Bob JENYNS

b. Australia, 1944; d. Australia 2015

Last Fellow (Ronald Ryan) 1988

painted timber

2021.61

Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Irwin Hirsh in memory of Etta and Emmanuel Hirsh, 2021

About the artist and their work:

Artist Robert ‘Bob’ Jenyns grew up in Victoria and gained his Diploma in Fine Art from the Caulfield Institute of Technology (1964) and took night classes at the National Gallery School under John Brack. From 1967 he lived in Daylesford with his wife, the sculptor Lorraine Jenyns. Later, they moved to Tasmania, where he taught at the University of Tasmania until 2004. Jenyns exhibited with Watters Gallery, Sydney throughout the 1970s and his drawings, paintings and sculptures had a naïve simplified style and graphic sensibility. His life-sized sculpture The Wedding (c. 1975) was gifted by novelist Sir Patrick White to the Art Gallery of New South Wales and became one of their collection’s iconic works of the 1970s.

Jenyns’ artworks were included in many significant national exhibitions including: the first Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales (1973); the Mildura Sculpture Triennials (1973, 1975 and 1978); the Australian Perspecta, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1981); the 2nd and 4th Australian Sculpture Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (1985 and 1990). In 2007 he won the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award at Werribee Park, Victoria.

This sculpture is a depiction of Ronald Ryan, the last man to be sentenced to death in Australia. He was executed at Pentridge Prison, Melbourne in 1967.