On the morning of the 1st of January, 1901 the Commonwealth of Australia hardly existed. Everything lay ahead, and in that respect our first decade runs exactly parallel with the wider complexities of the Edwardian moment, two inextricable phenomena existing at the same time: on the one hand the view of the reign of King Edward from 1901 to 1910 as an age of indolence, waiting for the disruption, the cataclysm of 1914; but, on the other hand, the exact same period was one of unstoppable social, technological, political change. For us that decade was a crucial one.
In a sense all of that is summed up in this marvelous post-war self portrait by George Washington Lambert, self-portraying as the rackish, Edwardian gentleman: dressing gown, gladioli, the flamboyant gesture, the pipe, the spritely mustaches, and spade-shaped beard. All of these things really recall older aspects of a world that, by the time Lambert was placing himself in it, was lost; so, he is both a man of the present and of the past. In this respect he alludes to the whole complexity of the Edwardian period.
