Flack, Arthur

FLACK, Arthur (1854–1931) painter, architect and artist, was born at Chelsea, Middlesex, London, second son of Henry Flack, a butcher, and Mary Julia Bundy. As a young man after enlisting in the 21^st Lancers, a light cavalry regiment of the British army, under General William Hampton Parlby (1801–1881), son of an engineer and grandson of an architect, he migrated to Queensland where he arrived at Moreton Bay in January 1874. After working at Jimbour and in the Taroom district, he moved to Roma where he married Ellen Letetia Reid, daughter of Thomas Reid who built the first hotel at Bungil Creek prior to the settlement of Roma. Flack worked as bailiff to the Southern District Court and as a painter – both as painter-decorator and as artist. From the mid-1880s, he was associated with W COWDRY, his brother-in-law who was an English-trained ‘draftsman, architect’s and contractor’s assistant’ and worked occasionally as an architect. It was claimed that Flack had received some training at South Kensington Art Schools in London and at Roma he established a reputation for producing illuminated manuscripts, and portraits. By 1898 they were well regarded as a ‘perfect likeness, with well delineated flesh-tints’. As well as exhibiting portraits Flack was also working as a contractor and designing buildings which included the Green Gate and Grande Hotels at Roma, the latter of two storeys with which Flack ‘succeeded in removing from Roma the reproach which formerly attached to the town and its principal public buildings’. Its octagonal bar and small corrugated iron ceilings were innovative. Twice, unsuccessfully, he applied for a position in the Works Department in 1906 and 1909. As his age advanced, Flack was increasingly involved with his artistic pursuits, and in 1922, considered moving his studio to Toowoomba. When he died at Roma, Flack was remembered as a ‘portrait painter of no mean ability’ whose portraits graced the walls of lodges, halls and local residences.