Four Continents was created by Douglas Annand in 1962 for the new Australian headquarters of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O). It was embedded in the exterior façade of the former 55 Hunter Street building.
Four Continents, 1963, Douglas Annand (1903 – 1976). Commissioned for the P&O Building at 55 Hunter Street. Photo: Rusty Goat Media.
The relief bronze sculpture was designed as a lintel that sat above the main Hunter Street entrance of the former P&O building. It comprises four figurative elements, each one depicting an animal or creature’s head, united by an abstract surround that echoes biomorphic patterning found in the natural world. Stylistically, the sculpture is very much of its time, its semi-abstracted, simplified forms influenced by the work of leading international sculptors such as Jacob Epstein and Henry Moore, as well as Australian contemporary artists Lyndon Dadswell and the Russian-born Danila Vassilieff.
Each of the four creature heads represents the places serviced by the P&O mail service: Australia (kangaroo), Britain (lion), China (dragon) and India (elephant). The creatures are those featured on the P&O coat of arms, though arranged in a different order. The kangaroo is rendered in a modernist linear style that Annand had developed over three decades in various two-dimensional contexts, including for a 1937 two-shilling coin for the Australian Mint, the 1940 cover of The Home Annual and a 1947 mural created in-situ on the Orient Line’s RMS Orcades in 1949. Curator Anne McDonald notes that Gert Sellheim’s 1947 design for the Qantas corporate emblem “bears an uncanny resemblance to Annand’s original 1937 kangaroo” (McDonald, A. 2001. Douglas Annand: The art of life, National Gallery of Australia, p.32).
Photography: Brett Boardman
During the 1990s refurbishment of the site, Four Continents was relocated from the Hunter Street entrance to the façade of the Castlereagh Street side of the building, adjacent to where it is now installed.
Douglas Annand (1903-1976) was a prominent designer, illustrator and relief sculptor, a key proponent of Australia’s Art Deco movement in 1920s Brisbane and later in Sydney. From the 1930s, Annand received commissions from the Orient Steam Navigation Co. Ltd in London. He also designed Australian advertising material for the Orient Line, producing everything from menu cards to posters, and over the years, established himself as a key influencer of the company’s corporate image. He consulted on interior design and created painted murals for two P&O cruising liners.
In 1956 Annand was the first Australian artist to combine mural painting with bas relief in a major commission for the University of Melbourne (The search for truth, Wilson Hall), a work on which he collaborated with Tom Bass. The same year he combined glass with ceramic tiles in a mural commission for Anzac House in College Street, Sydney., This work typified 1950s Modernism and was cited as a breakthrough in modern glass design (McGrath, R. 1961. Glass in Architecture and Decoration, Architectural Press, London, p. 340).
