‘Decorating the heavens’: a new Leonard French window sheds light on his masterpiece

National Gallery of Victoria In the 1950s and 60s, artists, writers and musicians were drawn to the islands in the Aegean, including Australian writers George Johnston and Charmian Clift, who took up residence on the Greek island of Hydra, as did the young Leonard Cohen.

In 1962, Melbourne-born Australian artist Leonard French spent six months on Samos, with his wife Helen, his son Marc, and me, then just a baby.

While there, a fortune teller told him he would “decorate the heavens”.

It proved to be an apt prediction, and became a much-retold family story.

In 1968, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) opened on St Kilda Road with my father’s monumental stained-glass ceiling illuminating its Great Hall.

He had created what is still believed to be “ the world’s largest cut-glass ceiling ”.

The heavens had, indeed, been decorated.

One of my childhood memories is of my father laying out the thick pieces of glass on vast glowing light boxes, then adding sawdust in between the glass to see the effect.

I also recall visiting the Great Hall while the ceiling was being constructed, and later lying on the floor beside him, gazing up at his work: the giant turtles at either end, surrounded by birds and partly obscured serpents, all facing a massive sun at its centre.

Leonard French’s ceiling work for the National Gallery of Victoria’s Great Hall.

National Gallery of Victoria The NGV has just installed another work by my late father at the Ian Potter Centre, its Australian art museum at Federation Square.

I had not seen it before, and coming face to face with it for the first time was thrilling; it is spectacular! To view it, visitors ride the escalator to the right of the gallery entrance and slowly approach the work.

It looks so perfect there, one could imagine it was commissioned for that space.

A key to deciphering a masterpiece It proves to be a fabulous companion to the original NGV commission.