My life has been filled with some extraordinary coincidences, particularly when writing on dead artists, notably my great-uncle Hugh Ramsay (1877–1906). After publishing my book on him in 1988 and curating his first retrospective exhibition in fifty years at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1993, I was appointed the Honorary Art Adviser to the Australian Club. Because of the famous Ellis Rowan murals in the Club, I became familiar with this amazing woman’s life and work, which led me to curate the travelling exhibition The Flower Hunter: Ellis Rowan for the National Library of Australia in 2002. Only after investigating Rowan’s life did I learn that she was the sister-in-law of my grandmother’s best friend, Audrey Ryan, whom I had met countless times in Launceston. If only I had known then that I was destined to help resurrect Ellis Rowan’s reputation.

Patricia Fullerton photographed beneath Hugh Ramsay’s Two girls in white, 1904 (Art Gallery of New South Wales)

In 1995, a Swedish friend paid me a visit and asked me to sign his catalogue of the recent Hugh Ramsay exhibition at the NGV. Then he presented me with a large book, saying, ‘If you can do that for your great-uncle, what can you do for my great-aunt?’

In my hands was the first major publication on the mystic artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944). The book was lavishly illustrated with bold, abstract, arcane images – totally incomprehensible to me, as was the Swedish text. Inside was an article in English describing how Hilma had wowed the critics when she was included in an exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting (1890–1985) at the Los Angeles County Museum in 1986. This was the first time any of her secret works had been shown publicly since her death forty-two years before. Among the eighty-seven artists shown were Kandinsky, Klee, Mondrian, and Malevich – pioneers of Abstractionism who had studied the principles of Theosophy to advance their art. What stunned the critics was that Hilma, through her dedication to the Theosophical Movement and her spiritual guides, had painted pure Abstraction years ahead of Kandinsky, long believed to be the leader of the modern movement.

As the elder daughter of the Admiral of the King’s Fleet, Hilma grew up in the grounds of the Palace in Stockholm. She developed a strong interest in natural science and trained as a traditional artist, exhibiting landscapes, portraits, and botanical illustrations throughout her life. After the early death of her sister, she began attending séances and became seriously involved with the Theosophical Movement created by the Russian Madame Blavatsky as an alternative to the moribund state of religions in the late nineteenth century.

Hilma joined a group of five women who regularly held séances, making contact with spirit ‘Masters’ or ‘Guides’, notably Gregor and Amaliel, who claimed to be of Indian or Tibetan origin. From 1907, under their ‘channelling’, which was combined with a strict diet and meditation, Hilma was instructed to paint twelve enormous abstract paintings in bold colour and arcane symbolism entitled Altar Paintings. Clearly recognising that she had accomplished a task of great spiritual significance but confused about its meaning, she turned to fellow Theosophist Rudolf Steiner, the recent founder of Anthroposophy. Bitterly disappointed that Steiner could not interpret her works, she hid them in a secret Temple until her death in 1944. In her will she entrusted them to her nephew Erik (who established The Hilma af Klint Foundation), and stipulated that they were not to be shown until twenty years after her death, when the world might be more able to appreciate their significance. In 2018, they were exhibited at the New York Guggenheim, to positive reviews and record crowds. From almost total obscurity, Hilma has quickly emerged as a superstar of modern art.

In 1995, shortly after receiving Hilma’s book, my friend Mary Eagle, then Curator of Australian Art at the National Gallery of Australia, phoned to say that Olle Granath, Director of the Stockholm Museum, was coming to Melbourne. Would I drive him to the Yarra Valley and show him some wineries?

After a tour of the region, including a visit to the Healesville Sanctuary for a koala cuddle, we lunched at Yering, the first vineyard established in Victoria by the pioneering Ryrie family. There I felt further connections. Gran’s sister, Grace, had married her cousin William Ryrie in 1902, and the grand Victorian portraits of his ancestors hung on Mother’s walls until, forced to move to higher care, she presented them to the State Library of Victoria in 2002. When I returned Granath to his hotel and produced the Hilma book, which I had been keeping up my sleeve, he was flabbergasted: ‘I’ve been involved in the Swedish art world for a long time, but I’ve never been able to see af Klint’s work. They never come on the open market and they’re housed in a secret location!’ I explained that I had only just become aware of her works and would be interested in visiting Sweden, since I had a strong link to a member of her family.

In 1996, I went to Stockholm to meet Gustaf af Klint, Hilma's nephew and current head of the Klint Foundation. He was naturally intent on guarding her works from the public; after much interrogation and validation of my credentials, we drove miles from the city to an unknown location, which I later discovered to be the Rudolf Steiner Institute. Overwhelmed by the vast scale, colour, and impact of her works leaning on walls, many others secreted in crates or on shelves, I felt privileged to be one of the few to see her collection in situ since her death. Naturally, I ensured that Olle Granath was finally able to see them for the first time.

Gustaf al Klint in front of Hilma af Klint’s Group IV, The ten largest, no 3, youth, 1907 during his visit with the author in 1996 (photograph by Patricia Fullerton)

In 1997, I managed to get two works by Hilma into the exhibition Beyond Belief: Modern Art and the Religious Imagination at the National Gallery of Victoria. The curator was Rosemary Crumlin, a Catholic nun who had been the nanny to a young Lachlan Murdoch, so funding for the show was not an issue. Serendipitously, Crumlin and I had crossed paths in 1993 when we were the judges of the inaugural Hugh Ramsay Prize for Portraiture at the Ave Maria College, formerly the Ramsay home, 'Clydebank', in Essendon.

Gustaf af Klint came to Melbourne for the opening of the exhibition, and we gave lectures on Hilma in several venues. During our talk at the National Gallery of Victoria, a feisty young lady spoke up. Micky Allen, a contemporary painter of mystic images, claimed that she was in touch with the head of the Theosophical Society in Daylesford, where Shara Tan would be able to help interpret Hilma’s symbolism. Shortly after, Gustaf and I visited the Theosophical Temple in Daylesford. On entering the Temple, I suddenly had a strong feeling of déjà vu. Sitting in a wheelchair and clasping a silver staff with an amethyst on top was a large Swedish lady – Shan Tara as she was called when I had attended her Theosophical sessions in the 1970s. Why had she changed her name? Ever since she told me in a Past Life reading that I had once been Madame de Pompadour, I had lost faith in her powers, but her Theosophical interpretations of Hilma’s images were extraordinary. Gustaf claimed that she was one of the most intuitive readers of her images to date.

Our last presentation was at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, where Nick Waterlow, director of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery, and Ross Mellick had just curated an exhibition, Spirit and Place. Although the show had finished, many of the works were still on display. One of the most intriguing artists in the show was the British painter Georgiana Houghton (1814–84), who in the mid-nineteenth century had painted exquisite images by Spiritual Guides. Little did I know that her sacred works hung in the Victorian Spiritualist Union where I had experienced my first séance thirty years before.

Back in Melbourne, Gustaf and I were given a tour of more than one hundred of Houghton’s works at the Victorian Spiritualist Union in A’Beckett Street. Houghton is generally regarded as the pioneer of Spirit Art. As a Spiritualist medium in the 1860s and 1870s, she used a pendulum to automatically produce the most astonishing series of abstract watercolours with intricate, web-like layerings of swirls and hues. The Victorian Spiritualist Union, established in 1870, attracted a number of eminent members, including the future prime minister Alfred Deakin, who was president of the Union for many years before committing himself to politics. Deakin may have been responsible for purchasing this unprecedented collection of Houghton’s work. Since our visit they have been the subject of a major exhibition at Monash University and at the prestigious Courtauld Institute in London.

In 2019, Sue Cramer, curator at the Heide Gallery of Modern Art, rang me to say that she had been in touch with the Hilma af Klint Foundation in anticipation of a Hilma travelling exhibition to New Zealand and Australia in 2021. It would start in Wellington, travel to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and then (it was hoped at the time) come to Heide. After several meetings, I suggested that we attend a séance at the Victorian Spiritualist Union. This was no longer situated in A’Beckett Street but in a modern building in North Melbourne. We were seated at tables of twelve under bright neon lights, with coffee and sandwiches. The séance had none of the mysterious ambience of the old address.

Fifty years ago, about twenty of us, arranged in a circle, had sat in darkness, hands on knees, ‘so that the spirits could creep up’. In a trance, the medium went around the room delivering messages from those who had ‘passed over’. I can still recall the emotional responses of those who had received messages from deceased husbands, wives, children or other loved ones.

The medium called me a ‘non-believer’ but insisted that I had strong connections that wanted to make contact. A happy teenager, I had no thought of anyone who had died. Suddenly, the medium was speaking about a very thin woman with Titian hair. I sat bolt upright – my godmother/aunt had died of a wasting disease and her long red hair had been cut off. I had the switch in a drawer by my bed. I would keep it there until Mother’s death, when I placed it in her coffin. With it I enclosed a copy of my book on Hugh Ramsay. We doubted that Mother had ever read it in her lifetime, since her husband, Spot, whose taste was more for thrillers and whodunits, declared it ‘boring’.

Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings runs from 12 June to 19 September 2021 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Julie Ewington’s review of the exhibition will follow.

This article is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.