Martin Gascoigne, November 21, 1943 - March 30, 2024
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Martin Gascoigne had a lifelong passion for the arts - almost unavoidable for someone whose mother was one of Australia's most revered sculptors.
His father, astronomer Ben Gascoigne, declared art as "a family value", and for Martin, art was the core from which his personality, interests and social connections grew.
Martin Bartholomew Gascoigne was born in Canberra in 1943 to Ben and Rosalie, who went on to become a successful artist. It was a shaky start - as a newborn Martin had major surgery and spent his first two months in a Sydney hospital.
The family lived on Mt Stromlo until Martin was 16. He and his younger siblings, brother Toss and sister Hester, had a typical 1950s childhood. Bike-riding, billy carts, Monopoly, children's library in Wentworth Avenue in Kingston, French cricket, tree houses, running under the hose, meccano - and always pine trees.
Martin's schooling was at Telopea Park Primary and Canberra High School, nowadays the ANU School of Art building. He was a successful athlete, representing the ACT at the NSW junior athletics championship in the hop, step and jump (now the triple jump). In 1961 he enrolled at the Australian National University where after two years studying law, he shifted to arts, graduating with an honours degree in history in 1966.
A lifetime of collecting visual art began at university, when in 1964, he acquired an abstract expressionist work by Erica McGilchrist. Active in student affairs, Martin also undertook the editing of several university publications and was offered the job of production manager at ANU Press. Editing was to stand him in good stead in both his public service career and his retirement activities.
The two family histories he wrote helped inform his magnum opus, Rosalie Gascoigne: A catalogue raisonné published by the ANU Press in 2019. This work, judged by scholars as an outstanding achievement, was built on the database his father Ben had begun in the late 1970s, in which photographs of works (taken by Ben before they were sent for exhibition) were assembled and recorded on cards with their titles, dimensions and first exhibition.
Art historian and curator Deborah Edwards, given access to Ben's database in the 1990s, when she was preparing an exhibition of Rosalie's work for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, noted that the task of "identifying works and then locating them had been substantially done for me".
She said of Martin: "To say that the Rosalie Gascoigne catalogue raisonné is one of the most precise and rigorously researched such documents in the history of Australian art is to state the truth."
Rosalie frequently spoke of finding the "honesty or truth of oneself". Martin's independent interest in contemporary art and his discussions with Rosalie on art matters fed into his appetite for the catalogue project and he too found his "oneself" in his scrupulous encompassing of her artistic life.
Having won a coveted position as a graduate trainee in the Commonwealth Public Service, Martin spent the bulk of his career in the Department of Defence. His salary was splurged on works of art which, to this day, demonstrate the strength of his gaze.
Outside of work he wrote about art for The Canberra Times and reviewed exhibitions on local ABC radio. Joining the Arts Council of Australia's ACT Division, he drafted its press releases and hung exhibitions. In 1968 he made his first overseas trip to the United States and Japan.
Three years later he took what was regarded by his Defence colleagues as a very adventurous step and went to work for the Asian Development Bank in Manila as editor of its publications. Eventually he felt he had to choose between life as an expat or a career in Australia. He chose Australia.
Returning to the Department of Defence in 1974, he worked for the chief editor in the Joint Intelligence Organisation. In 1977 he was posted for three years to Hong Kong as first secretary defence, representing the JIO in the Five Eyes (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK and US) intelligence community.
According to Myra Rowling, a colleague who spoke at his wake, Martin was already regarded as a "mature allrounder who could work well in sometimes difficult posts".
In 1982 Rosalie asked him to stop by the flat occupied by National Gallery curator Mary Eagle (a recent arrival from Melbourne) and pass on an invitation to dinner. They became friends, then lovers, produced a daughter Hester Mary Blanche Gascoigne (Hetty) in 1984, and married in 1989, when Hetty was old enough to sign the marriage certificate.
The three of them inhabited a house transformed by architect Bruce Townsend (Bruce' design won a Robin Boyd commendation), and a garden beautifully shaped by Martin.
On his return from Hong Kong, Martin had moved to Strategic and International Policy Division in Defence Central. His last project was a negotiation between the RAAF and American officials. Myra said "what the RAAF project team prized most was his writing skills."
He retired on November 21, 2003, his 60th birthday; and immediately zoned in on art, family history, friendships, cooking, gardening, bird-watching and above all, writing.
The arts community will remember him for his generosity and support of local artists, galleries and institutions including the ANU.
Martin took great joy in Hetty, her husband Anthony Huckstep (Huck) and in being "Gov" to their trio of little girls, Boe, Anouk and most recently, Juno.
In November 2023, at the time of his 80th birthday, Martin was diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer.
He died peacefully on March 30 and as he wished, his life was celebrated at a private wake in his garden.
- Toss Gascoigne, friends and family.