Queer Places:
Académie Colarossi, 10 Rue de la Grande Chaumière, 75006 Paris
Springvale Botanical Cemetery, 600 Princes Hwy, Springvale VIC 3171, Australia

Rupert Charles Wulsten Bunny (September 29, 1864 – May 25, 1947) was one of Australia's most distinguished and internationally successful expatriate painters.

Born in St Kilda, Melbourne, he was the third son of Brice Frederick Bunny, a British Victorian county court judge, and his German mother, Marie Hedwig Dorothea Wulsten. Growing up in an affluent and privileged household, Bunny benefited from a cosmopolitan upbringing that included an extended two-year childhood trip to Europe, leaving him trilingual in English, French, and German. This linguistic and cultural fluency later enabled him to assimilate effortlessly into Parisian society and its artistic circles, distinguishing him from many of his contemporaries.

In early 1881, Bunny briefly enrolled at the University of Melbourne to study civil engineering before pivoting to art, studying at the National Gallery School of Design under O.R. Campbell and George Folingsby alongside artists like Fred McCubbin, Aby Altson, and John Longstaff. At age twenty, he moved to London, spending eighteen months studying under Phillip Calderon at the St John's Wood Art School. After meeting French academic history painter Jean-Paul Laurens in London, Bunny enrolled in Laurens' atelier in Paris, where he studied for two years until 1886. He later refined his training under Pierre Paul Léon Glaize at the Académie Colarossi in 1890.

Bunny's early career was defined by traditional academic training and ambitious, large-scale mythological and religious subjects, characterized by a neo-classical style touched with Pre-Raphaelitism and symbolism. His mastery earned him landmark recognition: he became the first Australian to receive an honorable mention at the Paris Salon of 1890 for Tritons, won a bronze medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle for Burial of St Catherine of Alexandria, and secured a gold medal at the 1901 Victorian Gold Jubilee Exhibition in Bendigo. The French state ultimately acquired thirteen of his works for the Musée du Luxembourg and regional collections, making him the foreign artist most heavily acquired by the French government at the time. His high-profile Parisian network included cultural icons such as Claude Debussy, Auguste Rodin, Sarah Bernhardt, and Nellie Melba, while his deep appreciation for music—fostered by his mother's friendship with Clara Schumann—echoed through musical allusions in works like Nocturne [The Distant Song] and The Sonata.

Following his 1895 meeting with fellow art student Jeanne Heloise Morel—whom he married in 1902—Bunny's style shifted toward Pre-Raphaelite depictions of romantic, indolent female figures, with Morel serving as his eternal muse in works like Jeanne and Returning from the garden. After switching to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1901, his focus evolved toward the leisure and languor of the belle époque, capturing modern Parisian life in canvases such as In the Luxembourg Gardens. Later, influenced by Matisse and Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, his palette grew brighter and his compositions more abstract and rhythmically stylized, as seen in Salomé, Bell Dance, and Fresque. He also embraced Japonisme and orientalism, highlighted by his acclaimed portrait of Japanese actress Madame Sadayakko.

Following the death of his wife in 1933 and the economic strains of the Great Depression, Bunny permanently returned to Australia after nearly fifty years abroad. Settling in South Yarra, Melbourne, he immediately re-engaged with the local art scene. He helped establish the Australian Art Association in 1912, later served as Vice-President of the Contemporary Art Society from 1939 onward, and notably rejected Robert Menzies' invitation to join the conservative Australian Academy of Art. Bunny died in a private hospital on May 25, 1947, at the age of 82, and was interred at the Springvale Botanical Cemetery.

Rupert Bunny's personal life reflects a complex intersection of conventional public structures and queer art history. While he married Jeanne Morel and lived within traditional societal frameworks for decades, prominent art historians—such as Deborah Edwards, curator of the major retrospective Rupert Bunny: Artist in Paris—have noted that his lifestyle aligns with the historical reality that men of the fin-de-siècle period, including celebrated queer figures like Oscar Wilde and Marcel Proust, frequently maintained marriages and emotional or romantic liaisons with women without excluding same-sex attraction. Archival research and early diaries from his formative years in Europe, such as those of Hungarian art student Zsigmond Justh, document Bunny moving within bohemian and queer-adjacent circles. During his early studies, he famously shared a studio with Alastair Cary-Elwes, the grandson of an English baronet, within networks deeply tied to aestheticism and alternative identities. Furthermore, Bunny's sophisticated artistic exploration of classical male beauty, homoerotic undercurrents, and the male gaze has made his oeuvre a subject of significant interest for modern queer art historians examining how expatriates negotiated personal expression away from the rigid moral constraints of colonial Australia.


Alastair CARY-ELWES, Rupert Bunny (c. 1887), oil on canvas, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Gift of Mr C. C. Chisholm Esq., 1962

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