Melbourne early on in their relationship, he began writing the most heartfelt, poetic letters to her. These were the letters unearthed by Christabel and Barbara. It must have been a very emotional experience for them. For us these letters are a gold mine, a window into the souls of Charles and Barbara. His plaintive prose was dramatic and romantic:

“I’m naked, lonely and without you, weeping does me no good, and when you come to mind, I shudder, and cry on the shoulder of the nearest thought.”

Who writes like that nowadays? Charles wrote descriptive sketches of his encounters and sentiments to his new love Barbara, who is in turn experiencing her own transformations – the loss of her eyesight due to optic atrophy, life with a matriarchal mother and her growing literary and intellectual ambitions.

In this intimate and immersive account, Christabel reveals her parents’ unswerving devotion and blazing creativity, and shares insights into the iconic people they were becoming. With more than 160 artworks from Charles Blackman, as well as never-before-seen sketches, letters, documents and photos, it is a beautiful and revealing portrait of two people, their art and a world they changed forever.

It’s fascinating to read about the genesis of  Charles Blackman’s various strands of work. I’m particularly fascinated with his series based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Barbara was his Alice and in some of the Alice paintings her failing sight is suggested in the images.

Brisbane art dealer Brian Johnstone held an exhibition of the series at his Bowen Hills Gallery early in the piece and Charles Blackman continued exhibiting in Brisbane later with Philip Bacon Galleries in Fortitude Valley.

It’s interesting to read about the Blackmans’ friendships with the poet Judith Wright and her partner Jack McKinney, who lived together on Tamborine Mountain. Barbara was also a poet and she and Wright were close friends.

It all sounds like artistic and literary name dropping but the fact is that the Blackmans were part of this incredible artistic milieu, which makes this book all the more compelling.

Christabel Blackman skilfully weaves the personal story through what turns out to be a kind of potted history of a decade that produced the greatest flowering of art since the Heidelberg School. It’s a gorgeous book, a precious book. If you have any interest in Australian art, you must have it on your bookshelves.

Charles & Barbara Blackman: A Decade of Art and Love by Christabel Blackman, Thames & Hudson Australia, $59.99