Important Australian + International Fine Art by Deutscher and Hackett

Important Australian and International Fine Art AUCTION • MELBOURNE • 21 APRIL 2021

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Important Australian and International Fine Art Lots 1 – 80

IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN + INTERNATIONAL ART AUCTION • MELBOURNE • 21 APRIL 2021

MELBOURNE • AUCTION + VIEWING 105 commercial road, south yarra, victoria, 3141 telephone: 03 9865 6333 • facsimile: 03 9865 6344 info@deutscherandhackett.com

SYDNEY • VIEWING 16 goodhope street, paddington, new south wales, 2021 telephone: 02 9287 0600 • facsimile: 02 9287 0611 info@deutscherandhackett.com

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LOTS 1 – 80 WEDNESDAY 21 APRIL 2021 7:00pm 105 commercial road south yarra, vic telephone: 03 9865 6333 THURSDAY 8 – SUNDAY 11 APRIL 16 goodhope street paddington, nsw telephone: 02 9287 0600 11:00am – 6:00pm THURSDAY 15 – TUESDAY 20 APRIL 105 commercial road south yarra, vic telephone: 03 9865 6333 11:00am – 6:00pm email bids to: info@deutscherandhackett.com telephone: 03 9865 6333 fax: 03 9865 6344 telephone bid form – p. 151 absentee bid form – p. 152 www.deutscherandhackett.com/watch-live-auction

www.deutscherandhackett.com • info@deutscherandhackett.com

specialists

CHRIS DEUTSCHER executive director — melbourne Chris is a graduate of Melbourne University and has over 40 years art dealing, auction and valuation experience as Director of Deutscher Fine Art and subsequently as co-founder and Executive Director of Deutscher~Menzies. He has extensively advised private, corporate and museum art collections and been responsible for numerous Australian art publications and landmark exhibitions. He is also an approved valuer under the Cultural Gifts Program. FIONA HAYWARD senior art specialist After completing a Bachelor of Arts at Monash University, Fiona worked at Niagara Galleries in Melbourne, leaving to join the newly established Melbourne auction rooms of Christie’s in 1990, rising to become an Associate Director. In 2006, Fiona joined Sotheby’s International as a Senior Paintings Specialist and later Deputy Director. In 2009, Sotheby’s International left the Australian auction market and established a franchise agreement with Sotheby’s Australia, where Fiona remained until the end of 2019 as a Senior Specialist in Australian Art. At the end of the franchise agreement with Sotheby’s Australia, Smith & Singer was established where Fiona worked until the end of 2020.

CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE head of aboriginal art and senior art specialist Crispin holds a Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts and History) from Monash University. In 1995, he began working for Sotheby’s Australia, where he became the representative for Aboriginal art in Melbourne. In 2006 Crispin joined Joel Fine Art as head of Aboriginal and Contemporary Art and later was appointed head of the Sydney office. He possesses extensive knowledge of Aboriginal art and has over 20 years experience in the Australian fine art auction market.

ALEX CRESWICK head of finance With a Bachelor of Business Accounting at RMIT, Alex has almost 15 years experience within financial management roles. He has spent much of his early years within the corporate sector with companies such as IBM, Macquarie Bank and ANZ. With a strong passion for the arts more recently he was the Financial Controller for Ross Mollison Group, a leading provider of marketing services to the performing arts. Alex is currently completing his CPA.

CLAIRE KURZMANN head of online sales, gallery manager - melbourne Claire has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Art) from the University of Melbourne. She gained several years’ experience working as Gallery Assistant at Metro Gallery, Melbourne, assisting with exhibitions, events and marketing. She has acted as Artist Liaison for the Arts Centre Melbourne, coordinating aspects of artist care and has gained experience as a Studio Assistant for a number of emerging Australian artists.

ROGER McILROY head auctioneer Roger was the Chairman, Managing Director and auctioneer for Christie’s Australia and Asia from 1989 to 2006, having joined the firm in London in 1977. He presided over many significant auctions, including Alan Bond’s Dallhold Collection (1992) and The Harold E. Mertz Collection of Australian Art (2000). Since 2006, Roger has built a highly distinguished art consultancy in Australian and International works of art. Roger will continue to independently operate his privately-owned art dealing and consultancy business alongside his role at Deutscher and Hackett.

specialists

DAMIAN HACKETT executive director — sydney Damian has over 30 years experience in public and commercial galleries and the fine art auction market. After completing a BA (Visual Arts) at the University of New England, he was Assistant Director of the Gold Coast City Art Gallery and in 1993 joined Rex Irwin Art Dealer, a leading commercial gallery in Sydney. In 2001, Damian moved into the fine art auction market as Head of Australian and International art for Phillips de Pury and Luxembourg, and from 2002 – 2006 was National Director of Deutscher~Menzies.

HENRY MULHOLLAND senior art specialist Henry Mulholland is a graduate of the National Art School in Sydney, and has had a successful career as an exhibiting artist. Since 2000, Henry has also been a regular art critic on ABC Radio 702. He was artistic advisor to the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust Basil Sellers Sculpture Project, and since 2007 a regular feature of Sculpture by the Sea, leading tours for corporate stakeholders and conducting artist talks in Sydney, Tasmania and New Zealand. Prior to joining Deutscher & Hackett, Henry’s fine art consultancy provided a range of services, with a particular focus on collection management and acquiring artworks for clients on the secondary market.

LUCIE REEVES-SMITH contemporary art specialist and gallery manager – sydney Lucie completed her studies in Belgium, obtaining Masters of Arts in Art History (Modern and Contemporary Art), together with a Bachelors of Art History, Archaeology and Musicology from the Université Catholique de Louvain. Since returning to Australia in 2014, she has gained sound experience in cataloguing, research and arts writing through various roles with the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre and with private art advisory firms Tutela Capital and LoveArt International.

VERONICA ANGELATOS senior researcher & writer Veronica has a Master of Arts (Art Curatorship and Museum Management), together with a Bachelor of Arts/Law (Honours) and Diploma of Modern Languages from the University of Melbourne. She has strong curatorial and research expertise, having worked at various art museums including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice and National Gallery of Victoria, and more recently, in the commercial sphere as Senior Art Specialist at Deutscher~Menzies. She is also the author of numerous articles and publications on Australian and International Art.

DANNY KNEEBONE design and photography manager Danny Kneebone is an award-winning Photographer and Graphic Designer with over 30 years of experience. He was Art Director at Christie’s Australia from 19982007 and then Senior Designer and Photographer at Sotheby’s Australia from 2007-2019. Danny specialises in design, photography, colour management and production and has won many print and design awards for his work. Danny is also an artist in his own right, holding regular solo and group exhibitions, and winning over 50 national and international photography awards.

SCOTT LIVESEY auctioneer Scott Livesey began his career in fine art with Leonard Joel Auctions from 1988 to 1994 before moving to Sotheby’s Australia in 1994, as auctioneer and specialist in Australian Art. Scott founded his eponymous gallery in 2000, which represents both emerging and established contemporary Australian artists, and includes a regular exhibition program of indigenous Art. Along with running his contemporary art gallery, Scott has been an auctioneer for Deutscher and Hackett since 2010.

specialists for this auction

Chris Deutscher 0411 350 150 Damian Hackett 0422 811 034 Henry Mulholland 0424 487 738 Fiona Hayward 0417 957 590 Crispin Gutteridge 0411 883 052 AUCTIONEER Roger McIlroy Scott Livesey ADMINISTRATION AND ACCOUNTS Alex Creswick (Melbourne) 03 9865 6333 Lucie Reeves-Smith (Sydney) 02 9287 0600 ABSENTEE AND TELEPHONE BIDS Eliza Burton 03 9865 6333 please complete the absentee bid form or telephone bid form SHIPPING Veronica Angelatos 03 9865 6333 CATALOGUE SUBSCRIPTIONS Eliza Burton 03 9865 6333

contents lots 1 – 80

page

prospective buyers and sellers guide

page 144

conditions of auction and sale

page 146

catalogue subscription form

page 149

attendee pre-registration form

page 150

telephone bid form

page 151

absentee bid form

page 152

index

page 167

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CAROL JERREMS: THE PROPERTY OF CATRIONA [KATRINA] BROWN, MEXICO LOTS 1 – 5 In 1975, Carol Jerrems discussed with friend Catriona Brown the latter’s need for headshots for her portfolio. Brown was an aspiring actor and Jerrems an up-and-coming photographic artist. In return for the conventional headshots Jerrems suggested Brown pose for her and the iconic images taken at Vale and Mozart Streets in St Kilda came into being. As Brown relates: ‘Vale Street was the home of my girlfriend Jacky Trusty…The jacket and ankh I was wearing belonged to her, they dressed me for the shoot. Jacky was also good friends with Carol… charming and insightful she was well known in the club and music scene… After the shoot at Vale Street, we moved to Mozart Street where our friend Ian Macrae lived…’1 It is clear from looking at Jerrems’ proof sheets how events unfolded during the afternoon. Brown arrived at Vale Street to find two teenaged boys, Mark Lean and Jon Bourke with Jerrems. They were students from Heidelberg Technical School where Jerrems taught in 1973 and 74. Jerrems had involved herself closely in the lives of her pupils, photographing and filming them, meeting them out of school. Variously described as sharpies and underprivileged, the boys and their peers were willing participants. Jerrems was only ten years older and brought an expansiveness to life and learning at the school. In March 1975, the two boys are encouraged to remove their t-shirts and sweaters. Framed by leaves and set against a dark ground the environment becomes enigmatic. Catriona removes her top and her pale face and body move forward to centre stage. The boys flank her yet recede, their gazes sombre. It has taken some time to get to this point. Brown is luminescent, her eyes are completely engaged with the camera and therefore with us. The silver ankh at her neck signals life and power. In a 1999 interview Brown said, ‘[Carol] chose the boys being angry, cunning, and watching carefully, guarding themselves against my openness, directness and honesty… She was a great observer of people.’2 This applies as much to Mozart Street as to Vale Street. In Mozart Street, the boys mirror each other in the background while Catriona is nonchalant in the foreground. Jerrems’ choreography is evident in many of her most successful photographs. Her involvement with moving as much as still image, her life within the art and political scenes of the 1970s, brought a very different inflection to how she used the photographic medium. Rather than the standard mid-twentieth century hit and run photojournalism,

Jerrems had learnt from filmmaking and photodocumentary how to forge her own approach to engaging with her subjects. Unlike the compelling and off-centred style of Diane Arbus, or the overriding search for the single unique image, Jerrems noted her ‘interest in photographic filmmaking (filmic photography) [and]sequential imagery….’3 In 1977 she wrote, ‘I try to reveal something about people, because they are so separate, so isolated, maybe it’s a way of bringing people together. I don’t want to exploit people. I care about them.’4 Jerrems used Vale Street in different ways, from the crop which focusses on Catriona Brown and Mark Lean only, to the 1976 Juliet holding Vale Street.5 Variations arise with other images from the shoot, specifically Mark Lean with Catriona where the two are clothed, relaxed and can be read as two young people simply horsing around. The pairing of this photograph with the cropped version of Vale Street is instructive. Both are vertical format and the same subjects yet they read very differently – in the first, the fair woman is against a dark ground, the dark boy against a pale ground. Catriona stands behind with her hands on Mark’s arm and chest, her pale jacket in contrast to his dark sweater. In the cropped version of Vale Street positions are reversed, the clothing gone and expressions otherwise. The powerful ambiguity of the photographic image is fully revealed. Jerrems had graduated from Prahran Technical School in 1971 and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne acquired her Alphabet Folio that year. She was the first woman photographer to enter the collection. Filmmaker Paul Cox had been an important teacher and mentor at Prahran encouraging his students to take a holistic and spontaneous approach to photography and film, an ethos Jerrems fully embraced. For the duration of the 1970s until her premature death from BuddChiari syndrome in 1980, Jerrems was highly active as a teacher, photographer and filmmaker dedicated to social change. The major archive of her work is held at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. 1. Correspondence between Catriona Brown and Chris Deutscher 2021 2. King, N., ed. Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang, Heide Museum of Modern Art & Schwartz City, Melbourne 2010 p. 47 3. Ibid p. 21 4. cs.nga.gov.au/detail.cfm?irn=96378 accessed 24/03/2021 5. Op. cit. various essays deal in depth with the different aspects of Jerrems’ work and the evolution of Vale Street JUDY ANNEAR

Judy Annear is a writer and researcher based in Victoria on Dja Dja Wurrung land, never ceded. She is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne School of Culture and Communication.

CAROL JERREMS (Carol Jerrems, self portrait), 1973 gelatin silver photograph 17.8 x 25.4 cm (image) 28.0 h x 35.6 cm (sheet) Gift of Mrs Joy Jerrems 1981 © Ken Jerrems and the Estate of Lance Jerrems Collection: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

CAROL JERREMS (1949 – 1980) MOZART STREET, 1975 silver gelatin photograph 13.5 x 20.0 cm (image) edition: 1/9 signed, dated, numbered and inscribed with title below image: MOZART STREET. / 1 / 9 / JERREMS, 1975. ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000

PROVENANCE Gift from the artist, Melbourne, 1975 Catriona [Katrina] Brown, Mexico EXHIBITED A Decade of Australian Photography 1972–1982: Philip Morris Arts Grant at the Australian National Gallery, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 8 October 1983 – 29 January 1984 (another example) Living in the 70s: Photographs by Carol Jerrems, Plimsoll Gallery, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 20 July – 12 August 1990; and touring nationally (another example) Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 31 July – 31 October 2010 (another example) Carol Jerrems: Photographic Artist 1968 – 1978, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 25 August 2012 – 28 January 2013; and touring nationally (another example) LITERATURE King, N. (ed.), Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne and Schwartz City, Melbourne, 2010, p. 131 (illus., another example) RELATED WORK Another example of this work is held in collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

CAROL JERREMS (1949 – 1980) MARK LEAN, WITH KATRINA AND JOHN, 1975 (also known as ‘WAITING’) silver gelatin photograph 13.5 x 20.0 cm (image) edition: 2/9 signed, dated, numbered and inscribed with title below image: MARK LEAN, WITH KATRINA AND JOHN. / 2/9 JERREMS, 1975. ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000

PROVENANCE Gift from the artist, Melbourne, 1975 Catriona [Katrina] Brown, Mexico EXHIBITED A Decade of Australian Photography 1972–1982: Philip Morris Arts Grant at the Australian National Gallery, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 8 October 1983 – 29 January 1984 (another example) Living in the 70s: Photographs by Carol Jerrems, Plimsoll Gallery, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 20 July – 12 August 1990; and touring nationally (another example) Carol Jerrems: Photographic Artist 1968 – 1978, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 25 August 2012 – 28 January 2013; and touring nationally (another example, as ‘Waiting’) Public Image, Private Lives: Family, Friends and Self in Photography, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 5 February – 3 July 2016 (another example, as ‘Waiting’) LITERATURE King, N. (ed.), Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne and Schwartz City, Melbourne, 2010, pp. 128 -129 (illus., another example, as ‘Waiting’) RELATED WORK Other examples of this work are held in collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (as ‘Waiting’)

CAROL JERREMS

(1949 – 1980) VALE STREET, 1975 silver gelatin photograph 13.5 x 20.0 cm (image) edition: 3/9 signed, dated and inscribed with title below image: VALE STREET. / 3/ 9 JERREMS, 1975. ESTIMATE: $80,000 – 120,000

EXHIBITED (SELECTED) Carol Jerrems, Photographers’ Gallery, Melbourne, December 1975 – January 1976 (another example) Three Years On: Acquisitions 1978–81, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 15 October – 1 December 1981, cat. 24 (another example) A Decade of Australian Photography 1972–1982: Philip Morris Arts Grant, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 8 October 1983 – 29 January 1984 (another example) Living in the 70s: Photographs by Carol Jerrems, Plimsoll Gallery, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 20 July – 12 August 1990; and touring nationally (another example) World Without End: Photography and the 20th Century, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2 December 2000 – 25 February 2001 (another example) Federation: Australian Art and Society 1901–2001, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 8 December – 11 February 2001; and touring nationally (another example) Australian Postwar Photodocumentary, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 12 June – 8 August 2004 (another example) Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 31 July – 31 October 2010 (another example) Carol Jerrems: Photographic Artist, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 25 August 2012 – 28 January 2013; and touring nationally (another example) The Photograph and Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 21 March – 8 June 2015, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 4 June – 11 October 2015 (another example) Carol Jerrems: Portrait of a Decade, Smith and Singer, Melbourne, 27 February – 20 March 2020; Smith and Singer, Sydney, 24 March – 17 April 2020, cat. 5 (another example)

LITERATURE Le Guay, L. (ed.), Australian Photography 1976, Globe Publishing, Sydney, 1976, p. 83 (illus., another example) Mollison, J., Australian Photographers: The Philip Morris Collection, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 1979, cover and p.96 (illus., another example) Ennis, H., and Jenyns, B., Living in the 70s: Photographs by Carol Jerrems, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 1990, n.p. (illus., another example) Annear, A., World Without End: Photography and the 20th Century, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2000, pp. 23, 122 (illus., another example) McDonald, J., Federation: Australian Art and Society 1901–2001, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2000, pp. 220, 221 (illus., another example) King, N. (ed.), Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne and Schwartz City, Melbourne, 2010, cover (illus., another example), pp. 130, 131, 132–133 (illus., another example) Annear, J., The Photograph and Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2015, pp. 46, 50, 108 (illus. another example), 295 RELATED WORK Other examples of this photograph are held in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Victoria; Murray Art Museum, Albury; and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

CAROL JERREMS (1949 – 1980) VALE STREET (CROPPED VERSION), 1975 silver gelatin photograph 24.5 x 19.5 cm (image) artist’s stamp verso ESTIMATE: 20,000 – 30,000

PROVENANCE Gift from the artist, Melbourne, 1975 Catriona [Katrina] Brown, Mexico LITERATURE King, N. (ed.), Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne and Schwartz City, Melbourne, 2010, p. 49 (illus., another example)

CAROL JERREMS (1949 – 1980) MARK LEAN AND KATRINA (CROPPED VERSION),1975 silver gelatin photograph 24.5 x 19.5 cm (image) artist’s stamp verso

PROVENANCE Gift from the artist, Melbourne, 1975 Catriona [Katrina] Brown, Mexico

ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000

ALEX KATZ

born 1927, American SELF PORTRAIT, c.1977 oil on composition board 48.0 x 28.5 cm ESTIMATE: $70,000 – 90,000

PROVENANCE Robert Miller Gallery, New York (gallery stamp verso) Ray Hughes, Sydney, acquired from the above mid 1980s The Estate of Ray Hughes, Sydney RELATED WORK: Self Portrait (Primary Title), 1977, oil on canvas, 182.88 × 152.4 cm, in the collection of Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, USA, object Number: 85.551 Cheerfully posing in front of a bright, canary-yellow background, contemporary painter Alex Katz presents himself to the world as a charismatic and suave anchor-man, a persona fashioned on the popular Latino television icon Ricardo Montalbán. This small and rare Self Portrait, c.1977 is an oil on Masonite study for Self Portrait (Primary Title), 1977, held in the permanent collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in Richmond, Virginia, USA. This image was also reprised in a black and white aquatint, Self Portrait, 1978, which is held in the collections of many institutions across America, including the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. With an unbuttoned leisure suit displaying a hairy chest, Katz audaciously displays his machismo and challenges his artistic competitors and detractors. Unapologetic about the brashness of his artwork, Katz describes his process as ‘bringing the image to the surface of a picture, to intensify its frontal pressure so as to make it project more strongly or aggressively and immediately’. 1 Remaining steadfast in his resolve to distinguish himself from painterly fashions, Katz chose to portray the modern figure from within his immediate circle, against tides of dogmatic trends and theoretical battles in Modern painting. Over forty years of tireless artistic production, Katz has become renowned for a style that is truly unique (and has been described, tongue-in-cheek, as ‘Katzism’). With an ultra-cool detachment, his figures are distilled into flat and graphic shapes, often enlarged to fill enormous canvases. In Katz’s stylish world, everyone wears the latest clothes and glides hedonistically through life, utterly carefree. Light floods the canvas, frames are tightly cropped and colour

is fresh from the tube. In this pared-back aesthetic reminiscent of commercial art, Katz’s portraits sought to portray new kind of American social realism, with the artist himself, his wife Ada and son Vincent as the prototypical all-American family, holding court in the High Society of the artworld. Katz is unashamed by his focus on the superficial, ‘I can’t think of anything more exciting than the surface of things. Just appearance.’ 2 For Katz, the existentialist rhetoric and unbridled gesturalism of his New York School colleagues was facile, and, predicting a crisis, he distanced himself as much as possible from sentimentality and pure formalism. He instead forged a new path in synthesising two divergent tendencies in painting: truth to the perception of the real world and truth to the two-dimensional reality of the picture plane. Moving towards a largescale painting, Katz smooths out his brushwork and simplifies facial features into discrete flat areas, thinly painted with very little modular colour. The fluidity of his line, the animated quality of closely cropped canvases, and an exact recording of light compensates for Katz’s lack of detail and spatial depth. The considered combinations of adjacent colour fields, as evidenced by the lower section of this painting used by the artist as a trial colour palette, aligns Katz’s artistic practice more closely to that of Colour Field painters and Hard-Edge Abstractionists. This Self Portrait is much warmer and looser than its related painting. Here, Katz has tried to record visual facts, particularly of light and colour, and attempts to define the economy of means that will enable him to create one of his most well-known self-portraits. Perhaps painted from nature, in a mirror, Katz has provided the minimum number of details sufficient to capture the sitter’s distinctive features, expression and gesture. In this case, the pink-lipped gleaming smile, the sparkling eyes, hairy chest and popped collar are enough to convey the archetype behind which Katz-the-artist hides. 1. The artist, cited in Sandler, I., Alex Katz: A Retrospective, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1998, p. 19 2. The artist, cited in Horsfield, K., and Blumenthal, L., Profile: Alex Katz, New York, vol. 2, no. 1, Jan 1982, p. 9 LUCIE REEVES-SMITH

ALEX KATZ

born 1927, American ADA WITH HEAD BAND AND LIPS, c.1968 oil on composition board 27.5 x 30.0 cm signed verso: Alex Katz ESTIMATE: $45,000 – 65,000

PROVENANCE Robert Miller Gallery, New York (label attached verso) Ray Hughes, Sydney, acquired from the above mid 1980s The Estate of Ray Hughes, Sydney Diminutive and softly spoken, Ada Del Moro lives a double life in the works of her husband, the American painter Alex Katz. A contemporary muse, she has appeared in countless paintings from the 1950s until the 2010s, ageing slowly and gracefully, preserved in oil within each fashionable vignette. We see Ada in a Jackie Kennedy-esque pillbox hat, in a little black dress, with a bathing cap or fedora and sunglasses. Ada with Lips and Head Band is young. A quintessentially bohemian hippie, here she is on family holiday in Maine, with a paisley bandana tied horizontally around her head. Through the window behind her, is a lakeside landscape in bright, unnatural hues, closely related to Katz’s most famous landscape painting, Swamp Maple, 4.30, 1968, now held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington. While most families of the 20th century have photo albums of milestones and holidays, the Katzes have a body of work, ‘we didn’t take pictures of each other, he painted’, Ada explained in 2006.1 Ada with Lips and Head Band was painted directly from nature on a small piece of Masonite, and is full of delicate, painterly passages. Grounded in direct observation and faithful recording of colour and light, this intimate oil study bears the purest traces of Katz’s technical proficiency with oil paint and his translation of perceptual phenomena into art. Flattened by a uniform, diffuse light, and the optical effects of adjacent flat colour fields, Katz’s paintings appear effortless. Katz’s distillation of colour and form is the result of a rigorous process of editing, a push and pull between exact detail and stylistic omissions. All that Katz wants to convey is held on the surface of the painting, remaining frustratingly illusive to those who search for meaning beyond his slickly painted and smoothed exteriors. Katz’s subjects are all neatly self-contained within their tight frames, and the artist imposes the same rules on Ada, his Galatea.

Staring directly out from the painting, Ada remains forthright and inscrutable, her elusiveness defying any psychological reading of the painting and of her persona. The blank expression she bears emphasises Katz’s formal detachment (his flatness and coolness) and further elevates her to a position of transcendent, almost divine stillness. For the painter, she is the archetype of an American beauty, ‘And she’s a classic American beauty—full lips, a short nose, and wide eyes.’ 2 In Ada with Lips and Headband, it is precisely these physical traits that Katz has chosen to emphasise. He has carefully outlined the delicate changes of colour of Ada’s lips in the panel below the painting, recording these physical details with tender attention. On the hard surface of a pressed wood board, Katz’s brushstrokes are quick and visible, in some areas approximative. Painted fast and wet, Katz is willing to lay colour on top of colour and let his painting remain a little loose in these immediate records of direct perception. The contours are occasionally distorted and quirky, what the artist qualified as a ‘klutzy brush’, narrowly avoiding muddiness by eliminating superfluous detail. The most interesting of these graphic distillations is Katz’s omission of the whites of the eyes’ sclerae, instead painting the same colour as the sitter’s skin and rendering them uncannily more penetrating. As Simon Schama noted, ‘Katz’s works all begin with sensory impression and studious observation, but then are worked into something frankly and magically unnatural: a realm existing within the artist’s inner eye’. 3 1. Camhi, L., ‘Painted Lady’, New York Times, 27 August 2006 2. Tomkins, C., ‘Alex Katz’s Life in Art’, The New Yorker, 20 August 2018, p. 27 3. Simon Schama in 1996, cited in Sandler, I., Alex Katz: A Retrospective, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1998, p. 90 LUCIE REEVES-SMITH

8 ANISH KAPOOR born 1954, British UNTITLED, 1987 Indian ink on paper 30.0 x 45.0 cm ESTIMATE: $12,000 – 18,000

PROVENANCE Ray Hughes Gallery, Sydney, acquired directly from the artist in 1987 The Estate of Ray Hughes, Sydney EXHIBITED Anish Kapoor: On Paper 1975 – 1987, Ray Hughes Gallery, Brisbane, 24 October – 18 November 1987, cat. 63 (illus. in exhibition catalogue)

9 SHIRAZEH HOUSHIARY born 1955, Iranian / British ROUND SQUARE, 1986 soldered zinc and copper 34.0 x 59.0 x 18.5 cm ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000 PROVENANCE Lisson Gallery, London Ray Hughes, Sydney, acquired from the above in 1988 The Estate of Ray Hughes, Sydney We are grateful to the artist and Lisson Gallery, London, for their assistance with this catalogue entry.

LUCIO FONTANA (1899 – 1968, Italian) CONCETTO SPAZIALE TAGLIO, 1968 porcelain edition: 33/75 cast by Rosenthal, each slashed by hand by Fontana 42.5 x 26.0 x 2.5 cm signed and numbered on Ars Porcellana – Rosenthal Relief Reihe ceramic label attached verso: l.Fontana / 33/75 Marlborough Gallery New York / London / Roma ceramic label attached verso

PROVENANCE Galerie Bleue, Stockholm Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above LITERATURE Ruhé, H., & Rigo, C., Lucio Fontana, graphics, multiples, and more..., Tuja Books, Amsterdam 2006, p. 145, cat. C-3 (illus. another example)

ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000

CRESSIDA CAMPBELL

born 1960 JAPANESE PRINT AND CLIVIAS, 2013 unique colour woodblock print 145.5 x 94.5 cm signed below image lower right: Cressida Campbell ESTIMATE: $80,000 – 120,000

PROVENANCE Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane (label attached verso) Private collection, Brisbane, acquired from the above in 2013 RELATED WORK Japanese Print and Clivias, 2013, watercolour on plywood 146.0 x 96.0 cm, Private collection, illus. in Cressida Campbell, Hamilton Gallery, Victoria, 11 May – 7 July 2019 (exhibition catalogue cover) Cressida Campbell is an artist who requires no introduction, having attained through years of fastidious and unwavering commitment, a level of undeniable public and critical recognition. Dedicated to a labour intensive and intricate medium, Campbell’s artistic output is slow-paced, resulting in high demand for her hand painted prints and woodblocks alike. This large woodblock print, Japanese Print and Clivias from 2013, with its meticulous reflected composition, demonstrates the artist’s masterful handling of design, texture and tone. Through a delicate orchestration of the grooves and furrows of an incised plywood block, and the chalky deposits of watercolour left on its surface, Campbell conjures an image whose prosaic subject matter conceals the daring risks the artist has taken in its design. Japanese Print and Clivias is a work with a distinct Japanese aesthetic, with gentle attention to the flowers in the foreground balanced by significant areas of negative space. At East Sydney Technical College, Cressida Campbell discovered and developed a strong affinity with the medium of woodblock printing. But it was in 1980, at the Yoshida Hanga Academy in Tokyo, Japan, that she found and adapted a technique of monoprinting from hand painted woodblocks, called Yiban Duose (meaning ‘one block, many colour printing’) into her own dominant pictorial mode. Since the late 1980s, Campbell has exhibited and sold each painted woodblock alongside its unique print. This unusual technique requires her compositions to work harmoniously in both positive and negative. The central subject matter of Japanese Print and Clivias, the eponymous Ukiyo-e print, its reflection and iridescent refractions in a bevelled mirror, provides

a challenging compositional feat for Campbell. The artistic conceit of playing with reflections in a medium that is inherently based on printed mirror images shows both Campbell’s technical prowess and sense of humour. An old-fashioned aesthete and collector, Campbell has filled her homes with a small treasure trove of textiles and bunches of cut flowers amongst artworks and objets d’art, ‘rare pieces and mere curiosities, but everything has been chosen for pleasure, not monetary value’.1 Many of the objects in the artist’s home and reproduced in her pictures carry stories about the artist’s life and her relationships, providing motifs that are carried throughout her oeuvre. The Japanese print referred to in the title of this artwork is in fact a silkscreen copy of a rare Ukiyo-e print of a Japanese abalone diver. 2 This facsimile was created by John Coburn’s daughter, Kristin, for Campbell’s old friend, the artist Martin Sharp, who had owned and then lost the rare print in the 1980s. In contrast to the cossetted courtesans and geishas of other Ukiyo-e prints, the ama abalone divers were women liberated from societal expectations. In Japanese Print and Clivias, the diver inhabits many planes, travelling between the underwater world, the surface and another, more surreal plane in the mirrored surface, her hair flowing in invisible currents. Campbell has used her immediate surroundings as subject matter for her artworks from the very earliest years of her practice. Building on the comfort of intimate and familiar subjects, she presents an aura of careful casualness that is both soothing and captivating. As John McDonald wrote, to qualify Campbell as a decorator is no insult, as ‘she is a decorator in the same manner as Matisse or Bonnard … in bringing us back to simple things, Campbell is exploring a decorative art for our times … the vital difference is that her prints almost radiate with the pleasure of their own making’. 3 1. McDonald, J., ‘Cressida Campbell: Who wants the world?’, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 October 2017 2. The attribution of the original artwork is disputed. While some scholars believe that this artwork was created by the master Hokusai, others relate it to Kitagawa Utamaro’s Awabi-Tori suites from c.1788-1790 3. McDonald, J., ‘The Woodblock Painting of Cressida Campbell’, in Crayford, P. (ed.), The Woodblock Painting of Cressida Campbell, Public Pictures, Sydney, 2008, pp. 17 – 19 LUCIE REEVES-SMITH

IMANTS TILLERS

born 1950 WATERFALL VARIATION II, 2012 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 32 canvas boards 201.5 x 141.5 cm overall each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 091406 – 091437 ESTIMATE: $45,000 – 65,000 (32)

PROVENANCE Company collection, Melbourne, acquired from directly from the artist EXHIBITED The Fleeting Self, Arc One Gallery, Melbourne, 18 June – 20 July 2013 In 2014, Barry Pearce, emeritus curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, selected one hundred paintings from its collection for his publication 100 Moments in Australian Painting, through which he traced the artworks instrumental in the formation of an enduring image of the Australian continent. Amongst these paintings was Eugene von Guérard’s 1862 masterpiece, Waterfall, Strath Creek. Although modest in scale, it encapsulated the Romantic sense of awe and scientific exactitude that propelled the Austrian artist to the status of one of Australia’s greatest colonial painters. Waterfall, Strath Creek became a touchstone of Australian landscape painting for contemporary artists during the 1970s and 1980s, its dynamic composition reprised several times in a chain of appropriation that culminated with Imants Tillers’ Wynne prize-winning painting, Waterfall (After Williams), 2011 and associated major works based on this theme, including Waterfall Variation I and Waterfall Variation II. Tillers explained that these paintings could be more aptly described as ‘meditations on landscape’ in the wake of the revolution of Aboriginal landscape painting.1 As it was for von Guérard, the physical landscape is for Tillers a stimulus for Kantian self-reflection, a subjective assessment of man’s place in the environment, although this is conveyed without the colonial artist’s diminutive Rückenfigur explorers in the foreground. Key to Tillers’ work is the idea that the landscape is a constructed space, the product of a highly mediated conception of nature. A postmodern artist par excellence, Tillers’ longstanding artistic practice has been founded on its devices: appropriation, grid-based enlargement and reproduction and application of text and stencilled overlay on the painted surface. The subject of Waterfall Variation II is in fact, thrice removed from the original subject, a 50 metre valley through which flows the Strath Creek waterfall, in the thickly timbered country of Victoria’s Mount

Disappointment. Von Guérard visited this site in January of 1862, as did Fred Williams in 1970 when he painted Free copy of Eugene Von Guerard’s Waterfall Strath Creek, now held in the National Gallery of Australia. 2 Tillers did not go so far, choosing instead to appropriate Fred Williams’ gouache plein-air study, translating its painterly gestures into graphic, stencilled silhouette in a mosaic over thirty-two separate canvas boards. Further obscured under layers of text, the final image of Waterfall Variation II bears little resemblance to von Guérard’s original detailed naturalist painting. Physically, Strath Creek Falls has borne many climactic and environmental changes, from extensive timber logging in the 1880s, to the decades-long droughts and cataclysmic bushfires of more recent memory. We are clearly yet to master this unknown landscape. Over a hundred years after von Guérard, contemporary artist William Delafield Cook sat at the same spot in the bottom of the valley, looking up towards its V-shaped ravine. Having admired von Guérard’s topographical accuracy, he set out to record the scene with his own signature photographic realism. The resulting vast painting of a parched and bleached summer landscape won the Wynne prize in 1980 and was acquired for the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ collection the following year. 3 As an interpretation of an interpretation, Tillers’ work speaks to the idea of flux and transience, with the waterfall a metaphor for an everchanging landscape. Its spectacular scale provided a perfect template to illustrate the grand theatre of nature and our attempts to dominate it, becoming for Tillers an archetypal image through which to illustrate the changing attitudes towards landscape painting in Australia. 1. The artist, 9 April 2012 [https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/2012/29209/] 2. Fred Williams, Untitled, [Free copy of Eugene Von Guerard’s Waterfall, Strath Creek, 1862], 1970, gouache, 60.2 x 79.4 cm (sheet), in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 3. William Delafield Cook, A waterfall (Strath Creek), 1980 – 1, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 198.2 x 156.2 cm, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney LUCIE REEVES-SMITH

TIM MAGUIRE

born 1958 UNTITLED 99 U 59, 1999 oil on canvas 180.0 x 160.0 cm signed, dated and inscribed verso: Maguire ’99 / 99 U 59 ESTIMATE: $50,000 – 65,000

PROVENANCE Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso) Private collection Christie’s, Melbourne, 6 May 2003, lot 13 Peter Greenham, Melbourne The Estate of Peter Greenham, Melbourne EXHIBITED Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, April 2000, cat. 6 The goal for a serious painter today is to make work that is simultaneously embedded in the tradition of painting whilst engaging with the contemporary world. This Maguire does.’1 With its sheer beauty and theatrical grandeur, Untitled 99 U 59, 1999, exemplifies well the sensuous, magnified fruit and floral bloom paintings for which Australian contemporary artist Tim Maguire has become internationally renowned. Inspired by Dutch still life painting of the seventeenth century, such works are celebrated not only for their presence of scale and intriguing surreal quality but equally, for their enduring preoccupation with the physical act of painting itself. Highly skilful and unique, Maguire’s technique is distinguished by an abiding engagement with the dichotomy between production and reproduction, between the painterly and the photographic potential of

the canvas surface. Applying onto white canvas layers of transparent glazes which are then stripped back with droplets of solvent, Maguire thus creates an illusion of texture which - rather than preserve the thoughts and gestures of the artist - remains remarkably detached, even self-effacing. Indeed, there is no real sense of brush to canvas, an ambiguity further enhanced by the illusionistic nature and cropping of the image which unmistakably recalls photographic processes. That the marks of erased paint in the present work bear little relationship to the form of the fruit further substantiates the argument of critics that the subject of Maguire’s work is not its figurative content. As one commentator suggests, ‘capturing the moment when the magic of the image collapses into the materiality of the brushstroke, the real subject of his paintings is painting itself.’ 2 Such also accords with the artist’s own recollection of his relationship to the source of inspiration: ‘the further away I got from the original image, the more scope there was for painterliness and asserting the materiality of the process, which was the whole point of the exercise.’ 3 1. Godfrey, T., ‘Skin, Light and Beauty’ in Tim Maguire, Piper Press, Sydney, 2007, p. 28 2. Tim Maguire, ibid. dustjacket 3. Maguire cited in ‘’What is it ‘as it really is’? Tim Maguire in conversation with Jonathan Watkins’ in Tim Maguire, ibid., p. 72 VERONICA ANGELATOS

JOHN OLSEN

born 1928 VIEW FROM THE STUDIO, c.1986–87 oil on canvas 137.0 x 153.0 cm signed lower left: John Olsen ESTIMATE: $180,000 – 240,000

PROVENANCE Aptos Cruz Gallery, Adelaide Private collection, Adelaide, acquired from the above in 1989 In late July 1981, John Olsen wrote in his diary: ‘Noela and I arrive at Clarendon in South Australia. This will mark a new period in my life and work. Our house, an old rectory, is like an eagle’s nest, perched over the village. Looking across, we see the breasty hills, in withdrawing ranks. The one opposite is particularly steep, and has sheep climbing on it, and clusters of crows flying up and down. Cockatoos, white and splendid, soar past, the clouds seem at eye level, and sheep tracks make a fascinating meandering over the hills’ surfaces.’1 A small town about thirty kilometres from Adelaide, Clarendon was Olsen’s home for the next seven years and its picturesque beauty would be a constant inspiration for his art, giving rise to such joyous paintings as Golden Summer, Clarendon, 1983 (Art Gallery of New South Wales) and Clarendon Spring, Make Sure the Sun Wipes its Feet, 1984 (Broken Hill City Gallery). In 1985 Olsen was awarded the Wynne Prize for landscape painting for A Road to Clarendon: Autumn, 1985, this very public accolade confirming the brilliance and wide appeal of these paintings. The accolades have of course continued – from the recent 2005 Archibald Prize win, to the retrospective exhibition shown in Melbourne and Sydney in 2016-17 – throughout a career that has now spanned more than seven decades and which sees Olsen rightly hailed as Australia’s greatest living artist.

The exuberant mark-making and depiction of a riotous cacophony of plant, bird and insect life connects View from the Studio to the Clarendon pictures both visually, and in terms of the feelings of optimism it evokes. The energetic fluency of Olsen’s technique is on full display – from the tracery of swirling calligraphic lines to the lively dots and daubs that describe form as well as movement. His mastery of colour is evident too, subtle on first impression, but emerging more vividly with time. Wanting ‘to really come to terms with the experience of a total landscape’, Olsen uses his drawn and painted lines to lead the viewer on a journey through the natural environment rather than just presenting a view to be admired from a distance. 2 Depicted from above, below and within, his landscapes communicate the wonder of the natural world and the interconnectedness of all living things. While the title of this painting suggests a distant view – as indeed does the dramatic diagonal horizon line – the delicacy and detail of Olsen’s depiction transports us down close to the earth where we can perceive what he describes as ‘a certain mystical throbbing throughout nature.’ 3 1. Olsen, J., Drawn from Life, Duffy and Snellgrove, Sydney, 1997, p. 151 2. See Hart, D., John Olsen, Craftsman House, North Ryde, 2000, p. 38 3. Olsen, 1956, quoted in https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/68.1972 KIRSTY GRANT

FRED WILLIAMS

(1927 – 1982) LYSTERFIELD, 1965 oil on canvas 71.0 x 85.0 cm signed lower right: Fred Williams bears artist’s label verso with artist name, title, medium and dimensions ESTIMATE: $400,000 – 600,000

PROVENANCE Private collection, Melbourne Avant Galleries, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 1970s We are grateful to Lyn Williams for her assistance with this catalogue entry. The immediate response in seeing Lysterfield 1965 is the connection we make with other major works by Williams from the same period. In the mid-late sixties his reputation as Australia’s most original landscape painter was taking hold - he was still in his late thirties. The welcome surprise is that this work has come to light for the first time in decades. Lysterfield, Upwey and Sherwood are close to each other and now about a 40 minute drive east of Melbourne. Williams and his wife, Lyn, moved to Upwey in 1962. Its topography provided the wellspring for many great works with their subtly shifting style. From compressed compositions where vertical delineations splice through an overall landscape effect, to the raised horizon line with calligraphic marks below it suggest the randomness of the landscape. And the sparse and minimal paintings where all traditional compositional elements have gone and glazed surfaces are filled will painterly gestures echoing the landscape. Williams’ respect for a particular location as a recurring source of inspiration was not new. He admired the Barbizon School and Camille Corot in particular, where painting en plein air and studio work held equal value.1 Lysterfield is a studio work but we can see its formative ideas talking shape in contemporaneous watercolours and drawings. 2 Like most works Lysterfield is given a descriptive title, no romantic flourishes to suggest anything beyond the observed source which inspired the painting. This is one marker of his greatness – to refer to a

specific place but to speak of the Australian landscape more broadly to create a painting which, within itself, carries a robust intention well beyond any topographical identifiers. In 1963 he was awarded the Helena Rubenstein Scholarship and travelled to Europe. Before he returned from London in 1964 he bought rolls of canvas and had them shipped to Australia and soon ceased painting on board. Lysterfield has technical characteristics which reveal Williams’ keen art historical eye. In Venice he carefully noted the glazes of the Venetian Masters. Colour is pushed into the weave of the canvas as painterly layers rise to a crescendo of immediate impasto gestures, and the incremental application of wet on wet (and drying) paint achieves his unique pictorial synchronicity. When we take into account Williams’ technique and pictorial interests two other major works, amongst many, come to mind: Upwey 1965, National Gallery of Victoria and Upwey Landscape 1964 – 65, Tate, London. 3 Works with single delineated elements such as a high horizon line occur frequently from this period. ‘Skies are an infinite space and the landscape below is vast and contained within the artist’s imagination and his deft, painterly control. The surface becomes an expanse for Williams’ distinctive minimal forms and flecked intonations, where the immediacy of painting never allows for any gesture to be repeated. All the while they suggest the unpatterned irregularity of something observed and formed into an astonishing work of art in the studio’.4 1. The Barbizon School was an informal collective of like-minded artists who worked around the small village of Barbizon south of Paris, the nearby Forest of Fontainebleau was a favourite subject. All believed in taking the landscape as a primary expression where mythical figures, allegory and narrative held no interests. Many of its main exponents such as Corot, Theodore Rousseau and Charles-Francois Daubigny are represented in the National Gallery of Victoria. 2. Lyn Williams confirms Lysterfield is a studio work 3. Upwey Landscape, 1965, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Victoria, Felton Bequest 1965.

Upwey Landscape, 1964-65, oil on hardboard, Tate, London, purchased 1995.

4. Essay for lot 18, Upwey, 1965 oil on canvas. Deutscher + Hackett, Twenty Classics of Australian Art, Melbourne, 11 November 2020. DOUG HALL, AM

JEFFREY SMART

(1921 – 2013) WINE CARRIERS, 1950 oil on canvas board 33.0 x 44.0 cm signed lower right: JEFF SMART ESTIMATE: $30,000 – 40,000

PROVENANCE John Martin’s Art Gallery, Adelaide Dr Frederick Newall, Adelaide, acquired from the above in 1951 thence by descent Estate of the above, Sydney EXHIBITED Group 9, John Martin’s Art Gallery, Adelaide, 6 September 1951, cat. 40 LITERATURE Pearce, B., Master of Stillness: Jeffrey Smart, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2015 (revised and expanded edition), pp. 47 (illus.), 144 RELATED WORK Wine Labourers and Cart, Ischia, 1949, ink and watercolour on paper, 22.0 x 27.5 cm, illus. in Capon, E. et al., Jeffrey Smart Drawing and Studies 1942 – 2001, Australian Art publishing, Melbourne, 2001, cat. 16, pp. 44, 195 We are grateful to Stephen Rogers, Archivist for the Estate of Jeffrey Smart, for his assistance with this catalogue entry. Under a scumbled pale purple and grey sky, Jeffrey Smart’s Italian wine carriers rest their weary and suntanned bodies in a precarious balance atop barrels of locally produced wine, trundling back to the village via horse-drawn cart. Although Smart spent more than a year on the island of Ischia, off the coast of Naples between 1948–50, he painted no more than a handful of works there, finding it easier to work on paper in ink and watercolour. The origins of this painting are, in fact, found in an ink sketch from 1949, called Wine Labourers and Cart, in which we can see the barrels of famous Epomeo wine from Ischia were thankfully tied securely to the cart with a rope.

Smart travelled to Europe by cargo ship in 1948. After arriving in London, he moved to France where he was joined by his old friend from Adelaide, fellow artist Jacqueline Hick. Together they studied in Parisian art schools, La Grande Chaumière and under Fernand Léger at the Académie de Montmartre. Another South Australian artist, Michael Shannon, joined the pair, and the three of them sojourned together in an old house for an extended time on Ischia. The hedonistic lifestyle that these expatriates enjoyed on the island, while not particularly conducive to a disciplined artistic practice, would have lasting significance for Jeffrey Smart. His affinity with the Mediterranean pace of life would be later confirmed by his permanent relocation to Posticcia Nuova, the farmhouse in Arezzo where he would live for over four decades. Warm and textured, Wine Carriers, 1950 is a carefully crafted and dramatic study of some of the young men with whom Smart shared the island. The dynamic composition of stacked circles and diagonal directing lines demonstrates the crystallisation of one of Smart’s most enduring compositional devices: the contrast of geometric structures with human figures. These men appear resigned to a life of harsh physical labour in a landscape whose sparseness is poignantly described by a low horizon and a vast, pale, featureless sky. Donald Friend, who also responded enthusiastically to the island’s attractions and joined the motley group of expatriate aesthetes, wrote of this scenery in his diaries in December 1949: ‘the setting has been unrelievedly idyllic … bleached pink and white villages in clear pale sparkling sunlight, under a pale pure sky, the air warm, dry, sharp, invigorating … and through hilly country where innumerable farms and vineyards are enclosed in rough pale grey and white stone walls ... and behind reared the jumbled crags and precipices of wild mountains and hills so patterned and textures with terraces of vineyards ... that they took on the appearance of giant fingerprints.’1 1. Hetherington, P. (ed.), The Diaries of Donald Friend: volume 3, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2005, p. 45 LUCIE REEVES-SMITH

JEFFREY SMART

(1921 – 2013) SECOND STUDY FOR RAILWAY BRIDGE, 1996 oil on canvas on board 25.5 x 84.5 cm signed lower left: JEFFREY SMART ESTIMATE: $180,000 – 240,000

PROVENANCE Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane (label attached verso) Private collection, Brisbane Private collection, Melbourne Joel Fine Art, Melbourne, 30 October 2007, lot 21 Private collection, Sydney EXHIBITED Jeffrey Smart, Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane, 22 October – 23 November 1996, cat. 3 (illus. in exhibition catalogue) RELATED WORK Meeting, Railway Bridge, 1982, oil and acrylic on canvas, 75 x 111.5 cm, private collection, illus. in McDonald, J., Jeffrey Smart, Paintings of the 70’s and 80’s, Craftsman House, 1990, pl. 113 The Railway Bridge, 1996, oil on canvas, 40 x 135 cm; First Study for ‘Railway Bridge’, 1996, exhibited Philip Bacon Galleries, 22 October – 23 November 1996, cats. 1 and 2 We are grateful to Stephen Rogers, Archivist for the Estate of Jeffrey Smart, for his assistance with this catalogue entry. Jeffrey Smart was a true painter of modern life, exploring in each of his artworks, from the 1940s until the early 2000s, the surreal contrast between a geometrically constructed material world and the living things that these structures had encroached upon. Second Study for Railway Bridge, 1996 is borne of Smart’s aesthetic rigour, love of design and classicist penchant. In this work he has conjured up an uneasy and surreal atmosphere where purple sky looms above an empty road leading over a hill, dipping past a horizon that is obscured from view. Like a freeze frame of a film, the closely cropped images of Smart’s world are loaded with a sense of intrigue, the suggestion of action existing and persisting just beyond the audience’s line of sight. For many of Smart’s works, it seems that the scenes depicted are recorded faithfully en plein air. They are instead composite images, constructed from disparate elements recalled from real life locations or gleaned from other artworks, both his own and those painted by artists whom Smart admired. It is this complex weaving of motifs, of symbols from his unique visual vocabulary, which required a disciplined consecutive sequence: starting with pencil studies, then (often several) oil studies and then a final large-scale painting. The dialogue between these artworks is multifaceted and replete, stretching across a lifetime of observations and painted constructions.

‘Many of my paintings have in their origin a passing glance. Something catches my eye, and I cautiously rejoice because it might be the beginning of a painting. Sometimes it’s impossible to stop and sketch because I saw it from a train or a fast-moving car on the autostrada. And it can happen that when I go back to that place, I wonder what on earth it could have been that enchanted me – it isn’t there. Enchantment is the word for it’.1 Second Study for Railway Bridge is particularly rich in recurrent Smart motifs. The articulated container train spanning the entire composition and travelling slowly under the eponymous railway bridge is almost exactly replicated (along with striped signal pole with a bright red inverted triangular pane) from the artist’s masterwork, a 9-meter long mural for the Arts Centre, Melbourne, Container Train in Landscape, 1983-4. With a similarly long and narrow format, Second Study for Railway Bridge echoes this motif, which the artist had originally glimpsed during a trip to Yugoslavia in 1980. 2 With an uninhibited application of paint, Smart indulges here in different textures – from the delicately multiplied blades of grass on the knoll, to the worn realism of peeling posters on the side of the bricked bridge and tyre marks on the sweeping bitumen road. The structure of the railway bridge itself has been sublimated from another earlier work, The Meeting, Railway Bridge, 1982 (the real bridge, situated some 3 – 4 kilometres from Smart’s studio in Tuscany) 3, here now devoid of people, and surging above the train with clean, hard edges and gleaming bright and bold supports. With a quality of completeness, this second study is no mere aidememoire. It is a resolved painting in its own right, while also having offered the artist complete creative freedom with respect to composition and painterly facture. With multiple elements combined from Smart’s greatest compositions, Second Study for Railway Bridge, is a scene entirely constructed from Smart’s world, where familiar elements are repurposed and imbued with a gravitas that transforms them into monuments of modernity. 1. The artist cited in Capon, E., et al., Jeffrey Smart: Drawings and Studies 1942 – 2001, Australian Art Publishing, Melbourne, 2001, inside cover. 2. Pearce, B., Jeffrey Smart, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 2005, p. 194 3. Capon, E., op. cit, p. 117 LUCIE REEVES-SMITH

JEFFREY SMART

(1921 – 2013) DIVERSION FOR SIENA, 2002 – 03 oil on canvas 85.0 x 115.0 cm signed lower right: JEFFREY SMART ESTIMATE: $500,000 – 700,000

PROVENANCE Australian Galleries, Sydney (label attached verso) Private collection, Perth, acquired from the above in 2003 EXHIBITED Jeffrey Smart: Paintings and Studies 2002 – 2003, Australian Galleries, Sydney, 23 September – 18 October 2003, cat. 3 (illus.) RELATED WORK The Cleaners, 2004, illus. in Pearce, B., Master of Stillness: Jeffrey Smart, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2012, p. 105 We are grateful to Stephen Rogers, Archivist for the Estate of Jeffrey Smart, for his assistance with this catalogue entry. Jeffrey Smart once told me he aimed to make plain-speaking paintings that refreshed the eye while entertaining the inquisitive mind. He also talked of civic progress and modernisation as his enduring subjects, the artist having watched the systematic reconstruction of Italy, a crippled nation in ruins when he first arrived there after the Second World War. Those artistic qualities, and that driving theme, intersect in Diversion for Siena 2002 – 03 which shows a corner of present-day rural Tuscany. A road sign within the picture may indicate directions to historic towns including Arezzo, Siena and Florence, although what we see smacks of efficiency and modernity. Visually, Smart’s painting is fixed on a section of one of the autostrada which now criss-cross a previously inefficient country, enabling quick economical travel and communication. Suggestions of ongoing roadwork feature in middle ground. A container truck and two Italian-manufacture cars are queued to the right, these stationary vehicles being offset by a trio of workmen busy at the left. Further back, the artist shows in distance a group of smart modern apartment buildings on the right, balancing them to the left with a typical stand of Mediterranean umbrella pines. In his best mature paintings Jeffrey Smart always played visual games, confident his viewers would delight in hunting for sequences in geometry, proportion and colour. Diversion for Siena is rich in this

characteristic visual wit. Colours of vehicles alternate; so do the shapes of two traffic signs (circle, diamond); then there are five coloured traffic cones rhyme with the orange boiler suits the other side of the work; while contrasted patterns of road markings (directional arrows, dashes, straight lines) are used to excess. Of course, the dominant curve of the roadway, indeed, all the principal lines in the painting’s design, lead the eye to three large shapes in bright colours set in the upper left: a yellow junction divider, a blue road sign with green bands, and a red freight container. Ever playing his witty games, Smart even has the white arrows on a temporary barrier point out those main shapes. It is usual when discussing Jeffrey Smart to emphasise his indebtedness to Renaissance masters, especially to Piero della Francesca, a native Tuscan who excelled at integrating complex geometry into his pictures. We can see Smart following in his creative hero’s footsteps with that easy arc of the autostrada, which employs the famed ‘Golden Mean’. Lesser talents would struggle to calculate then accurately plot out this curve, let alone the many highway markings set on it, but Smart’s handling is effortless. He literally is a modern master. Mind you, those striping patterns upon the road underscore the title: Diversion for Siena. In our conversations, Smart would point to how he slipped into his later pictures sly visual references recognised by locals and visitors. those who have been to Siena will spot his cryptic allusion in this painting, because above the historic hilltop town sits a striking sight: an Italian-Gothic cathedral with stonework of alternating light and dark stripes. Once seen that distinctive pattern is not forgotten. It is synonymous with Siena, which since medieval times has had a white bar over a black bar for its coat of arms. So as you walk around the town white and dark bands can be found everywhere, from the interior decor and frescoes in heritage buildings through to traditional crucifixes worn by pilgrims using St Catherine of Siena’s chapel. No wonder Diversion for Siena has such an excess in white and dark geometric bands indicating the way to Siena. Jeffrey Smart, a long-time resident of Tuscany, is sharing a clever coded message with knowing viewers. DR CHRISTOPHER HEATHCOTE

JOHN OLSEN

born 1928 WETLANDS, 2000 oil on canvas 200.0 x 250.0 cm signed and dated lower left: John / Olsen / 2000 ESTIMATE: $300,000 – 400,000

PROVENANCE Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 2000 LITERATURE McGregor, K., and Zimmer, J., John Olsen: Journeys Into the You Beaut Country, Thames and Hudson, Melbourne, 2016, pp. 214 (illus.), 339 Wetlands, 2000 was reproduced as a fine art limited edition print by Digital Art Directory, Bowral, New South Wales There are many ways of looking at the dilemmas of the latter part of the 20th century with it’s atom bomb. It presents a huge question mark and the imminent or possible destruction of the world itself. Yet one thing that really strikes you in the environments I was working in is the abundance and generosity of life and life forces. The urge for life is a staggering thing and we just ought to take notice… There is such fecundity in this universe called a lily pond.1 Now 93 years of age, John Olsen’s career has spanned an extraordinarily long period, during which he has created an oeuvre of considerable breadth and continuing vitality. Large and immersive, Wetlands, 2000 rejoices in the fecundity and interconnectedness of the natural world. With fluid and sensuous meandering lines and layered washes of blue, green and yellow Wetlands shimmers with tropical liveliness and delicate harmony. In the 1970s, disillusioned with Sydney’s relentless pace and cutthroat ambitions, Olsen went to find solace in rural Victoria, where his friend Clifton Pugh lived. Since then, he has immersed himself in the physical landscape and reconnected with painting en plein air, grounded in a practice of intimate observation of the natural world. Olsen once described himself as a ‘wandering minstrel’1 travelling through the country and painting its unique strangeness into his artworks. Barry Pearce went one step further, describing the artist as a ‘poet of the brush…brave enough to go into the desert, the bush, wetlands and embrace it with love; absorb himself in the landscape like a true poet.’ 2

In a logical continuation of the meandering and freeform nature of his You Beaut Country paintings, Olsen’s landscape and marine paintings are teeming with animal and vegetable life, organisms competing for resources and attention. These paintings explored processes of natural organic growth and delicate symbioses. Nourished by the conviction that movement was essential to both life and art, and that everything was in constant state of flux, Olsen painted these works with inexhaustible enthusiasm. From the minutiae of a pond or rockpool to panoramic aerial views of lakes and meandering rivers, Olsen found artistic parallels between the structures of these biomes and the relationships that connect them: ‘When one begins to see nature as a series of processes, the appearance of the object change – form follows function … I would like to make the viewer see the microcosm and the next moment the expansiveness of the universe’. 3 The marine world has provided Olsen with a seemingly endless source of fascination and wonder throughout his life, following the continual flux of the tides and examining the microcosms and sensuous lines of sea and the harbour. Expansive in scale, Wetlands is immersive and dense with humorous painterly passages. The entirety of this watery microcosm is contained, stretching out towards the high and pale horizon and pushing against the edges and corners of the frame. Olsen’s iconic frogs peer out from Wetlands’ watery depths, leaping out from layers of algae while a lazy turtle floats in an eddy in the middle of the pool and a fat little jacana bird with spindly legs hovers above a lilypad. Olsen infuses his mystic paintings of the natural world with a generous pinch of humour and a great deal of artistic liberty, what Bernard Smith qualified as ‘vitalism and colouristic exuberance’.4 1. The artist, quoted in Hart, D., John Olsen, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1991, p. 125 2. Barry Pearce cited in Hawley, J., The Masterly Mr Squiggle, Good Weekend, September 2, 2006 3. The artist, John Olsen, My Complete Graphics 1957 – 1979, Gryphon Books, Sydney, 1980, p. 132 4. Smith, B., cited in Hart, D., ibid, p. 79 LUCIE REEVES-SMITH

BERTRAM MACKENNAL

(1863 – 1931) CIRCE, c.1902 – 04 bronze 57.0 cm height inscribed at base: KIP KH signed at base: B MACKENNAL ESTIMATE: $160,000 – 200,000

PROVENANCE Dr J.J.C. Bradfield, Sydney, a gift from the artist, c. 1927 Thence by descent Edith Bradfield, Sydney Dr Stanley G. Bradfield, Sydney, a gift from the above c. 1945 Thence by descent Enid Bradfield, Sydney Thence by descent Family collection, Canberra EXHIBITED The Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, Scotland, 1905, cat. 854 (another example) The Franco-British Exhibition, London, UK, 1908, cat. 1305 (another example) International Fine Arts Exhibition, Rome, 1911 (another example) The Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, Scotland, 1918, cat. 45 (another example) Exhibition of bronzes by Sir Bertram Mackennal K.CV.O., R.A., Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 7 – 20 October 1926, cat. 10 (another example) Memorial exhibition of statuettes by the Late Sir Bertram Mackennal, K.C.V.O, Fine Arts Society Gallery, Melbourne, May 1932 (another example) Commemorative exhibition of works by late members, Winter Exhibition, Royal Academy, London, 7 January – 11 March 1933, cat. 98 (another example, lent by Lady Mackennal) British Sculpture 1850 – 1914, The Fine Art Society, London, 30 September – 30 October 1968, cat. 106 (another example) Spring exhibition. Recent Acquisitions, Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne, 18 – 29 October 1976, cat. 33 (another example) Early Australian sculpture, from its beginnings up to circa 1920, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Victoria, 15 March 1977, cat. 20 (another example) Spring exhibition 1979, Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne, 17 – 30 October 1979 (another example) Australian Sculpture 1890 – 1919, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 22 January – 22 February 1987 (another example) Stampede of the Lower Gods: Classical Mythology in Australian Art 1890’s-1930’s, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 19 October – 26 November 1989 Australian Art, Colonial to Contemporary, Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne, May – June 1995, cat. 1128 (another example)

Reverie, myth, sensuality: sculpture in Britain 1880 – 1910, City Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, UK, 26 September – 29 November 1992 (another example) Australian icons: twenty artists from the collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 4 August – 3 December 2000 (another example) Exposed: The Victorian Nude, Tate Britain, London, 1 November 2001 – 13 Jan 2002, and touring (another example) Bertram Mackennal: The Fifth Balnaves Sculpture Project, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 17 August – 4 November 2007; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 30 November 2007 – 24 February 2008 (another example) Edwardian opulence: British art at the dawn of the twentieth century, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA, 28 February – 2 June 2013 (another example) Archie Plus, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 26 September 2020 – 7 March 2021 (another example) LITERATURE Spielmann, M. H., British Sculpture and Sculptors of Today, Cassel, London, 1901, p. 134 Moore, W., The Story of Australian Art, vol. 1, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1934, p. 202 (illus., another example) Badham, H., A Study of Australian Art, Currawong Publishing, Sydney, 1949, p. 136 Badham, H., A Gallery of Australian Art, Currawong Publishing, Sydney, 1954, pl. 101 (illus. another example) McCulloch, A., Encyclopedia of Australian Art, Hutchinson, Richmond, 1968, p. 662 Cooper, J., Nineteenth-Century Romantic Bronzes, David and Charles, London, 1975, p. 92 Flower, C., Erotica: Aspects of The Erotic in Australian Art, Sun Books, South Melbourne, 1977, pp. 24 – 25 (illus., another example) Sturgeon, G., The Development of Australian Sculpture 1788-1975, Thames and Hudson, London, 1978, pp. 64, 65 (illus., another example) Scarlett, K., Australian Sculptors, Nelson, Melbourne, 1980, p.405 Clark, J., et. al., Golden Summers: Heidelberg and beyond, ICCA, Sydney, 1985, p. 181 (illus. another example) Thomas, D., (ed.) Creating Australia: 200 years of art 17881988, ICCA, Sydney, 1988, p. 129 (illus. another example) Lane, T., Nineteenth Century Australian Art in the National Gallery of Victoria, NGV, Melbourne, 2003, pp. 116 – 117 (illus. another example)

Edwards, D., et. al., Bertram Mackennal, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2007, pp. 30 (illus. and illus. cover, another example), 31 – 34, 168 – 71, 211 (illus. detail), and catalogue in accompanying CD–ROM Mendelssohn, J., ‘Australian symbolism: the art of dreams’, Art & Australia, Sydney, Summer 2012, p. 309 Trumble, A., and Wolk Rager, A. (eds), Edwardian opulence: British art at the dawn of the twentieth century, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2013, cat. 89, pp. 349 (illus., another example), 351, 410 Grishin, S., Australian art: a history, The Miegunyah Press, Victoria, 2013, pl. 17.5, pp. 166, 167 (illus. another example), 548, 564

Bertram Mackennal portrays the sorceress Circe in the moment of casting a spell – awesome, ominous and dangerously all-powerful. Beguiled by the beauty of the sensuous curves and naked body, her pose is confrontational and commanding. Mackennal’s public presentation of his sculpture of Circe was a triumph, bringing him fame and recognition. Exhibited prominently in the Paris Salon (Société des Artistes Français) of 1893, it received the added prestige of being illustrated in the catalogue. Not only were reviews highly favourable, Mackennal also received a mention honorable. Writing in the Revue des Deux Mondes, one French critic observed: ‘The tense, restrained, but triumphant beauty of the sorceress bears itself with a firm and elegant alertness which is free from all trace of vulgarity and all suggestion of the model: no small merit in our opinion at the present day’.1 The English critic, R. Jope-Slade, praised Circe for its ‘remarkable and distinctive individuality’. He continued: This powerful woman with extended arms and drooping hands, and the serpent-filled tresses of a witch, stands erect, almost rigid in the pride of consciousness of the irresistible supremacy of her nudity; but form and face are devoid of voluptuousness, and her expression is one of scorn for her victims. 2 While the French had taken Circe in their stride, across the Channel at London’s Royal Academy she caused something of a sensation. Keen to show her in the 1894 exhibition, the prudish action of the hanging committee caused more than a sniff of scandal. Prominently displayed, they covered her base with a swathe of red baize to hide the erotic figuring, which Mackennal had described as ‘debased men and women who have drunk of Circe’s wine’ 3. It had the opposite effect. Exciting the public’s imagination, it became the talk of the town. The tale of the ancient goddess Circe is drawn from the pages of Homer’s The Odyssey. Here we learn of her enticements, of turning men into wild beasts and Odysseus’ sailors into swine. Irresistible and all conquering, Circe is the classic femme fatale, a fascination that gripped many of the creative minds of the fin-de- siècle. A memorable

oil painting is Circe Invidiosa, painted in 1892 by the English artist J. W. Waterhouse (Art Gallery of South Australia). Favoured by the Symbolists, the femme fatale populated opera, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov devoted a symphonic suite to Scheherazade, and Aubrey Beardsley, Richard Strauss and Oscar Wilde produced their own versions of Salome. These powerful figures also reflected contemporary interests in the women’s movement and the rise of feminine equality. 4 As the century drew to a close, subjects from classical mythology grew in popularity, especially among the young Australian artists exhibiting in Paris and London. Rupert Bunny’s Tritons c.1890 (Art Gallery of New South Wales) gained a mention honorable at the Salon of 1890 and is believed to have been purchased by Alfred Felton. Bunny also exhibited Pastoral c.1893 (National Gallery of Australia) in the same 1893 Salon as Mackennal’s Circe. Other notables in that same Salon included John Longstaff’s The Sirens 1892 and Aby Altson’s The Golden Age, 1893 (both in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria). The latter also received a mention honorable. The life-sized sculpture of Circe, which Mackennal exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1893 and London’s Royal Academy of 1894, was made of plaster, cast from the clay model. In Paris in 1901 Mackennal had it cast in bronze, the sculpture subsequently being acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria through the Felton Bequest in 1910. In response to the popularity of the work, Mackennal produced an edition of statuettes, of which the work on offer is one, cast in bronze in Paris between 1902 and 1904. Another is in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which produced, from the original bronze, a limited edition of 100, hand-cast in bonded bronze powder and polymer resin during 1997-1998. They are inscribed and numbered on the base: ‘B. Mackennal AGNSW …/100 Kip KH’. At the time of completing Circe in 1893, Mackennal wrote to his Melbourne patron and friend Felix Meyer saying: ‘I feel that I am all in it … I put so much time, money & thought into my Circe, …’. 5 Noted for its lively invention and technical excellence, its blend of French and British aesthetics is seamless. Mackennal is seen at his brilliant best in his combination of naturalism and symbolism. Knighted in 1921, internationally he remains today one of Australia’s most successful artists. When Mackennal made a celebrated visit to Australia in 1926, he was treated like a hero, receiving a number of prestigious commissions. Chief among these came from the State Government of New South Wales to undertake the design and erection of a cenotaph in Sydney’s Martin Place. The work was supervised by the noted engineer Dr John Bradfield (1867-1943), acknowledged as the ‘father’ of modern Sydney through his leading roles on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and other major projects undertaken for the Department of Public Works over many years. Notable for Mackennal’s bronze figures of an Australian soldier and sailor, the Cenotaph was unveiled in February 1929.

Bertram Mackennal in his London studio, c.1898 Courtesy: Pauline Kraay

Seemingly as a gesture of appreciation arising from their professional association with the Cenotaph, Mackennal gave Bradfield one of his bronze statuettes of Circe, believed to be one of the eight cast between 1902-4. An artist’s gift of one of their works, especially one of their most celebrated, is something very special. This is particularly so for the statuette Circe on offer, distinguished ownership adding prestige, interest of association and value for the prospective collector. During his Sydney visit of 1926, Mackennal held a solo exhibition of his bronzes at the Macquarie Galleries. Another example of the bronze statuette Circe was included. The exhibition was a sell-out.

1. ‘Les Salons des 1893: la Peinture au Champ du Mars et al sculptures sans les deux salons, Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. 118, July 1893, unpaginated, quoted in Jope-Slade, R., ‘An Australian Quartette’, The Magazine of Art, London, 1895, vol. 18, p. 390 2. Jope-Slade, ibid. 3. Mackennal, B., Table Talk, Melbourne, 29 June 1894, p. 3 4. Lane, T., ‘An Homeric Goddess for The Modern Age: Circe 1893’, in Edwards, D., et al, Bertram Mackennal, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2007, p. 168 5. Mackennal letter to Felix Meyer, 12 April 1893, Felix Meyer papers, quoted in Lane, ibid DAVID THOMAS

ARTHUR STREETON

(1867 – 1943) THE GRAND CANAL, 1908 oil on canvas 92.0 x 168.5 cm signed lower right: A STREETON artist’s label verso with title, artist’s name and 10 Hill Rd. / Abbey Road / London N.W. ESTIMATE: $1,500,000 – 2,000,000

PROVENANCE Victorian Artists Society Gallery, Melbourne Arthur Baillieu, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 1914 Amy Shackell, Melbourne (Arthur Baillieu’s sister) Sandra Clarke (ne Shackell), Devon Park, Western Victoria from December 1957 [note attached verso] Thence by descent Private collection, Victoria EXHIBITED Salon de la Société des Artistes Français, Paris, May 1910, cat. 1728 (stamped verso and label fragment attached verso) Mr Streeton’s Pictures, Victorian Artists Society Gallery, Melbourne, June 1914 Loan Exhibition of the Works of Arthur Streeton, National Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 20 November 1931 – 20 January 1932 (label fragment attached verso) 20th Century Australian Painting, Hamilton Gallery, Victoria, August 2016 A Western District Provenance – major works from private collections of the Western District of Victoria, united for the first time, Hamilton Gallery, Victoria, November 2018 Streeton, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 7 November 2020 – 14 February 2021

LITERATURE West, W.K., ‘Streeton: Mr Arthur: An Artist from Australia’ in The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art, vol 47, London, 1909, pp.259 – 267 (illus.) Streeton, A., The Arthur Streeton Catalogue, Osboldstone & Co., Melbourne, 1935, no. 346 (Mr. Arthur Baillieu) Schmidt, S., ‘A Significant Streeton Rediscovery’, Art Monthly Australasia, Issue 326, 30 December 2019, n.p. Schmidt, S., ‘A New Streeton Attribution: The Grand Canal, 1908’, Art Monthly Australasia, Issue 323, April 2020, pp. 56–61 Tunnicliffe, W. (ed.), Streeton, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2020, pp. 217 – 218, 230 – 231 (illus.) 371 RELATED WORK The Grand Canal, Venice, 1908, oil on canvas, 91.0 x 152.5 cm, in Streeton, A., The Arthur Streeton Catalogue, Osboldstone & Co., Melbourne, 1935, no. 365 (Sir Robert Mond) Grand Canal, Venice, 1927, oil on canvas, 36.0 x 66.0 cm, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

ARTHUR STREETON (1867 – 1943) THE GRAND CANAL, 1908

A BAILLIEU CENTURY: THE GRAND CANAL (1908) Dr. Sarah Schmidt

All Streeton’s powers are here concentrated… his mastery of composition and atmospheric truth, the distinction of his colour and touch – Lionel Lindsay This painting is assuredly among Arthur Streeton’s very best, a glorious work capturing all of the splendour and beauty of Venice, monumental and with great theatrical presence. Much has been written about the famous views of the Grand Canal, painted by artists from Canaletto, to Monet;1 this painting sits comfortably in the company of such masterpieces and their visual language of opalescent waterways, gondolas and landmarks of Venetian architecture. To look anew though, and to appreciate Streeton’s unique view of The Grand Canal, Arthur Streeton, 1901, photograph by W. Crooke, Edinburgh

is to observe the stepped terracotta roofing, arranged in this picture euphoniously like a sequence of musical notes: the interconnected roofs of Venetian palaces, and other buildings. This sea of terracotta is given undeniable beauty: a key element of the vista, perfectly harmonised with the shimmering blue of both water and sky. Streeton’s technical skill is shown in orchestrating this attractive palette, carefully dominated by two complementary colours, representing the Canale Grande and an optimistic sky counterpoised with palazzo rooftops. Streeton painted The Grand Canal from Palazzo Foscari, which present-day turisti d’arte will find ten minutes from Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, home of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. The composition is elevated, as the scene was captured from the top of Palazzo Foscari, a fact which Streeton communicated to Baldwin Spencer in October 1908 (see p. 54). 2 The elevation offers the viewer absolute command over the dazzling spectacle of the Grand Canal, which is part of the fetch of this painting. Streeton notes artist Clara Mustalba, a resident of Venice, gained him permission to paint at the Palazzo. 3 When I published these findings in 2019, drawing together Venetian references from Streeton’s archives to tell the story of this painting, I could not be sure that it was this picture to which Streeton refers in the October 8 letter but my continuing research allows me to suggest it is indeed this

Arthur Streeton with easel, Venice, 1908 Courtesy: archival photographs of Oliver Streeton

very picture, and also the first painted, of the two works discussed in this essay.4

Streeton painted most of his Venetian works in 1908: of 85 catalogue entries that year, 78 works are Venetian scenes.5 Newly married to Canadian violinist, Esther Leonora (Nora) Clench, Streeton holidayed in Venice from April to May 1908, visiting again in September to October of that year, and painting throughout each trip. Nora was a painter herself and at the turn of the century had stopped her music to travel to Paris and paint. When she resumed her violin, she started the all-female ‘Nora Clench Quartet’ which was known for ‘the most avant-garde music in London’.6 Soon after the newly-weds’ 1908 trips to Venice, Streeton held several exhibitions that featured the Venetian works: in Sydney, Melbourne, Paris, Dublin, Venice, and London, among others. The Alpine Club, London, staged a solo show in March 1909, and the Guildhall, Melbourne, presented Arthur Streeton’s Venice, in July 1909.7 The present work was not within that exhibition; it appears to have remained in Europe until at least May 1910, when it was shown at the ‘Salon de la Sociètè des Artistes Francais’, Paris. 8 Streeton’s letter to Spencer 9 details the picture’s size, corresponding exactly with the dimensions of the present work: ‘… I’ve painted on 66x36 from the top of Palazzo Foscari – commanding a fine view of the ‘Grand Canal.’10 This suggests that the painting was commenced

Arthur Streeton in Piazza San Marco, Venice, 1908 Courtesy: archival photographs of Oliver Streeton

during the artist’s second trip to Venice in September 1908, or the first week of October, and possibly completed in the studio in London.11 The catalogue number that the artist has given this work identifies it as the earlier of two epic pictures of this Grand Canal scene. The dimensions stated in the letter can be cross-referenced with the measurements provided through the 1914 exhibition purchase.12 Robert Mond Esquire of Sussex owned a Venetian Grand Canal painting by Streeton that shares similar grandeur to the present work.13 He and his father Ludwig were both patrons of Streeton’s work. From 1912, Ludwig hosted the artist and his wife as house guests on a number of occasions. A Mond home also became a soldiers’ hospital during the First World War, and Streeton stayed there under different circumstances.14 The current painting, the ‘Baillieu Streeton’, has a marginally broader waterway15 and slightly softer features than the Mond version, such as the angles, shadows and windows on some buildings. This gentler treatment emphasises the painting’s great achievement in Impressionist technique, and the Heidelberg School artists’ famous capture of the play of light using gestural brushstroke and colour. This work has a lightness, and almost ethereal quality that is similar to Venice, Bride of the Sea,16 also painted in 1908, but a fraction of the size.

Nora in Piazza San Marco, Venice, 1908 Courtesy: archival photographs of Oliver Streeton

From a letter to Baldwin Spencer, 8 October 1908, with a sketch of San Marco, Venice Courtesy: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Société des Artistes Français 1910, Catalogue Illustré du Salon Courtesy: University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

There are only two Venetian works of the scale of the present picture

The rediscovery of this work in time for the 2020 Streeton exhibition

in The Arthur Streeton Catalogue and of his vast body of work on the

at the AGNSW allowed Australian audiences to see the full brilliance of

Venetian theme (over eighty works), this painting is authoritatively the

Streeton’s Venetian vision in a work which eclipses other paintings of

largest. Among his extraordinary oeuvre of over 1000 paintings, only

the series in both scale and accomplishment.18

twenty-four are of a scale comparable to The Grand Canal. Until a public gallery exhibition in 2016, the painting had been out of In his final (smaller) Grand Canal painting (1927) Streeton retains

circulation for up to 84 years. This artwork and research were brought to

those key differences which distinguish the ‘Baillieu picture’ from the

the attention of AGNSW writers in 2019,19 but the work had escaped the

‘Mond picture.’17 The main change is the magnified building in the

attention of earlier Streeton publications and surveys, its whereabouts

left foreground that is introduced as a framing device; this suggests

had been largely unknown; in this sense it has been described as ‘the

that there is a progression in the latter two pictures that the artist has

missing Streeton.’ 20 With the passage of time this painting has slipped

chosen. The small Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) version

from the purview of museums and art historians, from 1932 until

(1927) is a spirited and lively little work despite the added building

this present century. In 1931–2 the picture was included in the Loan

it shares with the Mond, as it is painted with rapidity and freedom.

Exhibition of the Works of Arthur Streeton at the National Art Gallery of

Streeton’s return to this scene in 1927 reflects the artist’s attachment

New South Wales (forming a wonderful arc with its major public return

to this particular view. In contrast to the Mond painting, where the view

to exhibition at the AGNSW in 2020). This fact was discovered from

is hemmed in by the squarish building on the left, in the present work

a label on the painting’s verso. 21 In relation to the 1931-2 exhibition,

the eye glides into the waterway. The Art Gallery of South Australia has

Lionel Lindsay, as then Trustee, wrote in 1935:

a sketch of the Grand Canal that shows a successful asymmetry, in common with the present picture.

The Nora Clench Quartet, London, 1904 Photographer: J. Russell & Sons, London

And that great canvas of the Grand Canal! Can I sufficiently acclaim

a diva who, besides being a great musician, was also an almost royal

it? All Streeton’s powers are here concentrated as in his “Centre of

personage. She was grand in the days that were truly grand.’ 29 Melba

Empire,” his mastery of composition and atmospheric truth, the

sung for royals across Europe:30 ‘no fewer than seven kings and queens

distinction of his colour and touch. 22

attended one gala performance at Covent Gardens in 1914.’ 31 Hailed by her contemporaries as ‘the world’s greatest singer,’ 32 Melba was an

The Grand Canal (1908) has remained in different branches of the

ardent fan of Streeton’s work, owning several paintings. 33 In 1915 she

Baillieu family, for well over a century, since Streeton sold it to Arthur

wrote to him: ‘Dear Arthur Streeton, … I have seen your lovely pictures

Sydney Baillieu via Mr Streeton’s Exhibition of Pictures in June 1914, 23

at Professor [Baldwin] Spencer’s, how I wish they were all mine.’ 34

just a month before the start of the first World War. 24 This picture passing by descent in the family has led to its uncontested attribution

When building her home in the Yarra Valley, Melba employed Percy

and provenance, as established in 2019: Arthur Streeton’s, The Grand

Grainger’s father, John, as architect and engineer. 35 She named the

Canal (1908), no. 346 in The Arthur Streeton Catalogue (1935). 25 Many

house Coombe Cottage after a property she had rented in London while

major Streeton works have traversed the secondary art market multiple

performing at Covent Garden; it is quite possible that Melba and the

times;26 instead this picture has been held within one family for well

Streetons connected at the home of Ludwig Mond in Combe Bank,

over a century.

Sevenoaks, Kent. 36

Returning to live in Australia in 1923, the Streetons were met on arrival

In 1936 Streeton produced a painting titled Melba‘s Country, more than

at the wharf by Dame Nellie Melba, who encouraged them to settle in

twenty years after he had painted at her property in 1913-14. This

Olinda. 27 In the following year she opened Streeton’s exhibition at The

represented a return to favoured subject matter at the conclusion of

Fine Art Society Gallery, Melbourne. Melba was once described as ‘…

his career, just like ‘The Grand Canal’ paintings of 1908 which were

The Grand Canal, Venice Formerly in the collection of Robert Mond, Esq., Kent, England

reprised in 1927. This is Streeton returning to his most loved subjects.

in the Loan Exhibition of the Works of Arthur Streeton in 1931–32, and

A reviewer in 1914 wrote: ‘…the undulating country around Madame

through his will of 1943.45 The painting was situated in Baillieu’s South

Melba’s House…has provided him with excellent subjects for the

Yarra home in a stately room carrying Persian carpets, and portraits of

expression of his genius,’

and, ‘even when he… gives varieties of the

Napoleon’s conqueror, British Admiral, Lord Nelson.46 Baillieu is the

same scene, he has some technical effort or charming colour mystery

father of the major Australian art patron Sunday Reed; it is interesting

to reveal.’48 This observation is also true of Streeton’s Grand Canal

to know that this grand and significant Streeton painting once graced

scene.

the family home of this influential figure, who laid the foundations for

It is difficult to imagine that Streeton went from painting his generous and opulent Venetian scenes, to depicting the war as the next major chapter of his oeuvre. Anne Gray, Gerard Vaughan and Emma Kindred have precisely and observantly documented that body of work. 39 It seems certain, judging from the image of the Mond work in the publication The Art of Arthur Streeton, 1919,40 that the Mond picture survived World War One, and also that residing in Europe,41 it survived the Second World War; indications are that the Mond version remained in the family until the 1970s.42

far-reaching relevance, not least as an example of collecting taste in the early twentieth century, reflected here by one of the nation’s most prominent families. It featured strikingly in the recent exhibition, Streeton, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales as a key work, and the most important of the Venetian paintings.

Venetian series and indeed, of his extensive body of European work.

He is established as the

painting’s original owner by his 1914 purchase, the painting’s inclusion

The Grand Canal holds a central place in Australian art history, with

This remarkable painting represents the very pinnacle of Streeton’s

Arthur Sydney Baillieu, who also commissioned paintings by Streeton,43 died the same year as the artist, in 1943.

the Heide Museum of Modern Art.

Dr. Sarah Schmidt

Dr. Sarah Schmidt is an Australian public gallery director and curator. Schmidt, who is Director of Canberra Museum and Gallery and the Commonwealth’s Nolan Collection, previously managed cultural diplomacy at the Australian Embassy, Beijing, was Director of Hamilton Gallery, and Deputy Director of the Art Gallery of Ballarat.

1. S ee among many Venetian paintings by the two artists: Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), A Regatta on the Grand Canal, 1740 (National Gallery, London) and The Grand Canal looking South from Ca’Foscari to the Carita, c.1726-27 (The Royal Trust Collection, UK); Claude Monet, Le Grand Canal, 1908 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). An excellent reference which profiles significant artists who have painted in Venice is E.V. Lucas, A Wanderer in Venice, 1914; the reference is of note because it is contemporaneous with Arthur Streeton’s time in Venice, being published around six years later. 2. Galbally, A., & Gray, A., (Eds), Letters from Smike: The Letters of Arthur Streeton 1890-1943, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1989, p.112. I am greatly indebted to Galbally and Gray for this publication which makes Streeton’s letters so accessible. The painting’s stretcher size (to the extreme, including canvas overlapping the stretcher), measured by Deutscher and Hackett is 92 x 168.5 cm (36.2 x 66.3 in); this is commensurate with the 66 x 36 as Streeton describes in his letter. ‘The Grand Canal’ (1908) — Baillieu version — is also described as 66 x 36 inches in the newspaper, The Register, reporting the sale of the painting (see note 11). 3. G albally & Gray, op. cit, pp.114-15. See also Schmidt, S, ‘Arthur Streeton’s “The Grand Canal” 1908’, 2019 < https://academia.edu> re n.2 & 4; Francesco Foscari (1373–1457) was Doge of Venice, 1423—1457 (see E.V. Lucas, 1914, op. cit, p.95). Lucas discusses the beauty of the palace and its ‘golden borders to the windows’, p.135. 4. This view departs from those who assert it is the second, but facts surrounding the painting lead, I think, to a logical conclusion of this present painting as prima. Author of ‘Arthur Streeton’s Venice’, pp.213-232 in Streeton, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2020, Roger Benjamin, says ‘… the second large Grand Canal was purchased by Arthur Sydney Baillieu in 1914…’ — see p 218. I believe this claim is incorrect. The claim, as it is put, can also imply this assertion is drawn from my own research. I have shown many features of Streeton’s Venetian work, as published in 2019, but never asserted this painting as being the second work. A firm view on the order of these paintings has not been established or given by myself, until this present paper for Deutscher and Hackett; I am stating advances in what is ongoing research. Benjamin describes the ‘Mond version’ as having sold for £250 to Ludwig and Robert, citing as his source, the letter to Frederick Delmer of 23 September 1909 which describes a recent sale. The letter states, ‘I showed in Paris this year won a 3rd class gold medal… and I’ve sold at good price 250 pounds a

“Grand Canal Venice”, recently.’ See discussion in Galbally, & Gray, A, op. cit, p.117; and Schmidt, S, op. cit, 2019. It is only slightly overreaching perhaps, to assume this is the Mond painting sale, given at Streeton’s solo exhibition at The Alpine Club, March 26-April 9, 1909, the highest sale among 46 works sold, was approximately £105 (100 Guineas). This sizeable Grand Canal painting is clearly in the vicinity of the stated price, at a time when Streeton was heavily invested in his Venetian series. With the Baillieu purchase not until 1914, there is a high likelihood that the Mond Grand Canal Venice painting is the sale to which Delmer refers in the letter; the price, title and scale all point towards this. We know from the Mond picture’s reproduction in The Studio, vol.47, London, September 15, 1909, that it was acquired by this date (around five years earlier than Baillieu acquired his work). Regardless of sale dates, both paintings were made in 1908. The sequence of the pictures is not ideally constructed from sale dates, but instead from the artist’s own documentation of sequence (in The Arthur Streeton Catalogue, 1935, op. cit.). The Mond picture was exhibited 22 May, 1909, at the New English Art Club summer exhibition at The Galleries of the Royal Society of British Artists, London, May 22, 1909 (there were two New English exhibition seasons in 1909: May and November); the painting was sold sometime between May and September 1909. Details given by the artist of the sale of Venetian paintings ‘to rich friends’ by August 1908 (in a letter to Tom Roberts), could counter argument that the Baillieu work was painted on the second trip to Venice, however this would depend on grand assumptions around scale and price; Streeton’s Venetian output was prolific so this letter is no basis for presumption either. In Streeton’s letter to Roberts (7 August 1908) he says, ‘I’ve sold a few of the Venetians to some rich friends and we’ve been staying at their houses in the country’ — Galbally & Gray, op. cit, p.114. Note there are at least three letters surrounding relevant Venetian sales: this August 1908 letter to Roberts, a letter on 1 July 1909, where Streeton speaks of a garden party showing Venetian pictures, and the letter to Delmer of 23 September 1909 (£250 sale). Per The Arthur Streeton Catalogue (1935), there are only two large scale Grand Canal paintings such as would command this price, although, there is a 1908 Venetian oil in Streeton’s catalogue which is missing dimensions: #381 ‘Venetian Canal’, owner General H Grimwade; also, Streeton did continue to paint —though not so prolifically— beyond the publication date of his 1935 catalogue, for example ‘Melbas Country’ (1936).

footnotes continued page 144

HANS HEYSEN

(1877 – 1968) MORNING BREAK, 1922 watercolour on paper 66.0 x 56.0 cm signed lower right: HANS HEYSEN bears inscription verso: “Morning Break” / Hans Heysen / W-224 – D.H.H. ESTIMATE: $80,000 – 120,000

PROVENANCE Private collection Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 19 August 1991, lot 345 Private collection, Melbourne Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne (label attached verso) Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 2003 EXHIBITED The Seasons in Australian Art, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, 20 November – 18 December 1999 and touring, cat. 39 Annual Collectors’ Exhibition 2003, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, 6 September – 5 October 2003, cat. 11 RELATED WORK Noonday Rest, 1922, watercolour on paper, 56.0 x 65.0 cm, private collection, illus. in Thiele, C., Hans Heysen Masterpieces, Rigby Publishers, Adelaide, 1977, p. 25 The watercolour Morning Break, 1922 is a classic Hans Heysen. Presenting many of his favourite themes, especially the well-earned rest after physical labour, his gums are forever noble and the bountiful landscape is filled with the interplay of sparkling sunlight and restful shadows. For good measure, he adds his leit motif of seated man and resting animals (in this watercolour, draught horses) enjoying a break from work within the protective shield of broad trunked trees. It calls to mind other such notable works as the oil paintings A Summer’s Day, c.1907, acclaimed as ‘the landscape of the year’ when exhibited n Sydney in 1907, Morning Light, 1913 in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and The Three Gums, 1914-21 in the Art Gallery of Ballarat.1 His characteristic approach of painting into the light enables the striking contrast of shaded foreground with sun-filled background of open fields, rolling hills and meandering roads. In October 1920 Heysen wrote to his friend Lionel Lindsay: ‘…it is good to feel the sun warming the earth and flooding its light over everything……and it is good to feel man and horses working in it too.’ 2 The grandeur of the scene is heightened by depicting the gums from a lower viewpoint, figures of man and beast diminutive by comparison. Mastery of

composition is even seen in such detail as the reflected patterns of shaded foreground in the upper tracery of branches against the open sky, linked by, as Heysen observed separately: ‘the pattern of the bark on the trunk of a gum’. 3 Enabled by his intense observation and magnificent draughtsmanship, critics have long been impressed by the ‘truth’ of Heysen’s vision’, combined with poetic insight and clarity of expression.4 Entering his golden age, Heysen’s watercolours of the early 1920s are among his finest. Watercolours won him the Wynne prizes for 1920, 1922 and 1924 -The Toilers, The Quarry and Afternoon in Autumn respectively. The oil painting The Farmyard, Frosty Morning won the award for 1926, making up four among his nine Wynne prizes. The Toilers remained in Heysen’s personal collection until bequeathed to the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1968. The Quarry and Afternoon in Autumn had been earlier snapped up by the Art Gallery of New South Wales; and The Farmyard, Frosty Morning was part of the collection of Sir Warwick and Lady Fairfax, Sydney. In September 1922, at the Institute Building, Adelaide, Dame Nellie Melba opened a glittering exhibition of Heysen’s work consisting mainly of watercolours. It was ‘the first major exhibition of his work in his native Adelaide [and] reached the incredible total of £3,600’, an astronomical figure for those days.5 ‘- 38 of the 55 catalogued works … were sold by the end of the first day’.6 Melba was one of the buyers. Of the forty watercolours listed in the printed catalogue, none carried the same title as our work. Two illustrations of watercolours in the catalogue, however, show Morning Break, 1922 to be of similar thematic interests and exceeding artistic excellence. 1. A Summer’s Day was sold for the record price of $601,364 by Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne, 15 July 2020, lot 14 2. Heysen letter to Lionel Lindsay, 7 October 1920, quoted in Thiele, C, Heysen of Hahndorf, David Heysen Productions, Hyde Park Press, Adelaide, 2001, p. 291 3. Heysen, quoted in Thiele, ibid, p. 312 4. ‘Royal Art Society’, The Lone Hand, Sydney, 1 October 1907, p. 596 5. Thiele, op. cit., p. 186 6. Ibid DAVID THOMAS

JULIAN ROSSI ASHTON

(1851 – 1942) PORTRAIT OF A LADY, c.1895 oil on wood panel 81.0 x 32.5 cm signed lower right: J.R. ASHTON ESTIMATE: $30,000 – 40,000

PROVENANCE Private collection, Melbourne Christie’s, Melbourne, 14 March 1972, lot 45 Private collection, Melbourne Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne RELATED WORKS The Green Gown, c.1890, oil on panel, 66.0 x 24.5 cm, Sotheby’s, Sydney, 22 November 1992, lot 187 Bertha, 1894, oil on wood panel, 91.0 x 26.6 cm, The Stuartholme-Behan Collection of Australian Art, The University of Queensland, Brisbane Young Woman with a Parasol, 1895, oil on wood panel, 89.0 x 25.0 cm, Deutscher and Hackett, Sydney, 28 April 2010, lot 24 Young Woman in Blue with Parasol, oil on panel, 89.5 x 25.5 cm, formerly in the Ian Callinan Collection, Brisbane

Artist, illustrator, teacher, Julian Rossi Ashton was a major and influential figure in the Australian art world for over fifty years. One of his memorable achievements was the acquisition of Arthur Streeton’s Still Glides the Stream, and Shall Forever Glide,1890 by the Art Gallery of New South Wales when he was a trustee (1889-1899). It was the first work by Streeton to enter a public collection. Ashton was a leading figure in the plein-air movement, which, in New South Wales, included A.J. Daplyn, Henry Fullwood, Girolamo Nerli and Charles Conder. Prominent as president of the Art Society of New South Wales and of the Society of Artists, Ashton organised the first exhibition of Australian art to travel abroad, being shown at London’s Grafton Gallery in 1898. Perhaps, however, he is best remembered as an inspiring teacher. Founder of the prestigious Sydney Art School (also known as the Julian Ashton Art School), a short role call of former students is impressive – George Lambert, Elioth Gruner, Thea Proctor, William Dobell, and John Passmore.

and its favoured use of cedar cigar box lids. Memorable examples are Charles Conder’s A Dream of Handel’s Largo, 1889 (Art Gallery of South Australia, M.J.M. Carter Collection) and Streeton’s Honesty and Artichokes, 1889, (Wesley College, Melbourne, The Alec Cato Collection). Mention also should be made of Streeton’s Belinda, or, A Lady of the Period, 1894 in the Newcastle Art Gallery through the Dr Roland Pope Bequest. In 1895, Tom Roberts began a series of over twenty portraits, mainly on cedar panels, of prominent personalities. Key examples are George Coppin, c.1895-9 in the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra and Andrew Garran, c.1896 (private collection). The single female of Roberts’ group was the model and photographer, Ada Furlong, c.1895, in the Art Gallery of Western Australia. The similarity between Roberts’ and Ashton’s works suggests mutual influence. A noted painter of portraits, Ashton’s works range from Portrait of Louis Buvelot, 1880 (Geelong Gallery), through to Spring (Miss Helen Willis), c.1889 (National Gallery of Australia). The stylish (Portrait of a Lady), c.1890s, like its companion piece, Young Woman with a Parasol, 1895, is modish of dress.1 The folded parasol held by the latter, however, has morphed into the red and white azaleas of the former. Appropriately, azaleas in all their beauty symbolise femininity and softness. Such floral additions and detailing are a particularly attractive feature of Ashton’s portraits of ladies. Also, he often shows them in profile, facing right. Touched by a French sophistication and elegance inherited from his student days in Paris, their immediacy of appeal is promoted by the direct application of paint onto the unprimed cedar panel. Another striking feature of these related works is the presentation of the figure from a lower viewpoint – visually arresting through elevation. While the question of the identity of the model for (Portrait of a Lady) has not been resolved, Ashton’s daughter Bertha is a possibility. Although young, a likeness can be found in the drawing, ‘female head’ on the verso of ‘(Bertha Ashton)’, in the Ashton sketchbook in the National Gallery of Australia. 2 1. For details of Young Woman with a Parasol, 1895, see ‘Related Work’ 2. National Gallery of Australia, 77.59.3. 10AB

Painting on cedar and wooden panels was very popular in Australia in the late ‘eighties into the 1890s, particularly among the more advanced artists. In 1889, in Melbourne, there was the 9 x 5 Impression Exhibition

DAVID THOMAS

CLARICE BECKETT

(1887 – 1935) BATHING BOXES, BEAUMARIS, c.1932 oil on canvas 45.0 x 65.5 cm signed lower left: C. Beckett bears inscription verso: B / 43 ESTIMATE: $40,000 – 60,000

PROVENANCE Private collection, Melbourne We are grateful to Rosalind Hollinrake for her assistance with this catalogue entry. This idyllic painting depicts a quiet corner of Beaumaris, a coastal suburb to the south of the city of Melbourne. From the earliest days of colony, this bay-side locale attracted pleasure seekers with the first public swimming baths dating from the 1840s. By the turn of the century, clusters of bathing boxes were built within the ti-tree scrub by private individuals, or to service the patrons of nearby guesthouses. In Bathing Boxes, Beaumaris, c.1932, Clarice Beckett turns her gaze to one such group, most likely located in the cove of Watkins Bay, at the end of the street where the artist lived. Beckett’s distinctive style is immediately recognisable and, when seen collectively, her paintings provide an unsurpassed record of the changing landscape of the region. The artist was raised in Casterton in regional Victoria but the family often holidayed at Beaumaris. Her mother Kate ‘had taken sketching and painting classes and counted among her friends Walter Withers and Ola Cohn.’1 On their advice, she enrolled Clarice (and her sister Hilda) in the National Gallery School in 1914, studying under Frederick McCubbin. Inspired later by a lecture by the artist-theorist Max Meldrum, she joined his school for a year. Meldrum taught his own theory of ‘optical science’ aka Tonalism, which, as its name implies, revolved around building an image based on tonal values alone. Although she remained within the Meldrumite orbit throughout her subsequent career, Beckett’s paintings were truly a combination of the Gallery School’s academic teaching, Tonalism – and herself. As her colleague Elizabeth Colquhoun noted, Beckett’s paintings were more ‘fragile’ than Meldrum’s. ‘It was a different kind of thing, but it was very truthful.’ 2

By the early 1930s, bathing huts could be found on all beaches in the area, sometimes two or three deep. In Bathing Boxes, Beaumaris, the depth of the shadows indicates that the artist painted it in the early morning, a time when she was free from the constraints of looking after her increasingly frail parents. With her hand-made painting trolley in tow, Beckett would wander the same areas repetitively, always approaching a scene with a different ambition as to the mood she wished to capture. Indeed, when asked why she never felt the desire to travel more widely, she responded ‘I have only just got the hang of painting Beaumaris after all these years, why should I go somewhere else strange to paint?’ 3 Rosalind Hollinrake, the historian who ‘re-discovered’ Beckett, included a near identical painting in her landmark exhibition Clarice Beckett: politically incorrect in 1999. The variant on offer here is a tighter composition, and includes the Beckett family’s own hut near the centre of the group. Also apparent is Beckett’s technique of putting ‘a bit of the colour of the object ... into its shadow’ thus giving the whole ‘a greater luminosity.’4 Ultimately, this idyllic scene no longer remains. A huge storm in 1934 (also captured by Beckett in a memorable sequence of paintings) destroyed bathing boxes up and down the coast, most of which were not replaced. Bathing Boxes, Beaumaris, therefore, remains as a significant memorial to the location, and to the artist herself. 1. Hollinrake, R., ‘Painting against the tide’, The Age, Melbourne, 3 April 1985, p. 16 2. Elizabeth Colquhoun, cited in Peers, J., More than just gumtrees: a personal, social and artistic history of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors, Dawn Revival Press, Melbourne, 1993, p. 197 3. Clarice Beckett, c.1928, cited in Hollinrake, R., Clarice Beckett: the artist and her circle, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1979, p. 21 4. Clarice Beckett, c.1930, cited ibid., p. 26 ANDREW GAYNOR

CLARICE BECKETT

(1887 – 1935) VIEW ACROSS THE YARRA, c.1931 oil on pulpboard 35.0 x 46.0 cm signed lower left: C. Beckett ESTIMATE: $35,000 – 45,000

PROVENANCE Malvern Fine Art Gallery, Melbourne, Mrs Phyllis McBean, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 1975 Thence by descent, Private collection, Sydney RELATED WORK Across the Yarra, c.1931, oil on cardboard, 31.6 x 45.0 cm, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria There have been a number of significant artists who have been mesmerised by the effects of fog and light, including such names as J. M. W. Turner, James Whistler and Claude Monet. Misty paintings had become so popular in the late nineteenth century that Oscar Wilde was moved to write: ‘There may have been fogs for centuries ... (b)ut no one saw them. They did not exist until art had invented them.’1 The softfocus photography of Pictorialism also found inspiration here, and two of this country’s finest exponents, Pegg Clarke and John Kauffmann, were prominent in Victoria in the interwar years. There is little doubt that Clarice Beckett was aware of these aesthetic precedents, and through the 1920s and 1930s, she also painted countless views of the city of Melbourne and its bayside suburbs enveloped in the silken haze of fog. It is perhaps not surprising that the Wurrundjeri people’s name for the Yarra River was ‘birrarung’, meaning ‘place of mist and shadows.’ By day, its waters are brown from the suspended sediment of upriver soils but once night approaches, its mystery is enhanced as reflected lights begin to animate the surface. Beckett painted View across the Yarra, c.1931, from a position adjacent to where Deborah Halpern’s brightly coloured sculpture Angel now stands. In spite of her alliance to the group of artists gathered around the controversial artist-theorist Max Meldrum, Beckett was essentially a solitary figure due to the demands

of a home life centred on the care of her aging parents. Given this handicap, the number of city views in her oeuvre are evidence that she still took the most of her scant opportunities to visit the city and paint. Travelling by train or tram, with hand-made painting trolley in tow, she would walk short distances from their terminus before spotting an inspiring location. The site for View across the Yarra, for example, is less than ten minutes walk from Flinders Street station, and Beckett arrived just as the sun was beginning to set. Although the city itself is already lost in the haze, the reflections in the water reveal the twin spires of St. Paul’s Cathedral and Melbourne’s new secular temple, the T&G Building, erected in 1928. This painting is almost identical to Across the Yarra, c.1931, now in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria; and it is plausible that both may have been painted on the same evening, with View across the Yarra being the first due to the prominence of the pink caused by the setting sun. Beckett exhibited regularly but struggled to find financial or critical success, even though her talent was celebrated by Meldrum who wrote that she created work ‘of which any nation could be proud.’ 2 She was also was admired by the famed Heidelberg School artist Tom Roberts, who painted a small sunrise inspired by her work. 3 Following Beckett’s premature death in 1935, close friend Percy Leason wrote that the funeral occurred on a beautiful July day. ‘It seemed in some way like Clarice herself, gentle and kindly. ... In the foreground things were clear and vivid; a half mile away, everything was silvery. It was the kind of day that Clarice had loved and painted so well.’4 1. Oscar Wilde, ‘The Decay of Lying’, 1889. See: https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/steen/cogweb/Abstracts/Wilde_1889.html Viewed 25 March 2021 2. Max Meldrum, cited in: ‘Work of Clarice Beckett’, The Age, 5 May 1936, p. 9 3. Tom Roberts, Sunrise, Tasmania, 1924. Collection: Art Gallery of South Australia. See: Lock-Wier, T., Misty Moderns: Australian tonalists 1915-1950, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2008, p. 18 4. Percy Leason, 1935 cited in: Tasca, M., Percy Leason: an artist’s life, Melbourne: Thames and Hudson, 2016, p. 161 ANDREW GAYNOR

CLARICE BECKETT (1887 – 1935) MOONRISE, BEAUMARIS (VERSO: SUNSET AND TREES) oil on board 18.5 x 21.0 cm bears inscription verso: CLARICE BECKETT / HM031 ESTIMATE: $18,000 - 24,000

PROVENANCE Private collection, Melbourne, purchased in the 1970s Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 30 April 2002, lot 156 Private collection, Melbourne Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne, 20 April 2011, lot 95 Private collection, Sydney The following excerpt was published in ‘In Town and Out’, Herald, Melbourne, 19 October 1932, p.8 (unknown author) ‘Though I had biked, hiked and motored along Beach Road around Beaumaris Bay a hundred or more times I did not fully realise the beauty of the place till I looked at Miss Clarice Beckett’s exhibition of oil paintings at the Atheneum today. This Bendigo girl, pupil of Max Meldrum, has caught cliff and water in all moods and light and season, revealing there is not one Beaumaris Bay but a score.’

GODFREY MILLER

(1893 – 1964) CITYSCAPE, c.1950 – 1952 oil on canvas on compressed card 33.5 x 33.0 cm bears inscription lower right: JH 134 label attached verso signed by J. Henshaw, executor of the artist’s estate ESTIMATE: $35,000 – 45,000

PROVENANCE Estate of the artist, Sydney John Lockhart AO, Sydney Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 1981 EXHIBITED Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne, 10 – 24 September 1981, cat. 140 (illus. in exhibition catalogue) While Godfrey Miller was held in high regard amongst modernist painters of his time, an aversion to exhibiting, or releasing his works from the studio stunted the arc of his career during his lifetime. Most of Miller’s major works are held in institutions, as he was reluctant to sell to private collectors, except on rare occasions for important individuals whom he felt worthy of owning his works. Miller’s paintings represent the true spirit of an artist whose sole focus in life was the pursuit of truth and beauty through his work. His mature paintings are characterised by his use of fine, ruled lines, which segment the surface into small geometric fields poised to receive pockets of pigment. The artist’s working methods were such that it may have felt impossible for Miller to actually finish a painting. His forensic attention to detail meant that each additional application of colour, no matter how minor, would send a kaleidoscopic ripple across the work, which the artist would intuitively be required to follow with further strokes and counter strokes, resulting in a perpetual game of aesthetic adjustment. From early in his career, Miller was known to take up to fifteen years to complete a painting.

The current work Cityscape, c. 1950 – 52, is a square format which the artist has divided neatly in half using a direct horizontal line across the centre of the work. This bold gesture for Miller which displays a neat, formal division is not often apparent in Miller’s meditations on nature versus mathematics. In this case the strategy suits the subject very well as it allows him to divide the ‘landscape’ into two equal contrasting parts. The lower half of the work features Miller’s mature geometric style, which is rich in detail and colour and alludes to a natural world. Whereas the upper half of the work features a series of vertical forms, which when read in conjunction with the grey tones suggest a manmade environment of a city with industrial overtones. Miller has often drawn parallels between trees and architecture. In his endless quest for unity between subject, ground and medium, Miller developed a method of weaving and layering his subjects with the surrounding space. Through a merging natural and manmade forms, he succeeded in creating works of enormous technical complexity. The artist has left Cityscape, poised perfectly between representation and near abstraction. From the early 1950s onwards, Miller’s work sat in contrast to the lyrical abstraction which prevailed through the teaching at East Sydney Technical College. While the influential John Passmore and his students danced to the tune of Cézanne, Godfrey Miller stayed true to his intuition: his rigid analytical propositions representing not only a milestone of Australian painting, but a profoundly personal vision. HENRY MULHOLLAND

WILLIAM DOBELL

(1899 – 1970) HELEN BLAXLAND AND TONIA, 1941 oil on wood panel 44.5 x 53.5 cm signed lower right: WILLIAM DOBELL dated and inscribed verso: Mr Gregory Blaxland / 11 Wallaroy Road / Woollahra / Painted / 1941 ESTIMATE: $120,000 – 180,000

PROVENANCE Commissioned by Gregory and Helen Blaxland, Sydney Christie’s, Sydney, 3 March 1972, lot 99 (as Conversation Piece’) Private collection, Sydney Geoff K. Gray, Sydney, 12 November 1984, lot 45 (as ‘Conversation Piece’) Mr and Mrs René Rivkin, Sydney Sotheby’s, Sydney, 3 June, 2001, lot 18 (as ‘Conversation Piece’) Gould collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED Annual Exhibition, Society of Artists, Education Department’s Gallery, Sydney, 6 – 26 September 1941, cat. 162 Margaret Preston and William Dobell Loan Exhibition, National Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 19 March – 16 April 1942, cat. 10 (label attached verso) William Dobell, David Jones Art Gallery, Sydney, 1 – 26 August 1944, cat. 50 (as ‘Mrs. Blaxland and Tonia, 1942’) William Dobell: Paintings from 1926 – 1964, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 15 July – 30 August 1964, cat. 83, (as ‘Mrs Blaxland and Toni’) (label attached verso) 100 Years of Great Australian Art, Gould Galleries, Melbourne, 2 – 28 March 2004, and Gould Galleries, Sydney, 6 April – 9 May 2004, cat. 13 (illus. in exhibition catalogue) The Director’s Choice 2015, Celebrating 35 Years, Gould Galleries, Melbourne, 1 May – 13 June 2015, cat. 5 (illus. in exhibition catalogue) Best in Show: Dogs in Australian Art, Orange Regional Gallery, Orange, 9 April – 3 July 2016, cat. 14

South Wales) and particularly, another society commission Jacqueline Crookston 1940 (private collection), where the ‘poses and groupings have the artificial feel of the studio about them … touched with such breath-taking lightness and with such an exquisite sense of rhythm. Dobell is attracted by the possibilities of this highly finished artificial elegance.’1 The artist had returned to Australia from London in 1939 after attending the Slade School, where he had already developed a unique, penetrative talent for depicting people from all walks of life. On arrival in Sydney, he found himself a two-bedroom apartment above a bank in Kings Cross, with one room used as a living space, the other as a studio. 2 Thus settled, Dobell renewed his acquaintance with the influential publisher Sydney Ure Smith who began to actively promote his work; and soon he was painting a range of notable society and Government figures. Donald Friend records dinner parties in his diaries that included Ure Smith, Dobell and ‘Mrs Greg Blaxland’, 3 so it seems apparent that the publisher also introduced the artist to this potential sitter. Helen Blaxland and Tonia was one of his first portrait commissions.4

LITERATURE Penton, B., The Art of William Dobell, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1946, pp. 8, 122 (illus. as ‘Mrs Blaxland and Toni’) Gleeson, J., William Dobell, Thames and Hudson, London, 1964, cat. 98, p. 193

Helen Blaxland (nee Anderson, 1907-1989) was a tall and stylish woman who devoted considerable energy to a wide range of worthy pursuits. She originally studied at the Julian Ashton School of Art and when the Second World War erupted, she worked as a fundraiser with the Australian Red Cross Society. In 1946, she collaborated with the photographer Max Dupain and artist Elaine Haxton on a popular book on flower arranging; and in 1959, Blaxland joined the nascent National Trust. As a result of her important and extended contribution to the conservation group, she was awarded a DBE in 1975. Blaxland was also a foundation trustee of the National Parks and Wildlife Foundation (New South Wales); and in 1978 she became foundation chairman of the Australiana Fund, set up to acquire Australian furnishings for the four official Commonwealth residences.5 Daughter Antonia (known as Tonia or Toni) became a noted photographer following an apprenticeship with Dupain.

Helen Blaxland and Tonia belongs to a small suite of portraits painted by William Dobell in Sydney in the early 1940s, before the crippling traumas inflicted on him by the notorious Archibald Prize court case of 1944. This stylised double portrait shares many of the classic Dobell traits evident in such contemporaneous works as The Tattooed Lady 1941 (private collection), Elaine Haxton 1941 (Art Gallery of New

The family’s mansion, ‘Brush’, occupied a prominent location in Sydney’s Bellevue Hill. Noted art collectors and patrons, the Blaxlands owned significant pieces by Russell Drysdale, Sidney Nolan, Donald Friend and David Strachan; and the designer Loudon Sainthill was responsible for the decor of the sumptuous lounge room where Blaxland and her daughter are seen sitting. With glimpses of the harbour and

lush gardens beyond the curtains, and crested by a Sainthill-designed wall sconce, Dobell presents Helen, Tonia, and Crown, their Sealyham terrier, as very comfortable occupants within their own stylish – and highly stylised – environment. 1. James Gleeson, William Dobell, Thames and Hudson, London, 1964 (1969), p.80. 2. Corner of Darlinghurst Road and Roslyn St, the building is now a backpackers’ hostel. 3. See: Hetherington, P. (ed.), The Diaries of Donald Friend (Volume 2), National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2003, pp.68, 88. 4. One source claims it was his first commission. See: Engledow, S., ‘Petal to the Mettle’, Portrait (magazine), National Portrait Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 62, Autumn, 2019 https://portrait.gov.au/magazines/62/petal-to-the-mettle Viewed 25.03.21 5. Details of Helen’s life sourced from: Simpson, C., ‘Blaxland, ‘ Dame Helen Frances (1907–1989)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/blaxland-dame-helen-frances-12222 Viewed 07.01.17. ANDREW GAYNOR

ARTHUR BOYD

(1920 – 1999) UNTITLED (OLD TESTAMENT), c.1950 – 52 glazed ceramic tile 40.5 x 42.5 cm signed lower centre: Arthur Boyd ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000

PROVENANCE Geoffrey Dutton, London, acquired directly from the artist c.1960 Ninette Dutton (née Trott), New South Wales Private collection, New South Wales, acquired from the above prior to 2007 We are grateful to Jamie Boyd and Polly Boyd for their assistance with this catalogue entry. A ceramic tile for a Rolls Royce? That was the equivalent value for Arthur Boyd’s Untitled (Old Testament), c.1950-1963, when the poet Geoffrey Dutton acquired it in exchange for his Rolls in 1963. The two had been friends since 1940, and Dutton was on an extended visit to London, purchasing the car as his transport whilst there, having been advised it was a wise investment due to the Rolls’ retained value at re-sale.1 The Boyd family had been resident there since 1961, and when Dutton explained the reason for such an expensive short-term purchase, the artist made the exchange proposition, which the poet happily accepted. Boyd was then engaged in a sequence of tiles of larger dimensions than those in the inaugural series shown at Peter Bray Gallery, Melbourne, in 1952. Untitled (Old Testament) returns this earlier scale, and it is plausible that the artist crafted it so in order to pair it with an earlier tile, The Money Changers, 1950-52, already owned by Dutton. Boyd’s fascination with Old Testament stories started with his grandmother reading to him from an illustrated bible, ‘the tinted engravings in the text being as marvellous as they were bizarre.’ 2 Alongside his brother-in-law John Perceval, Boyd created a cycle of biblical paintings after World War Two, infused with the character of northern Renaissance artists, particularly Rembrandt – ‘perhaps the most humane and psychologically penetrating interpreter of the Bible’ – and the earthier, rambunctious Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 3 Having also established the AMB pottery with Perceval, Boyd started exploring the possibilities of glazed ceramic as a medium for narrative tiles. As the series progressed, Boyd experimented with colour and increased the darkness of his backgrounds, a tactic which ‘projects the figures

forward – they often fill the pictorial field in height – in sharpened dramatic confrontation.’4 Untitled (Old Testament) vividly records a fierce struggle between an unarmed man and four guards, the design of whose spears creates a ‘dominant pictorial rhythm, a strong telling and pervading gesture.’ 5 When the first series of tiles was exhibited, critics wrote positively of the their likeness to stained glass and the ‘very immediacy of the work (which) commands admiration, and the senses respond without question to warm glowing colour, and the sparkling brittle textures imparted by the ground.’6 In his autobiography, Dutton records that The Money Changers later fell off a wall sustaining a visible crack, and it may have been this knowledge that determined Boyd’s choice of creating this companion artwork for his friend. There was, however, a last-minute drama with the exchange. Dutton had been warned to unscrew the Rolls Royce’s Flying Lady hood ornament each evening in case of theft, but got very drunk on his last night in London and forgot to do so. It was indeed stolen, so when Dutton turned up at Boyd’s house with the car, he had replaced the ornament temporarily with a Maxwell House coffee jar lid.7 There is no mention of Untitled (Old Testament) in Franz Philipp’s catalogue raisonné, published with the artist’s input in 1967, but neither does it record Dutton as the owner (by then, for some fifteen years) of The Money Changers. 8 As such, the emergence – with impeccable provenance – of this powerfully conceived, yet previously undocumented ceramic tile by Arthur Boyd, is a moment of some note. 1. Dutton, G., Out in the open: an autobiography, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1994, p.288 2. Gunn, G., ‘Tribute. Arthur Boyd: 1920-1999, Art and Australia, Sydney, vol. 37, no. 2, December 1999/January-February 2000, p. 207 3. Pearce, B., Arthur Boyd: retrospective, Beagle Press, Sydney, 1993, p. 171 4. Philipp, F., Arthur Boyd, Thames and Hudson, London, 1967, p. 68 5. Ibid. 6. The Age Art Critic, ‘Art Notes: middle course could lead to beauty’, The Age, 26 August 1952, p. 2 7. Jamie Boyd, correspondence, 10 March 2021 8. Philipp, F., Arthur Boyd, Ibid., p. 250, no. 37 ANDREW GAYNOR

JOHN PERCEVAL

(1923 – 2000) THE HULL, WILLIAMSTOWN, 1956 oil on composition board 61.0 x 71.0 cm signed lower left: Perceval ESTIMATE: $240,000 – 280,000

PROVENANCE Barry Stern Gallery, Sydney Kevin (Pro) Hart, Broken Hill, NSW, acquired from the above in 1968 Deutscher ~ Menzies, Sydney, 15 March 2006, lot 15 Gould collection, Melbourne Deutscher and Hackett, Sydney, 15 March 2017, lot 5 Private collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED The Director’s Choice 2007, Gould Galleries, Melbourne, 17 February – 30 March 2007, cat. 7 (illus. in exhibition catalogue) The Director’s Choice 2010, Gould Galleries, Melbourne, 16 May – 5 June 2010, cat. 5 (illus. in exhibition catalogue) LITERATURE Allen, T., John Perceval, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1992, p. 158 (as ‘Stern of a Cargo Ship, c.1956 – 59’)

John Perceval’s paintings of Williamstown from the 1950s are amongst the most sought after in Australian art and key examples now reside in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery, Newcastle Art Gallery and the Tarrawarra Museum of Art. Vibrant, swirling, blustery and above all superbly painted, the series depicts the working port as a source of fascinating contrasts. Although some harbour and dock drawings by the artist have been noted from as early as 1949, it was his purchase of a second-hand Volkswagen Beetle in the mid-1950s that transformed his ability to travel further distances from his family base in the eastern suburbs. With Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd and Hal Hattam as occasional companions, Perceval explored Williamstown describing the experience as ‘like finding Venice.’1 This, of course, was the stuff of pure romance for the artist who had yet to travel overseas; nonetheless, it is an indication of his creative instinct that he could perceive such a poetic similarity amidst the working tugs, gulls, spilled fuel and battered hulks.

In The Hull, Williamstown, 1956 an aging vessel is moored at the docks, its stern a patchwork of metal plates of differing heritage and condition. Two wharf workers tug at the lines, smoke pollutes the air and bilge water spills out from near the Plimsoll line. It is a painting that almost begs to have a smell, one of salt, oil, soot and toil. Many contemporaneous critics mistakenly considered Perceval’s style to be one of a mindless joie de vivre, as if he were somehow untutored and the imagery contained no true technical skill or critical analysis. Considering his solid track record and well-known fascination with the art of Rembrandt and other masters, such shallow opinions were not appreciated by Perceval who commented in 1963 that ‘(s)ome critics have wrongly seen my work as action painting; but at all times my work is primarily a response to the subject, to light and trees, air, people etc. Whatever success it may achieve is due to the desire to equate the vitality, the pulse of life in nature and the world around us.’ 2 The Hull clearly demonstrates Perceval’s control with the brush as the pigment is almost alla prima, a situation where the purity of an original paint mark stays ‘true’ within the final work, that is, it is not over-painted at any time during the process. Further evidence is his compositional skill which includes visual cues – ropes, smoke, arcs of water and the spar extending from the stern – which all lead the eye around the scene. In November 1956, Australian Galleries in Melbourne opened to great fanfare and their first exhibition featured John Perceval’s paintings of Williamstown and Gaffney’s Creek. Although painted at the same time, The Hull was not included in this inaugural showing as the artist and the gallery decided to keep to a uniform 3 x 4 foot size. When the artist and prominent collector Pro Hart owned it, he sent Perceval a Polaroid which inspired him to do a rare reinterpretation executed in his thencurrent style which favoured heightened colour. This new work (The Old Tug Boat, 1995) became the cover catalogue image for the celebrated exhibition John Perceval: Paintings 1990 – 1995 held at Gould Galleries in 1996. 1. Plant, M., John Perceval, Lansdowne Australian, Melbourne, 1971, p. 52 2. John Perceval, quoted in: Reed, J., New Painting 1952 – 1962, Longmans, Melbourne, 1963, p. 24 ANDREW GAYNOR

ARTHUR BOYD

(1920 – 1999) NEBUCHADNEZZAR IN THE LONG GRASS, c.1968 oil on canvas 108.5 x 113.0 cm signed lower right: Arthur Boyd bears inscription verso: 13 ESTIMATE: $55,000 – 75,000

PROVENANCE Private collection Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 24 July 1988, lot 368 (as ‘Nebuchadnezzar Swimming Across a River’) Savill Galleries, Sydney Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 1998 ‘I’d like to feel that through my work there is a possibility of making a contribution to a social progression or enlightenment. It would be nice if the creative effort or impulse was connected with a conscious contribution to society, a sort of duty of service.’1 According to the Old Testament, Nebuchadnezzar, king of ancient Babylon (602-562BCE), was a successful ruler who fell from grace for placing his own self-aggrandisement before God. As punishment for his pride and arrogance, he thus lost his sanity and was banished into the wilderness for seven years where he underwent various trials and tribulations: ‘...his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses: they fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven; til he knew that the most high God ruled in the kingdom of men, and that he appointeth over it whomsoever he will’. 2 Although the Book of Daniel has provided inspiration to the visual arts for centuries from the medieval façade reliefs of Notre Dame La Grande, Poitiers to the Romantic prints of visionary William Blake, no painter has arguably ever devoted him or herself more fully to imagining the degenerative experiences of Nebuchadnezzar in the wilderness than Australian modernist, Arthur Boyd. Imbuing his king with Lear-like characteristics, Boyd embarked upon this impressive Nebuchadnezzar series in 1966 to illustrate a text on the theme by the scholar Thomas S.R. Boase (who subsequently published 34 of the works in his dedicated tome in 1974). 3 Characterised by its frenzied energy, vivid colour and profound symbolic permutations, the series still remains one of the artist’s most sustained, encompassing more than a hundred works and featuring some of the most sumptuously executed paintings of his career. Elaborating upon the appeal of the

theme for the artist, Boase suggests: ‘Here is a subject that leads immediately into Boyd’s preoccupation in many other works with the fusion between man and natural forces, the involvement of man and beast... Other echoes link with Boyd’s own symbolism, the sinister dark birds, the gentle mourning dog. Behind the figures there are traces of the Australian landscape of his early inspiration. But if these works are enriched with such references, the myth is newly and freshly created, a second Daniel come to judgment our own contemporary obscure and secret impulses’.4 Given the artist’s renowned social conscience, indeed it is perhaps not coincidental that his Nebuchadnezzar series was produced at the height of the Vietnam War when audiences internationally were assailed with images in the mass media of cruel dictatorial regimes: villages incinerated, men and women tortured, children screaming from the pain of napalm. As one author notes, ‘self-immolations in protest actually took place on Hampstead Heath near Boyd’s house... and once more, a biblical subject by him was seen to be an allegory of the descent of humanity in a conflicted world’. Accompanied by the signature Boydian motif of the black ram, in Nebuchadnezzar in the Long Grass, c.1968, the king ablaze in golden flames has become barely distinguishable from the dry Australian bushland - thus inextricably fused with the natural world in a manner strongly reminiscent of the artist’s interpretations of the Narcissus myth a decade later. As with the finest of Boyd’s Nebuchadnezzar images, the work offers an empathetic and emotive response to a harsh tale of moral instruction, giving compelling form to ‘…good and evil; things elemental and mysterious, things intensely human and vulnerable’.6 1. Arthur Boyd, cited at https://www.bundanon.com.au/collection/exhibitions-page/active- witness/ 2. Boase, T.S., Nebuchadnezzar, Thames and Hudson, London, 1972, p. 20 3. Pearce, B., Arthur Boyd Retrospective, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1993, p. 26 4. Boase, op. cit., p. 42 5. Pearce, op.cit. 6. Oliver, C., ‘A Welcome to Arthur Boyd’ in Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Other Works by Arthur Boyd, ex.cat., Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1969, n.p. VERONICA ANGELATOS

JOHN BRACK

(1920 – 1999) STANDING NUDE, 1970 oil on canvas 129.5 x 96.5 cm signed and dated lower left: John Brack 70 inscribed with title on artist’s label verso: STANDING NUDE ESTIMATE: $300,000 – 400,000

PROVENANCE Rudy Komon, Sydney (bears inscription on artist’s label verso: Rudy) The Estate of Rudy Komon, Sydney Ray Hughes, Sydney (label attached verso) Private collection, New South Wales, acquired from the above c.1996 EXHIBITED John Brack, Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney, 7 – 28 April 1971, cat. 5 (label attached verso, stock no. 2855) The Private Collection of Mr and Mrs Rudy Komon, Georges Gallery, Melbourne, 9 – 21 August 1971 LITERATURE Grishin, S., The Art of John Brack, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1990, vol. I, p. 117; vol. II, cat. o183, pp. 25, 142 (illus.) Lindsay, R., John Brack, A Retrospective Exhibition, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1987, p.125

The female nude is a consistent subject throughout John Brack’s oeuvre, first appearing in an important group of paintings made during the late 1950s and continuing through to the last decades of his career. The history of art remained an essential touchstone for Brack and the significance of the nude – as well as other traditional genres such as still-life and portraiture – from Boucher’s famous L’Odalisque, c.1745 (Musée du Louvre, Paris) to Manet’s Olympia, 1863 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), provided both inspiration and challenge as he borrowed from the masters and pitted himself against them. Underlying this was Brack’s enduring interest in the human condition, which he described in this context, saying: ‘When I paint a woman … I am not interested in how she looks sitting in the studio, but in how she looks at all times, in all lights, what she looked like before and what she is going to look like, what she thinks, hopes, believes, and dreams. The way the light falls and casts its shadows is merely … a hindrance unless it helps me to show these things.’1 Confronted by the fact that that ‘there is absolutely nothing whatsoever erotic in an artist’s model unclothed in a suburban empty room’ 2, Brack’s earliest nudes aimed to de-eroticise the subject, thereby subverting one of the primary expectations of the genre. Later nudes

of the 1970s and 80s reveal a certain sensuality and one senses the artist’s pleasure in depicting the female form, but viewed as a group, these works also express more universal ideas about women and their place in the world. Helen Brack has described the recurring focus on the (always) female nude as ‘John’s need for discipline in seeing and depicting, and his constant effort to define how women are’. 3 Painted in his studio with its timber floorboards and unadorned walls, the late nudes typically depict a woman (occasionally two) with various props; a chair, sometimes draped with the model’s discarded robe, and more often than not, a Persian carpet. Rendered in intricate detail, the carpets have a prominent role in Brack’s nudes, as do the floorboards, which often tilt vertiginously, as if everything they support might fall over at any moment. Eschewing all of these familiar accoutrements, Standing Nude, 1970 is one of Brack’s most austere paintings. The focus is on the young woman who stands at the very front of the picture plane, one arm folded across her body holding the other, a gesture which implies some awkwardness but also reinforces the strongly rectilinear nature of the composition. It was included in Brack’s 1971 solo exhibition at the Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney, alongside Reclining Nude, 1970 (Art Gallery of South Australia) and The Fur Coat, 1971 (Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art). While the Bulletin review of the exhibition asked ‘What Has Happened to the Nude?’4, Daniel Thomas looked beyond the surface, writing, ‘In the new nudes he reminds us that we are looking at paintings, not people … Besides the tension between real and artificial, I now think there’s a permanent tension between puritanism and luxury in his work. Spare puritan forms always, luxurious subject matter mostly’. 5 Standing Nude was acquired by Rudy Komon and later owned by Ray Hughes, and its provenance, as part of the personal collections of two of Sydney’s most renowned art dealers – both individuals with a very well-trained eye – highlights its pictorial strength and significance within Brack’s oeuvre. 1. Brack, H., ‘This Oeuvre – The Work Itself’, Grant, K., John Brack, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2009, p. 16 2. See Grant, K., ibid., p. 87 3. Brack, J. interviewed in Australian Contemporary Art Archive, no. 1, Deakin University Media Production, 1980, transcript, p. 3 4. Lynn, E., ‘What Has Happened to the Nude?’, Bulletin, Sydney, 24 April 1971, pp. 54-55 5. Thomas, D., ‘Display of Nudes’, Sunday Telegraph, Sydney, 11 April 1971 KIRSTY GRANT

JOHN BRACK

(1920 – 1999) GYMNASTS NO. 2, 1971 conté on paper 46.0 x 66.0 cm signed and dated lower centre: John Brack / 71 ESTIMATE: $30,000 – 40,000

PROVENANCE Private collection Christie’s, Sydney, 14 November 1988, lot 240 Niagara Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso) Private collection, Melbourne, acquired in 2004 EXHIBITED Recent Paintings by John Brack, Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne, September 1971, cat. 20 John Brack Drawings 1945 – 79, Monash University Exhibition Gallery, Melbourne, 9 June – 10 July 1981 LITERATURE Grishin, S., The Art of John Brack, 1990, vol. II, cat. p167, pp.60, 217 (illus.) RELATED WORK The Low Bench, 1971, oil on canvas, 129.5 x 96.5 cm, private collection, Sydney, in Grant, K. (et al.), John Brack, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, pp. 174-175 (illus.) The following excerpts are from Grishin, S.,The Art of John Brack, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1990, vol. I, pp. 121-122: ‘The series of gymnasts consists of ten oil paintings and eight conte drawings. Thematically it presents a logical progression from the ballroom dancing series – the concern with senseless ritual as recreational activities are converted into difficult and testing labour. In its formal language, however, there are signs of a fundamental change. A constant preoccupation in Brack’s art is identity. This can be traced back to a youthful interest in books on physiognomy as well as a later study of Nigel Dennis’ Cards of Identity with its questions of ‘reidentification’ and ‘personal distinctiveness’ ... Up to this point, Brack’s

images of still-life objects - scissors, knives and forks - were kept separate from figure compositions, although he did imbue these still life objects with a symbolic existence. In the gymnast series, the sticklike figures start to lose a little of their human identity and increasingly become formal elements that symbolically convey humanity as observed from a distance. The whole setting is reduced to a minimum - the featureless floors and walls of the gymnasium, with a few lines on the bare floorboards marking off the extent of the playing arena. They are very sparse compositions where the figures remain the dominant elements but no longer occupy most of the picture space. ‘The origins of the gymnast motif probably can be traced back to Brack’s observation of his own children when they were young, although when he commenced the series his youngest daughter was almost twenty and all the gymnasts in the first series are boys. Implied in this association is the artist’s concern that angst is being pushed down onto our children: “... a series of pictures dealing with children doing gymnastic exercises, the idea here is related to balancing and falling, but not absolutely collapsing - you know, the world is going on in a series of stumbling lurches, but not absolutely collapsing ... it is not the abyss, it is stumbling, but it is not the abyss.”1 ‘The series of gymnasts is largely preoccupied with exploring a number of premeditated ambiguities intended as a visual metaphor commenting on the complexity of life ... there is statement about balance and imbalance, movement and stability, unity and discord, implying in the antinomical sense that at the moment of greatest balance there exists the greatest potential for imbalance, that ascent implies descent, and so forth. These slight, almost sexless figures cast against the naked floorboards are involved in part of a ritual as complex as life itself. Having attained for a brief moment a state of triumph, they hover as if frozen on the pinnacle of their success, precariously balancing, tottering on the brink of collapse without actually collapsing.’ 1. John Brack on John Brack, Lecture, Australian National University, Canberra, 1977, p. 7

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR

(1841 – 1914, French) FEMME NUE ASSISE, c.1916-17 oil on canvas 24.0 x 22.5 cm accompanied by a certificate from the Wildenstein Institute, Paris, dated 17 October 2003, ref. 03.10.17 / 9010 ESTIMATE: $150,000 – 200,000

PROVENANCE Property from a London estate until 2003 Christie’s, London, 11 September 2003, lot 12 Private collection, Queensland Deutscher~Menzies, Brisbane, 22 February 2006, lot 23 Private collection, Brisbane LITERATURE Vollard, A., Tableaux, pastels et dessins de Pierre Auguste Renoir, Paris, 1989, p. 76, cat. 304 (illus.) This work will be included in the catalogue critique being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute from the Francois Daulte, Durand-Ruel, Venturi, Vollard and Wildenstein Archive. By the early 1910s, Pierre-Auguste Renoir was unanimously acclaimed, financially secure and had been appointed Officier of the Legion of Honour. He was also starting his last cycle of visionary paintings, which culminated in the large Les baigneuses (The bathers), 1918-1919, now in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; and to which Femme nue assise, c.1916-1917, is associated. Renoir’s health, however, was ruinous, confined to a wheelchair due to crippling rheumatoid arthritis, his painting hand reduced to a gnarled claw where ‘between his first finger and thumb ... a brush was stuck after the manner of a pen.’1 In spite of this, and with the support of paid assistants, he continued painting (and sculpting) prodigiously. In 1916, his long-time colleague Claude Monet wrote: ‘As for Renoir, he is still amazing. He is said to be seriously ill, and suddenly one hears that he is working and forcing himself, in spite of everything, to continue his work. He is simply wonderful.’ 2 Picasso called him the ‘Pope of Painting’; Cezanne and Matisse were also admirers of his work. Femme nue assise was painted at Renoir’s home in Cagnes-sur-Mer on the French Riviera. His practice was to use unstretched canvas ‘tacked onto boards or to strips of wood put together into frames. Like Bonnard, Renoir decided on the final format of the work only after it

was completed, readjusting it at the very end.’ 3 The model here is most likely Andrée Heuschling, known as Dédée, a vivacious, red-haired fifteen year-old who met Renoir in 1915, and would later marry his son Jean. Not only was she ‘gay, and cast over my father the revivifying spell of her joyous youth ... her skin ‘took the light’ better than any model that (he) had ever had in his life.’4 Renoir was indebted to Rococo artists such as Boucher, but also took cues from Mannerism, particularly the distortion figures as a means of heightening emotion or effect. In this manner, Dédée has been rendered plumper than she actually was, which for the artist, was symbolic of the sensual pleasure in life that she imparted. The female nude in a landscape was a continuous, compelling subject for Renoir and he returned to to the theme in several small canvases made during these last years of his life. In Femme nue assise, Dédée sits in an indeterminate space surrounded by fragments of vegetation and flowers, the whole scene rendered in vigorous brushwork and colour. Renoir sought to depict her as ‘simply one with the landscape ... (but) the most important thing is for it to remain (a) painting.’5 In this regard, the artist’s technique remains visible in Femme nue Assise. After first sketching in the image, Renoir applied layers of thinned turpentine with varying additions of white. ‘After a few more touches, one saw the beautiful round figures emerge from the coloured fog of the first stage of the picture.’6 Dédée, a similarly beautiful round figure, has thus been immersed within her environment by these means, her eyes closed in repose, her body rich with life, all imbued with Renoir’s painterly vision. 1. Georges Besson, quoted in: Florisoone, M., Renoir, Wiliam Heineman, London, 1938, p.29 2. Claude Monet to Georges Durand-Ruel, correspondence, 1916, quoted in: Adriani, G., Renoir, Yale University Press, Connecticut, 1996, p. 308 3. Benjamin, R. and others, Renoir in the 20th Century, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA, 2010, p. 328 4. Renoir, J., Renoir, my Father, Collins and Little, London, 1962, pp.398-399. Dédée appeared in numerous paintings from these years, and was one of the two principal models for Les Baigneuses. 5. Renoir to Albert Andre, quoted in: Roger Benjamin and others, Ibid., p. 320 6. Albert Andre, quoted in: Florisoone, M., Renoir, Wiliam Heineman, London, 1938, p. 28 ANDREW GAYNOR

ARTHUR LOUREIRO

(1853 – 1932) YOUNG COMPANIONS, 1884 oil on canvas 76.0 x 51.0 cm signed, dated and inscribed lower left: ‘’ARTHUR LOUREIRO’’ / SURREY 1884 ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

PROVENANCE C.R. Staples, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne Christie’s, Melbourne, 29 April 1997, lot 41 Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED Australian Art, Colonial to Modern, Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne, 30 October – 18 November 1985, cat. 43 (illus. in exhibition catalogue) LITERATURE Table Talk, Melbourne, 19 October 1888, p. 4 The solitary figure within the landscape had many manifestations in nineteenth-century painting. In Europe, they were often devoted to sentimental moments. In Australia, young women in bush settings provided popular subjects for painting outdoors, as in Tom Roberts’ A Summer Morning Tiff, 1886 (Art Gallery of Ballarat) and Frederick McCubbin’s Lost, 1886 (National Gallery of Victoria). Both are infused with engaging narratives of different kinds. Arthur Loureiro’s Young Companions, 1884 touches upon a favourite extension of the theme – of people and their relationship with animals. As a leading teacher of plein air painting in Melbourne, Loureiro’s close friendship with McCubbin resulted in a rich exchange of influences. And as Jane Clark observed, Loureiro: ‘was said to have introduced the vogue for pastel portraiture in Australia which was taken up enthusiastically by Tom Roberts amongst others.’1 Born in Porto, Portugal, Loureiro’s studies included Rome, and from 1879, Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts under Alexandre Cabanel, who earlier included Jules Bastien-Lepage among his students. Exhibiting in the Paris Salons of 1880 to 1882, his Australian connection came through his wife Marie Thérèse Huybens, of Hobart. Married in 1881,

they lived at Brolles in the forest of Fontainebleau, chosen place of the French Barbizon School of painters, Corot, Diaz, Millet and Rousseau. Moving to London, Loureiro continued working as a plein air naturalist, as shown in the atmospheric freshness of Young Companions. Late that year they moved to Australia, seeking, for health reasons, a warmer climate. In Melbourne Loureiro soon rose to prominence. Along with Roberts and McCubbin, he was a foundation and council member of the progressive Australian Artists’ Association. Loureiro was also conspicuous in the Centennial International Exhibition of 1888 and later in the newly formed Victorian Artists’ Society. With a special gift for portraiture, his portrait of James Cooper Stewart, 1887, Mayor of Melbourne (1885-6), (Town Hall Collection, Melbourne), was heralded by the Bulletin as ‘one of the best portraits ever painted in Australia’. 2 His self-portrait is in the Uffizi, Florence. Loureiro had a special feeling for young people, a particularly engaging example being the pastel portrait of his son Vasco, Boy with an Apple, 1891 (National Gallery of Victoria). Another, the oil painting Two Friends, 1887, shows Vasco in a touching moment with his dog. Illustrated, at £80 it was the top priced work in the Australian Artists’ Association Winter Exhibition of 1887. 3 In a lengthy article on Loureiro in Melbourne’s Table Talk, we learn that the noted Melbourne collector, Charles Raymond Staples bought Loureiro’s paintings: ‘ “The Forest at Fontainebleau”, and a picture of a little village girl holding a bird, both of which were painted previous to the artist’s arrival in Melbourne’.4 Loureiro’s inscription indicates that it was painted in Surrey, England, a country long given to close attachment to animals, pets and occasional pathos, as exemplified by Sir Edwin Landseer’s The Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner, 1837 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London). With feelings of sweet sorrow, might not the young girl holding the bird be about to let it fly free? 1. Clark, J., ‘Arthur José de Souza Loureiro 1853-1932’, Art and Australia, Sydney, vol. 23, no. 1, Spring 1985, p. 95 2. Bulletin, 19 March 1887, quoted in Mellor, S., ‘Loureiro, Artur Jose (1853-1932)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, vol. 5, 1974 3. Two Friends, 1887, Australian Artists’ Association, Winter Exhibition, 1887, cat. 14, (illus.) also formerly in the collection of C.R. Staples 4. Table Talk, Melbourne, 19 October 1888, p. 3 DAVID THOMAS

JULIAN ROSSI ASHTON (1851 – 1942) POTTS POINT FROM MRS MACQUARIE’S CHAIR, 1898 oil on wood panel 24.5 x 33.5 cm signed and dated lower right: J.R. ASHTON 1898 inscribed with title lower centre: POTTS POINT / FROM LADY [sic] MACQUARIE’S CHAIR signed, dated and inscribed with title verso: Potts Point / From Mrs Macquarie’s Chair 1898 / Julian Ashton bears inscription on old label verso: Julian Ashton / Lloyd Jones ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000

PROVENANCE Charles Lloyd Jones Collection, Sydney Lawsons, Sydney, 9 April 1981, lot 682 Private collection, Melbourne Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne

JULIAN ROSSI ASHTON (1851 – 1942) MAN O’WAR STEPS, 1899 oil on wood panel 29.0 x 39.5 cm signed and dated lower right: JULIAN ASHTON 1899 inscribed with title lower left: MAN O WAR STAIRS [sic]

PROVENANCE Charles Lloyd Jones Collection, Sydney Lawsons, Sydney, 9 April 1981, lot 683 Private collection, Melbourne Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne

ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000

BERTRAM MACKENNAL

(1863 – 1931) DIANA WOUNDED, 1905 bronze 37.0 cm height signed and dated at base: 1905 / B. Mackennal ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000

PROVENANCE Private collection, Melbourne Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED Royal Academy, London, 1906, cat. 1648 (another example) Bertram Mackennal: The Fifth Balnaves Sculpture Project, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 17 August – 4 November 2007 (another example) LITERATURE Edwards, D., Bertram Mackennal: The Fifth Balnaves Sculpture Project, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2007, pp. 66 – 68, 116 – 118 (illus., p. 66, another example) RELATED WORKS Diana Wounded, 1907 – 08, life-size marble version, Tate Gallery, London, acquired by the Chantrey Bequest, 1908

The mythological tales of Diana, virgin huntress, inspired many artists over the centuries, Titian’s painting Diana and Actaeon in London’s National Gallery being one of the Renaissance master’s greatest works. Bertram Mackennal’s bronze Diana Wounded, 1905 is a far cry from Actaeon being torn to pieces by his own hounds. Moreover, she is stripped of her godly attributes, ‘her bow and hounds’, and presented as a blithe nude in her virgin splendour. Her contemporary appearance, as a nubile Edwardian beauty, has been commented on by several writers.1 Like his fellow Symbolists of the 1890s Mackennal portrayed the femmes fatales of his time: Sarah Bernhardt and the past Circe, 1893 (bronze, National Gallery of Victoria), and Salome, c.1895 (bronze, Art Gallery of New South Wales). Things changed in the first decade of the new century. His women became outwardly more genteel, though refinement did not reduce their considerable appeal.

Diana, in Roman mythology, was the moon goddess of the hunt and birthing, equated with the Greek Artemis, daughter of Zeus and brother of the sun god Apollo. Jupiter gave Diana permission ‘to live in perpetual celibacy’ and, as ‘the patroness of chastity’, ‘to shun the society of men’. 2 Mythological references are avoided in Mackennal’s bronze. Diana Wounded is even more tongue-in-cheek. The vicious Roman moon goddess in Ovid’s Metamorphoses is inverted. It is she, not the quarry Damasichthon, son of Amphion and Niobe, who is injured in the leg’. 3 Taking into account the association of Diana with ‘heavenly’ and ‘divine’, Mackennal carried this further. Divine in looks rather than status, she is a sight perilously tantalising to the mortal male. The action of bandaging her thigh, inspired by the more explicit sight of ‘a model doing up her stocking’, effectively enabled the artist to show off her bodily attributes without loss of modesty.4 This teasing play between the appealing and the unobtainable epitomised that beguiling blend of poise and pleasure so typical of la belle époque and its English Edwardian counterpart. Although calling freely upon ancient Greek and Roman sculptures of the goddess of love, Aphrodite and Venus, she is a thoroughly modern Edwardian maiden. Effectively using the contrapposto pose, Mackennal created an ideal image endowed with grace, but sensuous of modelling. When Mackennal made a marble life-sized version in 1907–08, he crowned Diana with her crescent moon. It was smartly acquired by the Chantrey Bequest and given to London’s Tate Gallery in 1908. The Times called it ‘one of the most beautiful nudes that any sculptor of the British school has produced’. 5 The artist thought it one of his best works too. 1. Edwards, D., Bertram Mackennal: The Fifth Balnaves Sculpture Project, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2007, pp. 67–68 2. Lemprière, J., Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary of Proper Names mentioned in Ancient Authors, Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, London, revised edition, 1972, p. 204 3. Hutchison, N., ‘Here I am!’; sexual imagery and its role in the sculpture of Bertram Mackennal’, in Edwards, op. cit., p. 116 4. ibid. 5.’The Royal Academy: second notice’, Times, London, 8 May 1908, p. 6, quoted in Edwards, op. cit., p. 67 DAVID THOMAS

DAVID DAVIES (1864 – 1939) DIEPPE HARBOUR oil on canvas 35.5 x 41.5 cm signed lower left: D. DAVIES ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000

PROVENANCE Private collection, United Kingdom Bonhams, London, 22 October 2020, lot 62 Private collection, New South Wales RELATED WORK Dieppe Harbour, c.1900, oil on canvas, 34.5 x 44.0 cm, illus. in Gleeson, J., Australian Painters, Lansdowne Press, Sydney, 1976, formerly in the collection of D.R.Sheumack Dieppe Harbour – A Sketch, oil on canvas, 33.2 x 45.4 cm illus. in Cowden, T, David Davies, The Expatriate Period, (exhibition catalogue), London, 1978, cat. 9

DAVID DAVIES (1864 – 1939) ST JACQUES, DIEPPE oil on canvas 47.0 x 61.5 cm signed lower right: D. DAVIES

PROVENANCE Private collection, United Kingdom Bonhams, London, 22 October 2020, lot 63 Private collection, New South Wales

ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000

FREDERICK McCUBBIN

(1855 – 1917) BURNLEY, c.1914 oil on canvas board 25.5 x 35.5 cm signed lower left: F McCubbin bears inscription verso: F. McCubbin / Burnley / c.1914 (indistinct) ESTIMATE: $30,000 – 40,000

PROVENANCE Hugh McCubbin Dr John McCubbin, until 1976 Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 4 November 1976, lot 236 (as ‘South Yarra Landscape’) John H. Robinson Jean Robinson, thence by descent Private collection, Victoria RELATED WORK Coming of Spring, 1912, oil on canvas, 69.0 x 102.0 cm, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Burnley, c.1914 is one of a series of small studies that Frederick McCubbin made of the landscape and buildings around Burnley, many of which feature the Burnley quarry. After his return from Europe at the end of 1907, McCubbin moved with his family to the rented property ‘Carlesberg’, a historic house at 42 Kensington Road, South Yarra, which offered a large garden and views across the Yarra river, to the city and the nearby suburb of Burnley. McCubbin’s paintings, after his only trip to Europe, were characterised by a lighter palette and a much looser application of paint, reflecting the influence of artists such as the Romanticist J.M.W Turner, as well as Corot, Monet and his English contemporary, George Clausen. The use of a palette knife is also evident in many of these paintings from the last years of his career. Although McCubbin is principally known for large scale paintings which depict subjects drawn from Australian pioneering life, he considered his smaller works a significant aspect of his art. As Anne Gray, Curator of the National Gallery of Australia’s exhibition McCubbin: Last Impressions has indicated, ‘McCubbin’s art was most remarkable during his final years. The late McCubbin is one of the top 10 artists in Australia. His daring, his experimental painterliness, and his ability to capture the Australian landscape produced some incredible work.’1 1. Anne Gray cited in Perkin, C., ‘Such Dreams of Colour’, Weekend Australian, 8-9 August 2009, p. 4

ARTHUR STREETON

(1867 – 1943) INTERIOR, COMBE BANK, SEVENOAKS, c.1913 oil on canvas 76.0 x 63.5 cm signed with initials lower left: AS. ESTIMATE: $45,000 – 65,000

PROVENANCE Probably Sir Robert Mond, Combe Bank, United Kingdom Private collection Tom Silver, Sydney Private collection, Sydney Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED A Very Private Collection, S.H. Ervin Gallery, The National Trust Centre, Sydney, 15 June – 15 July 1990, cat. 64 (as ‘Interior Scene’) When Arthur Streeton stayed the Easter of 1913 at Combe Bank, Sevenoaks in Kent, he described the memorable experience in a letter to a friend: grand dining, ‘Billiards, golf, fishing, shooting, “music”, peaches grapes flowers – nothing wanting’.1 Famous houseguests over the earlier years had included Matthew Arnold, Charles Darwin and Oscar Wilde.The original Palladian villa had been designed and built by Roger Morris in 1720 for John Campbell, future fourth Duke of Argyll. Over the years, different owners saw important alterations. During the ownership of Dr William Spottiswoode, President of the Royal Society, Walter Crane, was engaged to redecorate the saloon as a library. ‘The chimney breast I designed was a semi-classical structure in wood

…’, Crane wrote. 2 Rich in gold, silver and bronze with a striking gesso plaster ceiling, the frieze ‘of Amorini in procession or playing, carrying fruits and emblems..’. The fireplace is signed and dated 1880. Crane (1845-1915), a highly regarded British designer and illustrator was a leading figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement, a founder-member of the Art Workers’ Guild and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. In 1907, Combe Bank estate was acquired by Ludwig Mond, prominent chemist, industrialist, philanthropist and art collector (including Streeton). His son Robert inherited the estate in 1909, in 1913 commissioning Streeton to paint: ‘.. a dozen landscapes of the place & surroundings to be hung in the house….’ 3 One of these, The Lake, Combe Bank (1913), is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Interior, Combe Bank, Sevenoaks belongs to this time. Streeton’s paintings of interiors are rare. Among over eleven hundred titles listed in his 1935 Catalogue, the word ‘interior’ occurs five times. Although few in number, they range widely in date and location. An early interior, Tambourine 1891 in the Joseph Brown Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, shows Tom Roberts’ Melbourne studio of that time.4 London examples include the watercolour, Interior Artist’s Studio, St. John’s Wood, London, 1913. The year 1913 was an important one for Streeton, being awarded an ‘Honourable Mention’ at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute, for his oil The Artist’s Dining Room. Interior, Combe Bank, Sevenoaks, c.1913 spotlights Crane’s decorations as one of its special features. Stage like in presentation, the invitingly open doors provide a proscium arch, revealing the sparkling play of light across curtains, furniture and the grand chandelier which appears in the early saloon photograph illustrated here. Streeton moved from the acclaimed master of light-filled landscapes to capture the sparkle of light indoors, acknowledging, with Crane, its one-time owner. ‘Dr. Spottiswoode [Crane wrote] was also the first, I think, to use the electric light for domestic purposes.’ 5 1. Arthur Streeton letter to Walter Pring, London, 30 March 1913, in Galbally, A. and Gray, A., Letters from Smike, the Letters of Arthur Streeton, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1989, p. 125 2. Crane, W., An Artist’s Reminiscences, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1907, p. 191 3. Streeton letter to Pring, op. cit. 4. The title comes from having been painted on a tambourine

The Saloon, Combe Bank, Sevenoaks Interior designed, modelled, and painted by Walter Crane

5. Crane, op. cit, p. 192 DAVID THOMAS

ARTHUR STREETON

(1867 – 1943) ROSES, PINK, 1934 oil on canvas 77.0 x 64.0 cm signed lower left: A. STREETON ESTIMATE: $45,000 – 65,000

PROVENANCE Mr H. Burgess, Melbourne, by 1935 Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 21 May 1975, lot 127 Private collection, Melbourne

practically to shake myself free of this fancy, I found I was gazing at a picture of what was just a bunch of red roses in a simple glass vase, but so real, so perfect, that one of the roses looked as if it was about to wilt.1

EXHIBITED An Exhibition of Arthur Streeton’s Paintings, Athenaeum Gallery, Melbourne, 4 – 16 June 1934, no. 32 Arthur Streeton 1867 – 1943, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 8 December 1995 – 12 February 1996, cat. 75, and touring to the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 1 March – 14 April 1996; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 1 May – 16 June 1996; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 8 July – 25 August; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 11 October – 24 November 1996

These qualities were readily noted by the newspaper critics. Of Streeton’s exhibition at Melbourne’s Athenaeum Gallery in November 1920, the Age critic wrote: ‘a painting of a spray of plum blossom in a glass bowl … reveals the painter’s almost uncanny cleverness. To paint glass without the help of a dominant color behind it is a problem that most artists would leave severely alone. With a few sure strokes of the brush Mr. Streeton has achieved the translucency, the actual brittleness of the glass’. 2

LITERATURE Streeton, A., The Arthur Streeton Catalogue, Melbourne, 1935, no. 1103 Smith, G., Arthur Streeton 1867 – 1943, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, cat. 75, pp.176–177 (illus.) Arthur Streeton’s interest in painting flower pieces increased considerably after his return to Melbourne in 1920. Purchasing the property ‘Longacres’ at Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges and setting up a city home in Toorak, he established gardens at both. They inspired the many flower paintings that now hold a prominent part in his oeuvre. His favourite was the rose. So enamoured was he that, in December 1932, he held an exhibition devoted to it. Shown at Melbourne’s Fine Art Society’s Gallery, it included Roses, Silver and Silk; Roses - Deep Red and Green; Roses Pale in Silver Bowl and Roses - Pale Yellow. Two years previously both the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of New South Wales acquired paintings simply titled ‘Roses’ – the former through the Felton Bequest and the Sydney gallery from Streeton’s solo exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries. They often contained a touch of drama, as in Roses, c.1929 (Art Gallery of New South Wales). Spot-lit against a dark background, the impact of its realism is powerful, as admired by a viewer at the time:

Roses, Pink, 1934 is one of Streeton’s finest flower pieces, featured in the touring exhibition presented by the National Gallery of Victoria in 1995. In a virtuoso performance, bravura is balanced with sensitivity as Streeton delights in celebrating the many beauties of his favourite flower and sharing them generously with the viewer. A similar, slightly smaller painting, Roses, La France, c.1933, was sold by Deutscher and Hackett in September 2017. 3 Both Roses, Pink and Roses, La France were included in Streeton’s Athenaeum exhibition of June 1934.4 ‘In this show’, wrote Argus art critic Harold Herbert, ‘there are many beautiful flower pieces, all painted with the wizardry that is Streeton’s own’. 5 Citing Roses, La France as ‘a perfect example’, he adds: ‘his flower pieces [are] full of fragrant freshness and convincing realism. Not only are the flowers beautifully painted and arranged, but the glazed vase or crystal bowl that contains them is an object to be admired for its masterly treatment in paint. Backgrounds of silks and velvets are other features of these studies to excite admiration’.6 Such words of praise apply equally to Roses, Pink, 1934. 1. W.G.E., ‘The Streeton Collection’, Letters to the Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 December 1931, p. 4 2. ‘Mr. Arthur Streeton Among The Grampians’, Age, Melbourne, 2 November 1920, p. 8 3. Deutscher and Hackett, Sydney, 20 September 2017, lot 5 4. The title ‘Roses La France’ appealed to Streeton, who used it, with variations, several times in works exhibited in the ‘thirties. His 1935 Catalogue, however, lists only one painting titled ‘Roses, La France’, (1070). Two by the title ‘Roses La France’ were included in his 1936 exhibition at the Athenaeum and one, ‘Roses (La France) in his 1937 show. 5. Herbert, H, ‘The Art of Arthur Streeton’, Argus, Melbourne, 5 June 1934, p. 5

… I noticed a bunch of crimson roses on the wall, so real, that at the same instant I seemed almost to be overpowered by the scent. Having

6. Ibid. DAVID THOMAS

ARTHUR STREETON

(1867 – 1943) GORDALE SCAR (SUNNY), 1910 oil on canvas 50.5 x 76.0 cm signed lower right: A. STREETON ESTIMATE: $40,000 – 60,000

PROVENANCE Oliver Streeton, Melbourne Norman Schureck, Sydney James R. Lawson, Sydney, 27 – 28 March 1962, lot 48 Major Harold de Vahl Rubin, Brisbane (label attached verso) Christie’s, Sydney, 2 October 1973, lot 50 Private collection, Sydney Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED Mr. Streeton’s Pictures, Victorian Artists’ Society, Melbourne, open 5 June 1914, cat.24 or 90 (both listed as ‘Goredale Scar’ [sic], 30” x 20”, 52 gns) 110 Years of Australian Art: an exhibition of the art of Australia – drawings, paintings, sculpture – since 1840, Farmers’ Blaxland Galleries, Sydney, September 1950, cat. 29 (as ‘Cordale Scar [sic]’) Norman Schureck Loan Exhibition, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, June 1958, cat. 85, illus. (as ‘Goredale Scar’ [sic]) A Very Private Collection, S.H. Ervin Gallery, The National Trust Centre, Sydney, 15 June – 15 July 1990, cat. 63, as ‘Cordala Scar’ [sic]. LITERATURE Colquhoun, A, ‘Mr. A. Streeton Exhibits: nature closely observed’, The Herald, Melbourne, 4 June 1914, p. 10 ‘Mr Arthur Streeton’s Pictures’, The Age, Melbourne, 5 June 1914, p. 12 ‘Mr Arthur Streeton’s Pictures’, The Leader, Melbourne, 6 June 1914, pp. 51-52 Streeton, A., The Arthur Streeton Catalogue, Melbourne, 1935, cat. 442 (as ‘Goredale Scar’ [sic])

Gordale Scar is a 100-metre deep limestone chasm in the Yorkshire Dales. It has a significant connection to the poets and artists of the Romantic movement, including J. M. W. Turner who portrayed the Scar in a dramatic painting in c.1808. A decade later, William Wordsworth composed a sonnet, describing it as ‘terrific as the lair where the young lions couch’.1 With the Gordale Beck (river) at its heart forming divided waterfalls, the Scar also attracted the eye of Arthur Streeton, himself known for bold paintings of the Australian landscape, be it crashing

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waves, the cliffs of Sydney Harbour, or the eroded banks of a mighty river valley. In Gordale Scar (sunny), (1910), the chasm is pictured on a blustery day with the slightest threat of storm in the clouds. Prior to his departure overseas in 1907, Streeton held successful exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne, which allowed him the finance to travel through continental Europe. This included an extended stay in Venice where he ‘threw off his devotion to conscious art, and became absorbed again in truth of presentation.’ 2 Once in England, Streeton undertook a series of painting journeys with friends such as Tom Roberts, with whom he bicycled through Dorset in May 1909. In 1910, he undertook the famed loop walk in Yorkshire that includes Marnham Cove and Gordale Scar; though a recent scholarly catalogue claims the journey happened in September the previous year, possibly in the company of George Lambert. 3 Streeton did large plein air studies at both sites, and the work offered here captures ‘the very spirit and essence ... in a kind of artistic shorthand, characterised by an amazing certainty of brush work.’4 In Gordale Scar (sunny), the drama of the chasm dominates the view with a final spill of one waterfall illuminating the void like a bolt of electricity. A clutch of stubbed yew trees and shrubs cling to the edge of the right-hand cliff, and the interplay of shadow and light recalls the muscularity of Streeton’s masterwork Fire’s On, 1891. On his return to Australia, Gordale Scar (sunny) and its companion Gordale Scar (grey) were included in the artist’s monumental exhibition (114 oils and 56 watercolours!) at the Victorian Artists’ Society; where the pair were singled out by critics for their ‘dazzling effect of cliff and verdure.’ 5 In particular, fellow artist-critic Alexander Colquhoun celebrated Streeton’s maintenance of ‘the charm and virility of the first stroke of the brush, a matter of more importance where light and purity of colour are a consideration.’6 Apart from its direct provenance to the Streeton family, Gordale Scar (sunny) had two other notable owners. The first, Norman Schureck, was a trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales who had a comprehensive collection of works by Australian artists, particularly William Dobell, who painted his portrait in 1942. The second was the eccentric grazier (Hon.) Major Harold de Vahl. His sprawling collection of works by such artists as Picasso, Degas, Renoir, Dobell and Streeton, filled his city residences, with the paintings ‘stacked face to face (alongside) live and stuffed exotic and domestic birds.’ 7 Gordale Scar (sunny) was purchased from the posthumous sale of the Major’s collection in 1973, and has remained in private hands ever since.

1. William Wordswoth, Gordale, 1818. Gordale is the correct spelling. 2. Lionel Lindsay, ‘Arthur Streeton’, in: Streeton, A., The Arthur Streeton Catalogue, Melbourne, 1935, p. 16 3. See: Tunnicliffe, W. (ed.), Streeton, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2020, p. 339 4. ‘Mr Arthur Streeton’s Exhibition. A further review’, The Age, Melbourne, 9 June 1914, p. 9 5. ‘Mr Arthur Streeton’s Pictures’, The Age, Melbourne, 5 June 1914, p. 12 6. Colquhoun, A, ‘Mr. A. Streeton Exhibits’: nature closely observed’, The Herald, Melbourne, 4 June 1914, p. 10 7. Seear, L., ‘Rubin, Harold De Vahl (1899–1964)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography (online), https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rubin-harold-de-vahl-11581 ANDREW GAYNOR

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TIM STORRIER

born 1949 THE LAMENT OF THE STREAM, 2000 synthetic polymer paint on linen 107.5 x 244.5 cm signed lower right: Storrier signed and inscribed with title on stretcher bar verso: ‘The Lament of the Stream’ / Storrier. ESTIMATE: $120,000 – 160,000

PROVENANCE Private collection, New South Wales, acquired directly from the artist 69 John Street, Sydney Private collection, Sydney Encompassing the subtlety of nature’s fugitive diurnal moods, its mysterious, silently unfolding rituals and vast droning presence, Tim Storrier’s iconic outback paintings evoke a poignant sense of place that is inextricably Australian. As Edmund Capon, a former director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales elucidates, ‘they could not, I believe have come from any country other than Australia’.1 Typically juxtaposing the element of fire against low horizons and expansive skies, indeed his evocations are indelible echoes of this brooding landmass – longcontemplated narratives inspired by Storrier’s own highly personal experience of the landscape, and enhanced by the alluringly beautiful texture and finish of his art. Utterly individual and exquisitely rendered, thus his interpretations feature among the most instantly recognisable and universally admired images in Australian art. Upon first glance, The Lament of the Stream, 2000 mines familiar territory in Storrier’s oeuvre, with the strong horizontal tension of the blazing horizon echoing his celebrated ‘point to point’ paintings of the 1980s. Yet despite such affinities, the composition reveals a significant shift in Storrier’s vision towards the end of the millennium: where previously his evocations of fire had been literal and direct, these nocturnal landscapes are more subdued, reflective and abstract, announcing ‘a more sophisticated exploration of the emotive, melancholic mood that has always haunted Storrier’s work.’ 2 Accordingly, the burning rope is here replaced by a burning log and the glowing embers of a vacated campsite, juxtaposed against an opalescent pink sky and sprig

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of delicate floral blooms. Betraying a fundamental concern with the tension between the decorative and representational function of art, the work is a meticulously composed, psychologically laden image which, though clearly derived from the natural world, nevertheless resonates with symbolic meaning and the artist’s own deeply personal vision. Indeed, in the manner of European Romantic and Neoclassical predecessors such as David, Ingres, Casper Friedrich and Delacroix, Storrier here contemplates the insignificance of humankind when compared to the awesome magnitude of the natural world, drawing upon the symbolism of the fading light of day as a metaphor for change or the fin de siècle (end of an era), while the sensuous blooms poignantly allude to evolution, the passing of time and the grandeur of decay in the same vein as a traditional vanitas still life. Like the finest of Storrier’s work, The Lament of the Stream, 2000 highlights the artist’s enduring interest in the dichotomy between classical and romantic, between the disciplined order of a painting’s surface and the submerged, darker implications of its subject. Disquietingly beautiful, the work encapsulates superbly the real power of Storrier’s unique vision; as Paul McGillick astutely elucidates, ‘…Tim Storrier’s art is about ambiguity and irony. It is never what it seems. Storrier’s critics have invariably been taken in by the surface charm of the work. What they have not appreciated… is the contradiction between Storrier’s pretty palette and the ugly, decaying and often violent imagery of the pictures.’ 3 1. Capon, E., quoted in Lumby, C., Tim Storrier: The Art of the Outsider, Craftsman House, Sydney, 2000, p.8 2. ibid., p.142 – 3 3. McGillick, P., ‘Culture shock for Paddo?’, Australian Financial Review, Sydney, 28 July 1989 VERONICA ANGELATOS

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GARRY SHEAD

born 1942 THE ANGELIC MUSE, VELÁZQUEZ, 2001 oil on steel on particle board 112.5 x 92.0 cm signed lower right: Garry Shead ESTIMATE: $60,000 – 80,000

PROVENANCE Savill Galleries, Sydney (label attached verso) Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in September 2002 EXHIBITED Garry Shead and the Lyrical Vision, Savill Galleries, Sydney, 21 August – 14 September 2002 Emerging almost seamlessly from the ‘Dance’ series during the late 1990s, the ‘artist and muse’ paintings, superbly encapsulated here by The Angelic Muse, Velázquez 2001 pay tribute to the techniques of the great European Masters - Goya, Velázquez and Rembrandt - by capturing a vision of the Muse that inspired their creative journeys. Thus depicting the Masters themselves in the intimate act of creation, the works typically feature the artist accompanied by the mythical muse of poetry, Erato, who appears as something magical, often hovering spirit-like in the studio and bathed in a radiant light. Notwithstanding the ostensibly secular iconography however, the figures seem to inhabit spiritually-charged spaces – there is profound tenderness in the artist’s gaze for whom the Muse is a luminous revelation, guiding the Master’s hands, cradling his palette or even taking brush to canvas. Elaborating upon the importance of the Muse for Shead in his monograph on the artist, Sasha Grishin suggests, ‘Shead felt himself to be one of the few who consciously sought out Erato, and that at certain periods in his life he felt that he both saw her and heard her and that he in a sense was a willing medium through which her inspiration could act’.1 Accordingly, autobiographical undertones may be discerned in

works such as the present, with Shead also paying passionate homage to the most profound source of artistic inspiration in his life, namely his wife Judit. Shead had first met the Hungarian-born Judit Englert, a classically-trained sculptor, during the European winter of 1981 – 82 when he was invited to visit Budapest by the Director of the Michael Karolyi Memorial Foundation in Vence. Drawn to Judit as ‘the woman who is my twin of the same kind’ 2, Shead stayed on in Budapest for a year before the couple eventually returned to Australia and married in June 1983. As testament to their poignant connection, Shead had begun to include the presence of Judit (or her more abstracted role as ‘Muse’) in his work from the early 1990s. Indeed, the protagonist Frieda in his celebrated D.H. Lawrence series bears more than a passing resemblance with to Judit with her fine, aquiline nose, angular features and stylized bobbed hair, and equally, her likeness is apparent in the regal figure of Queen Elizabeth II in the important satirical sequence, The Royal Suite which he produced in 1995 – 96. However, it is not until works such as The Angelic Muse, Velázquez, 2001 with their complex labyrinth of ideas, that Shead most fully explores the insights of this deep and poignant source of artistic inspiration in his life. As Grishin elucidates, ‘Shead is an artist who in most instances has to enter the work by putting himself into the composition – whether he be Lawrence, Prince Philip, a dancer or, in this case, an artist. However by entering a composition this does not mean that he ‘owns’ it, as painting grows through its own internal logic and momentum; he enters it to give it life, then participates in the delight and agony of its growth and development’. 3 1. Grishin, S., The Artist and Muse, Craftsman House, Sydney, 2001, p. 164 2. Shead cited ibid., p. 793. ibid., p. 174 VERONICA ANGELATOS

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JOHN OLSEN

born 1928 DRY RIVERBEDS, 2005 oil on canvas 106.0 x 122.0 cm signed and dated lower left: John / Olsen / ’05 signed and inscribed with title verso: “DRY RIVERBEDS” / JOHN OLSEN ESTIMATE: $70,000 – 90,000

PROVENANCE Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in October 2005 EXHIBITED John Olsen, The Flight to Broome, Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney, 15 October – 19 November 2005, cat. 8 (illus., front cover, n.p.) With a vast and varied oeuvre spanning more than seven decades, John Olsen has quite deservedly been hailed Australia’s greatest living artist. From the pulsating, larrikin energy of his You Beaut Country series, to the quieter, more metaphysical paintings inspired by his expeditions to Lake Eyre, or the exquisitely lyrical works immortalising his halcyon days in Clarendon, Olsen’s unique interpretations of the natural environment in its manifold moods have become indelibly etched on the national psyche, revolutionising the way in which we now perceive the Australian landscape. Indeed, where artistic predecessors such as Russell Drysdale and Sidney Nolan had presented visions of a parched, inhospitable land where figures stand as sentinels in the wilderness, Olsen instead highlights the teeming activity and incident within this remote region, inviting the viewer to experience his sheer wonderment at the redemptive, life-affirming properties of mother nature: ‘The urge for life is a staggering thing and we just ought to take notice … There is such fecundity in this universe’.1 Painted in 2005, Dry Riverbeds encapsulates Olsen’s remarkable ability to capture both the immensity and intricacy of the Australian landscape. Employing his signature ‘all-at-once’, multi-perspective approach – ‘I’m down on the canvas one moment and up flying the next, or looking sideways or underneath’ 2 – thus the work possesses a remarkable breadth and spaciousness which conveys tangibly the sight as well as the feel of this sparse terrain. Map-like, the aerial view details the solid but sinuous form of the parched riverbed meandering through the folds of the surrounding ochre gorges and plains – here evoked through an irreverent tangle of squiggling lines and pattern. As the eye ascends upwards through the picture plane, it is brought back to reality by the illusion of depth suggested in the conventional horizon line and flat field of blue sky beyond. Even within this expansive

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scene however, importantly Olsen still incorporates delightful details of local wildlife – encouraging the viewer to appreciate the relationship between the tiny and the vast, the microcosm and macrocosm in a manner reminiscent of his first responses to the area three decades earlier (when travelling to Lake Eyre in 1974). Witnessing first-hand the arid, salt-encrusted plains of the South Australian desert erupting into a veritable oasis, ‘a carnival of life’ following the extraordinary floods of 1973 (only the second such occurrence since white settlement), Olsen had been immediately awestruck by discovery of the monumental in the miniature: ‘My devotion to Chinese art and philosophy finds fulfilment in this experience. Nothing too small or too strange should escape my attention – an insect’s wing, the leap of a frog, the flight pattern of dragonflies. They all induce poetic rapture’. 3 Far from being a despondent image of the wild, desolate reaches of the country’s dry interior, the present work resonates with a vitalistic energy – betraying a sense of not only keen observation, but joyful celebration derived from a lifetime dedicated to physical and spiritual immersion in the landscape. For ultimately, as Olsen poignantly muses, the Australian outback offered more than mere topographical phenomena to be accurately recorded. More fundamentally perhaps, the experience was the catalyst for a myriad of ideas and metaphorical connections that reaffirmed his Taoist belief in the total interconnectedness of all living forms, thereby heralding a new spirituality in his art: ‘The enigma of it all. It is a desert and it can be full. After the rains, it is so incredibly abundant; so what you are looking at in one place, as if through an act of the Dao, becomes full … It has an effect on you when you are there because all the time it is impossible for you to accept fully the sense of impermanence and transitoriness. Somehow it affects you – you realise that you are looking at an illusion really. I don’t think that there is anything more Buddhist than that’.4 1. Olsen quoted in Hart, D., John Olsen, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1991, p. 123 2. Olsen quoted in Hawley, J., ‘John Olsen’, Encounters with Australian Artists, University of Queensland Press, Queensland, 1993, p. 129 3. Olsen quoted in Olsen, J., Drawn from Life, Duffy and Snellgrove, Sydney, 1997, p. 116 4. Olsen quoted in Hart, op. cit., p. 135 VERONICA ANGELATOS

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ROBERT KLIPPEL

(1920 – 2001) No. 369, 1981 cast 1982 bronze 201.0 cm height edition: 3/6 signed with initials, dated and numbered on base: RK 369’81 3/6 bears Meridian foundry mark on base ESTIMATE: $60,000 – 80,000

PROVENANCE Private collection, Sydney Private collection, Melbourne RELATED WORK Another example of this work is held in the installation Robert Klippel, Group of Eight Bronzes, 1981 in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra LITERATURE Gleeson, J., Robert Klippel, Bay Books, Sydney, 1983, pp. 413, 416 (illus. pl. 382), 478 Edwards, D., Robert Klippel: Catalogue Raisonné of Sculpture, (CD ROM), Deborah Edwards and the Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2002 (illus. CD-ROM Artworks no. 369 b) Edwards, D., Robert Klippel, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2002, p. 192 (illus.) Wach, K., Robert Klippel - The American and European Years, Galerie Gmurzynska, Zurich, 2013, pp. 38 – 45 & 53 (illus.) EXHIBITED Art in the Park XI, Galerie Gmurzynska, Zurich, June – August 2013 (another example) Robert Klippel’s mantra was deceptively simple: to create; not recreate. That is, he strove to add to the world of things rather than to replicate them. In other words, he wanted to make sculpture rather than statuary. For Klippel, true human creativity and artistic ideation inhered in the urge to emulate, even surpass, Nature’s powers of ingenuity. For Klippel, this was the crux of Modernism – the creation of new manmade additions to Nature. It is a little-known fact that the later justly celebrated art critic Robert Hughes camped outside Sydney’s Clune Galleries so that he could get one of Klippel’s sculptures from his solo exhibition in September 1963. Such was their quality. James Gleeson AO, the Sydney artist and writer, certainly agreed with this assessment as did James Mollison AO, the far-sighted first Director of the National Gallery of Australia. In fact, Australia’s art world agreed and in 2002 he was the subject of a highly lauded retrospective exhibition, entitled Robert Klippel: A Tribute Exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which was expertly curated by Deborah Edwards.

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Perhaps nowhere is Klippel’s aesthetic prestigiousness more evident than in his Federal Government funded public sculpture commission for the opening of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. The present work, the bronze entitled No. 369, was created as part of this commission in preparation for the formal inauguration of the gallery by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on 12 October 1982. Klippel’s sculpture commission led to the creation and casting of a group of eight bronze works that stand in a garden pond within the NGA Sculpture Park – an informally landscaped area that includes outdoor sculptures by Auguste Rodin, Aristide Maillol, Henry Moore, Alexander Calder and Mark di Suvero – now listed by the Australian Heritage Commission on its Commonwealth National Heritage List. Klippel was personally commissioned by Mollison and in 1981 the Group of Eight, as the cast bronze artwork came to be called, was initially constructed from sections of prefabricated wooden pattern parts that the artist had found and stored away since 1964. In 1980, one year before his NGA sculpture commission, Klippel was awarded an Australia Council for the Arts grant to investigate bronze casting techniques – the opportunity allowed him to diverge from his usual processes of fabrication to rethink and refine his growing interest in construction and reconstruction. bronze cast sculpture during the early to late eighties extended the parameters of reuse and recycling to an artistic form of ‘upcycling’ – where found and prefabricated objects were technically remade and materially transmuted. Bronze casting allowed Klippel to ‘push’ assemblage toward a stand-alone architectonic unity. Klippel certainly had a highly responsive and sensitive inner self, but it was never the subject of his art – like a haiku poem that reveals the wonderful perception of common things and never the personality of the poet. For Klippel, thought should always be the mother of the act. Klippel’s Group of Eight ‘modified’ assemblage sculptures were cast in bronze by Peter Morley AM at his Meridian Foundry in Melbourne and installed as artist’s proofs, from a proposed edition of six, in the garden pond of the NGA Sculpture Park between July and October 1982 (Nos: 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371 and 372). These were Klippel’s first major bronze sculptures – the present work firmly belongs within this notable artistic category. KEN WACH

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JOHN OLSEN

born 1928 ROOKERY, LAKE EYRE, 2001 mixed media on paper on canvas 121.5 x 80.5 cm signed and inscribed with title lower left: Rookery / L. Eyre / John / Olsen ESTIMATE: $50,000 – 70,000

PROVENANCE Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in December 2001 EXHIBITED Figures and Landscape: Recent works on paper, Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney, 15 December 2001 – 2 February 2002, cat. 35 (Illus. exhibition catalogue.) LITERATURE McGregor, K., and Zimmer, J., John Olsen: Journeys Into the You Beaut Country, Thames and Hudson, Melbourne, 2016, pp. 249 (illus.), 340 For many artists, there is a motif to which they return at numerous points in their career, reinterpreting and drawing new inspiration. For Sidney Nolan, it was Ned Kelly; for Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire. For John Olsen, the motif is Lake Eyre. Its significance is such that Patrick McCaughey has described it as being central to ‘four decades of Olsen’s Dreaming’.1 ‘I’ve been nearly drowned on the blessed lake when our boat sank in a sudden storm; nearly been sucked under by the quicksand-like treacherous black mud; nearly been blown away by winds that howl in at midnight, buffeting your tent; I’ve had desert sand blow into my eyes, my paint, the camp oven, and ruin my beautiful fish paellas ... but all in all, I’ve had a fabulous time there.’ 2

Located 700 kilometres north of Adelaide, Olsen first visited Lake Eyre in October 1974 in the company of naturalist Vincent Serventy. They had journeyed to see the lake’s largest flood in 500 years, an experience which profoundly affected the artist’s way of interpreting his world. ‘The lake might be viewed as an unconscious plughole of Australia, a mental landscape... Because it is 13 metres below sea level - and perhaps nowhere in Australia does one have the feeling of such complete emptiness - covered by a bowl of endless sky with inviting silences, there is, as you stand on the edge of the lake, a feeling that you are standing on the edge of a void.’ 3 Like the artist Ian Fairweather, who he greatly admired, Olsen was fascinated by Chinese art and literature. With Rookery, Lake Eyre 2001 he presents a perfect encapsulation of their interpretation of the void as evoking the concept of ‘everything and nothingness’, ‘a place for contemplation, a vast, engulfing space.’4 Set on a highly tilted plane that may be viewed on a macro and micro level, the composition teems with birdlife - their busy flight paths reminiscent of the trails behind Whiteley’s ferries. As Olsen himself observes, ‘There’s a lot happening in my pictures. I take a multi-perspective approach on the one canvas, I’m down on the ground one moment and up flying the next, or looking sideways or underneath, because that’s the way the world is today.’ 5 1. McCaughey, P., Why Australian Painting Matters, The Miegunyah Press and Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2014, p. 236 2. Hawley, J., ‘John Olsen’, Encounters with Australian Artists, University of Queensland Press, Queensland, 1993, p. 134 3. Olsen, J., 1975 cited in Hart, D., John Olsen, Craftsman House, Sydney, 2000 (revised edition), p. 133 4. Hart, D., ibid., p. 135 5. Janet Hawley, op. cit., p. 129 ANDREW GAYNOR

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KEN WHISSON

born 1927 FACE AND FLAG FACE OR DEEP DREAM, 1976 oil on composition board 82.0 x 109.0 cm signed, dated, and inscribed with title verso: “FACE AND FLAG FACE” / OR “DEEP DREAM” / PAINTED 24 / 3 / 76 / KEN WHISSON. bears inscription verso: TITANIUM WHITE / TO RAY HUGHES … BRISBANE / “FACE AND FLAG – FACE”/ OR “DEEP DREAM” / 24 / 3 / 76 ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

PROVENANCE Ray Hughes Gallery, Brisbane Ray Hughes, Sydney (bears label verso) The Estate of Ray Hughes, Sydney EXHIBITED probably: Ray Hughes Gallery, Brisbane, 1976 Ken Whisson, As If, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 17 March – 15 July 2012; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 28 September – 25 November 2012, cat. 90 LITERATURE Barkley G., and Harding, L., Ken Whisson. As If. ,Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2012, p. 154 (illus.)

There is an almost cult status around Ken Whisson and his work. To own a Whisson is to belong to a club which reflects collectors’ shared commitment to a form of painting that is not simply fashionable, but deeply seated in ideas and painterly possibilities. Born in Lilydale in 1927, Ken Whisson was part of a generation of artists that included Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, and the European migrant Danila Vassilieff, who as his teacher, had a profound influence on the young artist. Face and Flag Face or Deep Dream, 1976, belongs to a fascinating group of works created prior to Whisson’s departure from Australia for Italy in 1977, and is typical of his St Kilda period. As well as the current work, paintings of that time included Disembarkation at Cythera (Idiot Wind), 1976, held in the collection of National Gallery of Australia and What Should we Do When we Get to Illyria, 1974, which was notably owned by the artist, Rosalie Gascoigne. From his flat in Acland Street, St Kilda, Whisson had a view of the maritime traffic coming and going from Port Melbourne, and consequently these works are all characterised by motifs of ships, clouds, figures and flags. Two ships feature prominently in Face and Flag Face or Deep Dream; one sits on the horizon beneath a soft grey cloud and a second ship

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appears to be turned toward the viewer. The latter abruptly breaks the horizon line in a manner that flattens the picture plane and disrupts the conventional idea of western pictorial perspective. In Disembarkation at Cythera (Idiot Wind) Whisson depicts migrants arriving at Port Melbourne, commenting, “My people were more like poor Italian migrants who have come from a splendid, beautiful place to the awful environment of Port Melbourne … an industrial place.”1 Whisson was clearly sensitive to the experience of migrants coming to Australia from Europe with its centuries of painting, literature and architecture – a world to which he was about to permanently move – and arriving in a foreign country, carrying with them hopes and dreams of life in a new world. In Face and Flag Face or Deep Dream, we have a similar arrangement, however here the artist has painted a clean, titanium white rectangle which dominates the foreground. Above and around it the forms appear to hover and float, as though trying to find their place, both in the new world in which they have arrived, and in the painting. The white area is suggestive of both a fresh beginning for the migrants as well as the artist’s blank surface. The notion of the flag face in the title perhaps speaks to the individual identity of migrants. The current example is consigned from the Estate of the gallery owner Ray Hughes, who exhibited Ken Whisson’s work from 1973 onwards. Hughes’ long association with Whisson helped define his Gallery as one that took pride in representing artists who existed outside the fashionable mainstream of curatorial elites. Whisson’s painting represents the antithesis of painterly conventions, he abandons any preconceived expectations, which frees his mind to expand onto the canvas. No matter how suggestive these interpretations are, it is of course all conjecture, Whisson’s works are complex personal images, which puzzle many and polarise opinion. In the end its all a matter of memory and which memories matter in the mind of the artist. 1. Blackman, B., Interview with the artist, 20 April 1984, National Library of Australia Oral History Program, tape 1:2 HENRY MULHOLLAND

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WILLIAM ROBINSON

born 1936 POSSUM MOON LANDSCAPE, c.1989 oil on canvas 56.5 x 66.0 cm signed lower left: William Robinson inscribed with title verso: POSSUM MOON LANDSCAPE ESTIMATE: $30,000 – 40,000

PROVENANCE Ray Hughes Gallery, Sydney Private collection, New South Wales, acquired from the above, c.1996 When Possum Moon Landscape, c.1989 was painted, Bill and Shirley Robinson were living on two hundred acres of bush, rainforest and cliffs at Beechmont in southern Queensland, where they had moved to in 1984. The works from around this time can be viewed as autobiographical vignettes often containing playful anecdotes about Bill and Shirley’s life on the farm. By the time Robinson had painted this delightful example he had won his first of two Archibald Prize awards for portraiture, and was on the cusp of winning the first of two Wynne Prizes for landscape painting. He had retired from teaching to work full time on his painting and his regular exhibitions at Ray Hughes Gallery were consistently sell out shows. This, along with the broad critical support the artist enjoyed ensured that by 1989, Robinson’s career was on the ascendancy. While Robinson took his approach to the Australian landscape very seriously, he often found room for pockets of humour which, in some ways, defuse the seriousness intent of the works. In the current example we see Bill and Shirley rounding up a few stray cows that appear to have found their way into the property dam. Images of dams and waterholes played an important role in the development of his landscape painting. They first appeared in the ‘farmyard paintings’ and via the reflection of the surrounding animals, trees and clouds, the water became the pictorial device that allowed Robinson to break with convention and move the horizontal horizon line to any part of the picture he chose.

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Bill and Shirley took great delight in their lives as hobby farmers the images Robinson created of their life on the farm have an Adam and Eve quality, perhaps because there are only ever the two of them depicted in these works. Possum Moon Landscape was painted at the time Robinson was beginning to expand his ideas around distorting the plane. In this classic example, we can see the evening sky drawn down deep into the picture. Robinson describes the origins of this development… To look up and down almost at the same time; to have a feeling of time; the beginning and movement of day and night and be aware of the revolving planet may revealed in the same work. I did not paint these works as a visitor to the landscape, but as one who lived in it and experiences it every day. The boundaries of my pictures were almost solely the boundaries and close neighbourhood of our farm.1 Late evening is suggested by Bill holding his kerosene lamp with its halo of light echoing the crescent moon setting low in the west. And what of the Possum which features so prominently in the title of the work? It makes the most minor cameo appearance in the upper right of the work near Bill, Shirley and the cows. The mention of possum points to Robinson’s arial views, suggesting that perhaps we are viewing the landscape from high in the trees looking downward as the possum does. So while the image of the possum is tiny, its importance to the work is overarching. 1. Robinson, W., quoted in Klepac, L., William Robinson: Paintings 1987 – 2000, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 2001, p. 40 HENRY MULHOLLAND

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VERNON AH KEE born 1967 LYNCHINGS, 2011 suite of six charcoal on paper works 76.5 x 57.5 cm (sheet, each) each signed and dated verso: Vernon A. 2011 ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000 (6)

PROVENANCE Milani Gallery, Brisbane Private collection, Brisbane RELATED WORK Lynching, 2011, suite of etchings on paper, image 51 x 33.5 cm; sheet 70 x 50.5 cm (each) in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney The following excerpt is from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2013. This suite of works forms part of Vernon Ah Kee’s ongoing critique of race and politics in Australia. In stark black-and-white, Ah Kee pairs delicately rendered portrait drawings with words alluding to the experience of being Aboriginal in Australia. Ah Kee’s work has consistently addressed the subject of Aboriginal experience and identity within a culture of colonial racism. His work is a direct engagement between artist and viewer, concerned with Indigenous politics and culture. The title of some of the works, unwritten, suggests the invisibility of Indigenous identity in Australia. These faces, which emerge from a web of lines, respond to that history by coming into being with a palpable sense of energy and presence. They appear to push out from the paper and the network of lines that enmesh them to be seen and noticed, while the words alongside them demand to be heard. Ah Kee’s word play points to prejudices and agendas embedded in Australian society and politics. These puns and words-within-words fuse the history and language of colonisation with contemporary experiences and issues, such as the governmental control of Aboriginal lives enacted in the Northern Territory’s National Emergency Response in 2007, commonly known as ‘the intervention’. Creating a confronting tension between word and image, these works encourage the viewer to re-examine their own perspectives on race-related issues.

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LIN ONUS (1948 – 1996) MARRI MALIRI GARKMAN (FROGS AT DUSK), 1996 gouache on card 27.0 x 63.0 cm signed lower right: Lin Onus ESTIMATE: $18,000 – 25,000

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PROVENANCE Fireworks Gallery, Brisbane (accompanying certificate of authenticity attached) Private collection, Queensland, acquired from the above in 1999

CRESSIDA CAMPBELL born 1960 CACTII, BOTANIC GARDENS, ADELAIDE, 1987 unique colour woodblock print 89.0 x 52.0 cm edition: Artist Proof signed, dated and inscribed with title below image A.P. CACTII, BOTANIC GARDENS, ADELAIDE Cressida Campbell ’87 ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

PROVENANCE Mori Gallery, Sydney Private collection Mossgreen Auctions, Melbourne, 24 June 2014, lot 15 69 John Street, Sydney Private collection, Brisbane, acquired from the above in 2014 EXHIBITED Cressida Campbell Woodblock Prints 1985 – 1987, Mori Gallery, Sydney, 18 August – 5 September 1987, cat. 18 Important Impressionist, Traditional, Modern and Contemporary Art, 69 John Street, Sydney, 1 – 31 August 2014, cat. 37 LITERATURE Crayford, P., The Woodblock Painting of Cressida Campbell, Public Pictures, Sydney, 2008, cat. P8711, p. 342 (as Ed 3 [sic])

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GWYN HANSSEN PIGOTT (1935 – 2013) STILL LIFE WITH CURVED JUGS, 2002 Limoges porcelain six pieces (two bottles, two beakers, two jugs) 26.0 x 38.0 cm overall each stamped at base with the artist’s roundel ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000

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PROVENANCE Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane Private collection, Melbourne, acquired in 2002

ROBERT HUNTER (1947 – 2014) UNTITLED, 1995 synthetic polymer paint on plywood 112.5 x 244.5 cm signed with initials, dated and inscribed verso: P 5 95 / RH

PROVENANCE Company Collection, Melbourne, acquired directly from the artist

ESTIMATE: $15,000 – 20,000

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IMANTS TILLERS born 1950 THE WALK IN DARKNESS, 1990 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on 24 canvas boards 152.5 x 152.5 cm overall each panel numbered sequentially with stencil verso: 29979 – 30002 ESTIMATE: $18,000 – 26,000 (24)

PROVENANCE Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne Private collection, Hobart Goodmans Auctioneers, Sydney, 23 October 2000, lot 168 Private collection Deutscher~Menzies, Melbourne, 2 September 2003, lot 62 (as ‘Dievturi’) Paul Sutherland, Sydney Estate of the above, Sydney EXHIBITED Australian Art, Colonial to Contemporary, Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne, May – June 1995, cat. 114 (illus. in exhibition catalogue) LITERATURE Curnow, W., Imants Tillers and the ‘Book of Power’, Craftsman House, G+B Arts International, Sydney, 1998, p. 137

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ETHEL SPOWERS (1890 – 1947) DURHAM CATHEDRAL, c.1924 colour woodcut 16.0 x 20.0 cm (image) edition of 20 signed and inscribed with title below image ESTIMATE: $8,000 – 12,000

PROVENANCE Private collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED Victorian Artist’s Society: Annual Spring Exhibition, October 1924, The Galleries, Melbourne, cat. 236 (another example) Exhibition of Works by Ethel Spowers, The New Gallery, Melbourne, 4 – 15 August 1925, cat. 33 (another example) LITERATURE Coppel, S., Linocuts of the Machine Age: Claude Flight and the Grosvenor School, Scolar Press, Aldershot, England, in association with the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1995, cat.ES A/3, p. 118 RELATED WORK Another example of this print is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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MARGARET PRESTON (1875 – 1963) HARBOUR FORESHORE, 1925 woodcut 24.5 x 18.5 cm edition: 7/50 signed with initials in image lower left: PM signed, dated, numbered and inscribed with title below image ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000

PROVENANCE Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above c.1983 EXHIBITED Margaret Preston and Thea Proctor, The Grosvenor Galleries, Sydney, 18 November – 2 December 1925, cat. 43 (another example) Exhibition of Woodcuts by Margaret Preston, Dunster Galleries, Adelaide, September 1926, cat. 50 (another example) LITERATURE Butler, R., The Prints of Margaret Preston: A Catalogue Raisonné, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2005, cat. 79, pp. 102 – 103 (illus., another example)

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SALI HERMAN (1898 – 1993) PADDINGTON (ORANGE HOUSE), 1975 oil on canvas 43.5 x 64.0 cm signed and dated lower left: S. Herman 75 ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000

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PROVENANCE Avant Galleries, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 1970s

SALI HERMAN (1898 – 1993) SURRY HILLS TERRACES, 1974 oil on canvas 46.0 x 61.0 cm signed and dated lower left: S. Herman 74 bears inscription verso: ‘’SURREY HILLS’’ [sic] SALi HERMAN / AVANT GALLERIES

PROVENANCE Avant Galleries, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 1970s

ESTIMATE: $12,000 – 18,000

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SIDNEY NOLAN (1917 – 1992) UNTITLED LANDSCAPE, 1948 Ripolin enamel on composition board 61.0 x 73.0 cm signed and dated lower right: 10 Dec 48 / Nolan ESTIMATE: $18,000 – 24,000

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PROVENANCE Private collection, Melbourne Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above c.1984 (as ‘untitled, 1960’)

ARTHUR BOYD (1920 – 1999) BLACK RAM IN UNDERGROWTH oil on board 49.0 x 61.5 cm signed lower right: Arthur Boyd

PROVENANCE Savill Galleries, Sydney (labels attached verso) Private collection, Sydney

ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

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SIDNEY NOLAN (1917 – 1992) BIRD + MAN, 1982 oil on paper 76.0 x 61.0 cm signed lower left: Nolan signed, dated and inscribed with title verso: Nolan / Bird / + Man / 17 May / 82 ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000

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PROVENANCE Victoria and Murray Stroud, a gift from the artist Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 24 November 2003, lot 120 (as ‘Aboriginal Man and Bird’) Savill Galleries, Sydney (label attached verso, as ‘Aboriginal Man and Bird’) Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 2005

SIDNEY NOLAN (1917 – 1992) MARY IN A BOAT ON THE SHOALHAVEN, 1975 oil on composition board 89.5 x 120.0 cm signed lower right: Nolan bears inscriptions verso: A BOYD / NOWRA /…/ ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

PROVENANCE Sandra McGrath, Sydney, a gift from the artist Michael Carr Art Dealer, Sydney (label attached verso) Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 2001 EXHIBITED Collectible: A Selection of Significant International and Twentieth Century Australian Fine Art, Michael Carr Art Dealer, Sydney, 18 April – 27 May 2001 (label attached verso)

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66 ROBERT KLIPPEL (1920 – 2001) No. 465, 1983 cast 1983 bronze 30.5 cm height edition: 75/100 signed with initials, dated, and inscribed with number at base: RK 83. 75 /100 bears inscription with edition number on base: 75 ESTIMATE: $2,000 – 3,000 PROVENANCE Private collection, Sydney, acquired directly from the artist, c.1983 LITERATURE Edwards, D., Robert Klippel: Catalogue Raisonné of Sculptures, (CD-ROM) Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2002, No. 455 (illus.) This work was produced and sold to accompany the limited edition (100) signed copy of the publication Gleeson, J., Robert Klippel, Bay Books, Sydney, 1983.

67 JOHN OLSEN born 1928 COOPER FLOWING INTO LAKE EYRE, 1975 gouache on paper 55.5 x 76.0 cm signed with initials and dated lower right: JO 75 bears inscription with title verso: JOHN OLSEN COOPER FLOWING INTO LAKE EYRE ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000 PROVENANCE Barry Stern Galleries, Sydney Private collection Bay East Auctions, Sydney, 7 October 2012, lot 21 Private collection, Sydney

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LEONARD FRENCH (1928 – 2017) CALDERA, 2000 – 01 (FROM THE MINOAN PAINTINGS) enamel on hessian on board 104.5 x 118.5 cm signed lower right: French artist’s label attached verso inscribed with caption (faded) ESTIMATE: $18,000 – 24,000

PROVENANCE Savill Galleries, Sydney (label attached verso) Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in September 2001 EXHIBITED Leonard French: The Minoan Paintings, Savill Galleries, Melbourne, 20 September – 7 October 2001 and Sydney, 16 – 31 October 2001 (illus. in exhibition catalogue)

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ROBERT JUNIPER (1929 – 2012) AUTUMN, 1983 oil on canvas 90.0 x 89.5 cm signed and dated lower right: Juniper / ’83 inscribed with title on frame verso: AUTUMN ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000

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PROVENANCE Bridge Street Gallery, Sydney Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 1986

JOHN COBURN (1925 – 2006) TIMANA GREEN, 1975 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 130.5 x 140.0 cm signed lower right: Coburn signed, dated and inscribed with title verso: “TIMANA GREEN”/ JOHN COBURN / SYDNEY 1975

PROVENANCE Private collection, Melbourne Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 22 July 1987, lot 106 Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above LITERATURE Amadio, N., John Coburn Paintings, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1988, p. 199

ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

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71 RAY CROOKE (1922 – 2015) AFTERNOON CONVERSATIONS oil on canvas on board 61.0 x 76.0 cm signed lower left: R Crooke bears inscription verso: No. 5 ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000 PROVENANCE Wagner Gallery, Sydney Private collection, United Kingdom, acquired from the above in 2000 Cheffins Auctions, United Kingdom, 9 May 2019, lot 279 Private collection, New South Wales

72 CHARLES BLACKMAN (1928 – 2018) GIRL IN CHEQUERED DRESS, 1964 charcoal on paper 101.0 x 89.0 cm signed and dated lower left: Blackman 64 ESTIMATE: $8,000 – 12,000

PROVENANCE The Estate of Pro Hart, Broken Hill, New South Wales Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne, 16 April 2008, lot 141 Private collection, Melbourne RELATED WORK The Chequered Dress, 1963, oil on canvas, 137.0 x 243.5 cm, in the collection of the Reserve Bank of Australia, illus. in St John Moore, F., Schoolgirls and Angels, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, p. 87

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WILLIAM DOBELL (1899 – 1970) STUDY FOR SUNBATHING oil on composition board 10.0 x 11.5 cm signed lower right: DOBEll bears Certificate of Authenticity from Sir William Dobell Art Foundation, signed by Anthony Clune and James Gleeson, attached verso

PROVENANCE Estate of the artist, New South Wales Private collection, Melbourne Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne

ESTIMATE: $8,000 – 12,000

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HANS HEYSEN (1877 – 1968) THE BRACHINA, 1940 charcoal and pastel on paper 47.5 x 61.0 cm signed and dated lower right: HANS HEYSEN / 1940 bears inscription on label verso: THE BRACHINA 1940 ESTIMATE: $6,000 – 8,000

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PROVANCE Private collection, Sydney LITERATURE Klepac, L., Hans Heysen, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 2016, p. 188 (illus.)

HANS HEYSEN (1877 – 1968) DRY CREEK BED, NORTHERN SOUTH AUSTRALIA, 1938 watercolour on paper 31.5 x 39.0 cm signed and dated lower left: HANS HEYSEN 38

PROVENANCE The Sedon Galleries, Melbourne The Estate of Dr Gladys Hallows, Melbourne Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 16 April 1986, lot 175 Private collection, New South Wales

ESTIMATE: $16,000 – 18,000

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JAMES ALFRED TURNER (c.1850 – 1908) WORKING FOR A SELECTOR, 1886 oil on canvas 30.5 x 51.0 cm signed and dated lower left: J.A. Turner / 1886 ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000

77 JAMES ALFRED TURNER (c.1850 – 1908) A LIFT ON THE WAY, 1906 oil on canvas 45.0 x 29.0 cm signed and dated lower left: J A Turner / 1906 ESTIMATE: $6,000 – 9,000 PROVENANCE Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne (label attached verso) Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 2003

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PROVENANCE Rogowski Antiques, Melbourne Private collection, Victoria, acquired from the above in 1971 Menzies, Melbourne, 9 February 2017, lot 17 Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne, acquired form the above in 2003

JAMES ALFRED TURNER (c.1850 – 1908) RIVER LANDSCAPE (POSSIBLY THE GOULBURN RIVER NEAR SEYMOUR), 1891 oil on canvas 56.5 x 107.0 cm signed and dated lower left: J. A. Turner 1891

PROVENANCE Private collection, Melbourne Christie’s, Melbourne, 9 April 1991, lot 261 Private collection, Melbourne

ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000

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EUGENE VON GUÉRARD (1811 – 1901) CORTILE ANTICO NELL CONVENTO DI S. S. TRINITA DELLA CAVA, VICINO NAPOLI, 1835 watercolour on paper 18.5 x 25.0 cm signed and dated lower right: “J: v: Guérard 1835” inscribed in pencil below image: “J. v. Guérard 1835” / “Cortile antico nell convento di S.S. Trinità della Cava vicino Napoli” inscribed with title verso ESTIMATE: $6,000 – 8,000 PROVENANCE Private collection, Germany

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RELATED WORKS Three Preliminary Sketches, Sketchbook VI, Italy (Amalfi, La Cava, Capri, Cuma), June 1835 – July 1936, in the collection of the Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney (File numbers: FL8653171, FL8653172 and FL8653174) We are grateful to Dr Ruth Pullin for her assistance with this catalogue entry. Illustrated here is the Interior of La Trinità della Cava (commonly known as Badia di Cava) – a Benedictine abbey located near Cava de’ Tirreni in the province of Salerno, Southern Italy. Located in a gorge of the Finestre Hills, this 11th century Benedictine convent has a rich history which Von Guerard enjoyed exploring in the library of ancient parchments during his stay there in July 1835 with his father. Indeed, church or monastery cloisters were a favourite subject for von Guerard at this time, and both he and his father produced several sketches and paintings (particularly in the watercolour medium) during their stay.

80 S.T. GILL (1818 – 1880) THE KANGAROO HUNT (I) THE MEET (II) THE CHASE (III) THE KILL watercolour on paper 15.5 x 24.5 cm (each) each signed with initials lower left: S.T.G ESTIMATE: $15,000 – 20,000 (3)

PROVENANCE Francis Edwards Ltd., London Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 19 November 1971, lot 52 Private collection, Melbourne Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED Exhibition of Australiana, Foundation to Federation, Old Xavierians Association, Studley Park – Burke Hall, Melbourne, 3 – 11 November 1970

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LOT 21 ARTHUR STREETON FOOTNOTES CONTINUED

5. The Arthur Streeton Catalogue, 1935, op. cit; see also Schmidt, S., 2019, op. cit, for analysis of the number of Venetian works in the Streeton catalogue, in the context of purchasers. 6. S ee https://yso.org.uk/history/biographies/nora-clench-1867-1938 7. Streeton’s letter to Walter Withers (25 May 1909) says: ‘My pictures [of?] Venice are on their way to the Guildhall & I’m fortunate in being in ‘Venice International’ most exclusive RA [Royal Academy], New English, RBA & Both Salons.’ — Galbally & Gray, op. cit, 116; I note also, relevant 21st Century Australian exhibitions on Venice: in 2003, La Serenissima: The Fascination of Venice, National Trust S.H.Ervin Gallery, curator Lou Klepac; and in 2005, Peter Perry, Venezia Australis: Australian artists in Venice 1900-2000, Castlemaine Art Gallery. 8. I note, Robert Mond died in Paris in late 1938 and his widow, Lady MarieLouise Mond, lived in France from the time of Mond’s death. Robert Mond bequeathed his art collection as follows: Lady Marie-Louise (his second wife) (four-sixths of his art collection), his eldest daughter, Frieda Brackley (one-sixth), and the children of his youngest daughter Irene Dunn (onesixth). In the will of Lady Marie-Louise Mond, property already in France is divided among her French relatives, and property in England was divided amongst Robert Mond’s grandchildren in England. Lady Marie-Louise Mond was imprisoned by German Forces at the start of the German Occupation of France. The Germans requisitioned two castles owned by Lady Mond during World War Two. 9. Part of this assertion comes from it being the only Grand Canal picture at this scale that has two verified references regarding its true measurements — see notes 2 & 7. 10. G albally & Gray, op. cit, p.112.; Schmidt, S., 2019, op. cit. 11. T he 36 x 66 inch measurement is stated in the letter from Arthur Streeton to Baldwin Spencer, 8 October 1908, and again in 1914 when the present picture was purchased by Baillieu. See Galbally & Gray, op. cit, p.114, and ‘Concerning People’ The Register, Adelaide, 13 April 1914.

right however, and a close friend of Streeton. Ludwig’s collection passed, at his death, to his wife, Frida Mond (nee Lowenthal) until her death in 1923 [Constable, W.G., ‘The Mond Bequest to The National Gallery’, Apollo: A Journal of the Arts, vol. 7 (39), March 1928, p.98; see also Wardleworth, D., ‘The “Friendly” Battle for the Mond Bequest,’ The British Art Journal, vol. 4, no. 3, 2003, pp. 87-93. Parts of the Mond collections were gifted to the National Gallery, London (as its most significant gift to date), the British Museum, and to the universities of Toronto, Liverpool and Manchester (Bonhams Old Master Paintings, 30 April 2014, p.175). A search of these collections has not provided any record of Sir Robert Mond’s The Grand Canal (1908). Extensive review of international auction records, has not unearthed the Mond work either, but database records for the relevant period are not as complete as those today. Research was also conducted by the writer in 2019, looking for the painting in collections related to Mond bequests, and via the University Ca‘ Foscari Venezia located in Palazzo Foscari and the Bibliotheca Hertziana — Max Planck Institute for Art History. This ongoing research into the location of the Mond painting considers how the Mond family engaged in philanthropic and collecting practices across several countries, including from a base in Rome, and employed German Professor of art history Jean Paul Richter as an adviser. No Streeton paintings are recorded in Richter’s 1910 catalogue, The Mond Collection: An Appreciation. This publication pertains to the collection of Ludwig Mond, rather than Robert Mond, and is devoted to major European masterpieces so is not likely a full catalogue of artworks owned, but rather, a showcase for collection highlights. The Will of Frieda Brackley (nee Mond) is extremely detailed with regard to artwork and does not include mention of The Grand Canal, and nor do the wills of the other family members mention the painting (see note 8); a large portion of Ludwig’s collection had already been bequeathed conditionally to the National Gallery, London, in 1909, to transfer to the Gallery upon the death of Frieda (42 paintings were given). See also Saumarez Smith, C., Ludwig Mond’s Bequest. A Gift to the Nation, National Gallery, London, 2006, and The Mond Bequest at King’s College London: A Celebration; Adam, T., Transnational Philanthropy: The Mond Family’s Support for Public Institutions in Western Europe from 1890 to 1938, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

12. A ccording to the 1935 catalogue, there was only ever one 66 x 36 inch Grand Canal painting made by Streeton.

15. I t recalls to the writer, the words of Lucas: ‘To me the Grand Canal is the river of Venice—its Thames, its Seine, its Arno’, says E.V. Lucas, op. cit, p.114.

13. R obert Mond is credited in most publications as owner, Ludwig Mond on other occasions (see note14). In the 1935 Streeton catalogue, the Mond and Baillieu entries are separated by eighteen paintings. It is tempting to suggest that one painting was produced on the April-May trip, 1908, and another in September-October, but it may be the latter trip alone, when a work was painted en plein air. It is an October 1908 letter in which Streeton mentions one such painting (this present painting per catalogue sequence), and artist Clara Mustalba gaining him access to the Palazzo before further work being completed on return to the studio. See Galbally & Gray, op. cit, p.114 & Schmidt, S, 2019, op. cit; Mary Eagle has observed that many of Streeton’s Venetian paintings carried the special conviction of plein air works (Eagle, M., The Oil Paintings of Arthur Streeton in the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, 1994, p.147).

16. C ollection, Carrick Hill Trust, Adelaide.

14. The Mond family, beginning with Robert’s father Ludwig (1839-1909), were major patrons of Streeton, a relationship acknowledged by the naming of the artist’s son, Charles Ludwig Oliver Streeton (1911-77). Ludwig Mond died 11 December 1909, in the same year as the purchase of The Grand Canal. In 1913 Streeton received a Mond commission for 15 paintings; several of these paintings have reached Australia, including The Orchard Garden of the Sir Robert Mond Home at Combe Bank Estate; The Cedars, Combe Park (1913); Lake, Combe Bank (1913), Interior, Combe Bank, Sevenoaks (1913). The Mond Grand Canal, is variously documented as the property of Ludwig Mond (such as in The Craftsman 1909), or of Robert Mond (1867-1938) (such as in The Studio, 1909, or the register of works in The Arthur Streeton Catalogue, Melbourne, 1935); the picture may have passed to Robert Mond after Ludwig’s death. By 1909, Robert was already a collector in his own

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17. There are subtle differences between reproductions of this scene published in 1909 and 1919, which are possibly the same (Mond) painting: The Studio, London, 1909; The Craftsman, 1909; and The Art of Arthur Streeton, 1919. The ‘Mond Streeton’ has more prominent structures, and a close-up view of a building in the left foreground. That Streeton chooses to retain the building close-up, also helps suggest that the Baillieu picture was painted first, before Mond’s, the artist later adding the symmetrical framing device of the magnified building. Other subtle variations in the number and placement of gondolas — especially the proud sail on a vessel at the centre of the Baillieu picture — and shadows across the water, differentiate the pictures, but they are substantially the same scene. To my eye, the present work is more spacious and pleasing than the Mond version, being without the heavy foreground building, which the artist appears to have experimented with for symmetry. 18. The work was included in exhibitions curated by the writer in 2016 and 2018, as then Director, Hamilton Gallery: 20th Century Australian Painting, August 2016; then, A Western District Provenance - major works from private collections of the Western District of Victoria, united for the first time, November 2018. 19. I refer to an AGNSW request in November 2019 for permission to forward my research (as provided to Wayne Tunnicliffe in October 2019) to Roger Benjamin, towards his essay for the Streeton exhibition publication.

20. K nown principally through the artist’s catalogue, being Streeton’s own (published) record of his artworks produced 1883 to 1934, The Arthur Streeton Catalogue, 1935, op. cit; In 2016, Streeton’s And the Sunlight Clasps the Earth, (1895) was rediscovered in a private collection in Tasmania after around 120 years out of circulation. In 2014 the artist’s Ariadne, (1895) emerged from a private collection in Sydney after 70 years when the work was sold. There was also the reappearance in 2016 of etching plates by Streeton, subsequently printed by Theo and Soula Mantalvanos at Queenscliff Gallery and Workshop: see Legge, K., ‘Into the light: The lost etchings of Arthur Streeton,’ The Australian, 26 November 2016. 21. S ee Schmidt, S., ‘The Grand Canal, 1908, by Arthur Streeton’, attribution paper, (updated) August 2019 for notes recorded from the original labels. 22. Lindsay, L., ‘Streeton’s Loan Exhibition’, pp.19 -20, in The Arthur Streeton Catalogue, op. cit, p.20; Lindsay served as AGNSW Trustee 1918-1929 and 1934-1949; the ‘Centre of Empire’ reference will refer to Streeton’s painting The Centre of the Empire, (1902); similar glowing reviews were made of the Mond version: ‘...it is technically full of ability and has an unusual breadth of atmospheric effect.’ — newspaper article, 26 May 1909, obtained from The General Press Cutting Association. 23. Held at Melbourne’s Victorian Artists Society’s Gallery. 24. Galbally & Gray, op. cit., p.133, painting title and catalogue no. 346 provided: Streeton writes to Nora, ‘The opening day was a success… The Baillieu brothers (William and Arthur) and their wives are buying well, even the children snapping up Water-colours’. 25. Schmidt, S., attribution paper, 2019, op. cit.

35. Melba describes further: ‘If you take the long white road from Melbourne out towards the great Australian Bush, leaving behind you the little wooden-built townships of Lilydale and Coldstream, you will eventually arrive at what seems to be the fringe of civilisation... At this turning of the roads I have built my Australian home, Coombe Cottage, almost within sight and sound of the same trees and vineyards in which I played as a child…’ Melba, Dame Nellie, ‘Early Days in Australia,’ in Melodies and Memories:1861-1931, 1980, p.9. 36. The Streetons were first houseguests of Mond in 1912, on 14 and 15 December; Melba rented Coombe House, Devey Close, Coombe, Kingston Upon Thames in 1906. 37. ‘ Mr Arthur Streeton’s Pictures’, Punch, Thursday 24 December, 1914, p.35; review re an exhibition at The Athenaeum, Melbourne, 10-17 December, 1914. 38. Ibid. 39. Gray, A.,The Art of War, National Gallery of Australia, 2017 40. Ure Smith, S., Stevens, B., Lloyd Jones, C., (Eds.), The Art of Arthur Streeton, Angus and Robertson, 1919 41. S ome of Mond’s collection was stored with that of the National Gallery, London, during wartime; one resource shows over ten Venetian ‘Grand Canal’ artworks, by artists from Paul Signac to Camille Corot, and a possible Canaletto, that were removed in wartime; the Mond painting is not among these. This is a specific body of work located in one French facility where Nazi agencies deposited the artwork that was seized — see Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume.

26. See for example Australian and New Zealand Art Sales Digest.

42. C ommunication between the author and Mond descendant, January and February, 2021.

27. Melba apparently ‘yoo-hooing at the top of her substantial voice… Nora would recall their arrival with horror. She thought Melba most vulgar.’ Victoria Button cited in ‘York Symphony Orchestra profile of Nora Clench’: https://yso.org.uk/ history/biographies/nora-clench-1867-1938

43. R . H. Croll (ed.), Smike to Bulldog: Letters from Sir Arthur Streeton to Tom Roberts, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1946, pp. 90–1.

28. The Herald, Melbourne, 22 March 1924, p.11; it was at this exhibition that Mrs McKenzie of Trawalla paid 1000 guineas for Golden Summer, Eaglemont, 1888. 29. T he Sun, Sydney, Sunday 8 June, 1941, p.22; Melba, singing across Europe, in Venice, ‘gave an unannounced concert… word having gone around that she was going to sing, a few gondolas began to cluster round a lighted barge… Half an hour later there was a stir, and the prima donna, stepping into a gondola, crossed the Grand Canal… she sang across the moon-flooded waters of the Grand Canal.’ — ‘Melba Sings in Venice’, Argus, Sat 24 October, 1925, p.8. 30. D avidson, J., ‘Dame Nellie Melba’, Dictionary of Biography, volume 10, Melbourne University Press, 1986. 31. Ibid. 32. ‘Madame Melba: The World’s Greatest Singer’, Daily Telegraph, 8 June, 1915, p.2.

44. B aillieu bequeathed the painting to son Everard as option for purchase or representing his share. The picture transferred to Arthur Baillieu’s sister, Amy Adelaide Shackell, who together with her son-in-law William John Trevor Clarke, gave the picture to her daughter Sandra Elizabeth Baillieu-Shackell (Arthur Baillieu’s niece) who married Clarke. Sandra owned multiple Venetian Streetons, loaning three, though not the present work, to an Adelaide Festival of Arts Exhibition in 1968 (see note from Papers of Streeton Family, MS 114, National Gallery of Australia). The couple later gave this painting to their son and his wife. 45. E stablished using original sources including the will of Arthur Baillieu, family oral histories, Streeton’s letters and exhibition catalogues, newspaper reports of the day, and original manuscripts, plus Streeton’s published letters. 46. The residence also housed, by Streeton, a Venetian watercolour and two further oil paintings: one of Queenscliffe (1907) and the other a panel showing Sydney Harbour. Source - Will of Arthur Baillieu. A letter, 5 October 1907, to Tom Roberts describes: ‘I’m here having an excellent time free of charge, and everything I like, Schnapper fishing thrown in, and doing a commission of Queenscliff for Baillieu – 30 x 20…’ Croll, op. cit., p.91.

33. The Windsor Damsel, Fishing, 1903; Strood Hill, 1904 and Venice, n.d., are other works known to be owned by Melba. 34. S ee National Library of Australia Manuscript Collection, ‘Letters of Sir Arthur Streeton’, 1915-1943, MS 9828; Letter from Nellie Melba to Arthur Streeton, 1915, from Coombe Cottage and re-addressed to Streeton from 10 Hill Road, Abbey Road, London, to 3rd London General Hospital Wandsworth, London, S.W. (the artist had volunteered to serve at the hospital as part of the Royal Army Medical Corps).

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7. Bidding: Deutscher and Hackett may sell each lot to the highest bidder at auction provided the reserve price has been met or where the net amount accounted to the vendor is at least equivalent to the net amount that would have been achieved for a sale at the reserve price. The fall of the auctioneer’s hammer marks the acceptance of the highest bid and the conclusion of a contract for sale between the vendor and the buyer. Unless otherwise agreed in writing with Deutscher and Hackett, the individual physically present at the auction who signals the bid accepts personal liability to pay the purchase price, including the buyer’s premium and all additional fees, taxes and charges. GOODS AND SERVICES TAX 8. Amounts inclusive of GST: Unless otherwise specified, all amounts specified in this section as payable by the buyer, or otherwise used to calculate payment to Deutscher and Hackett, are inclusive of any GST component. Deutscher and Hackett will provide buyers with a tax invoice that meets the requirements of the Australian Taxation Office. 9. Application of GST to buyers: Buyers are required to pay a 10% GST which sum is: a. included in the final bid prices where buying from a GST registered vendor; and b. included in any additional fees charged by Deutscher and Hackett; and c. included in the buyer’s premium. If a buyer is classified as a “non-resident” for the purpose of GST, the buyer may be able to recover GST paid on the final purchase price if certain conditions are met. POST-SALE CONDITONS 10. Post auction private sale: Should the lot fail to sell at auction, Deutscher and Hackett is authorised to sell the lot privately for a period of seven days in which event this agreement shall apply to the relevant buyer to the full extent of its provisions. 11. Payment: The buyer will not acquire title until payment has cleared in full. Interest at a rate of 17.5% p.a. will be charged over outstanding accounts where no extension of terms has been granted. Interest will be payable from the payment due date. With respect to each lot purchased, the buyer agrees to make the following payments within seven days from the date of sale: a. The hammer price. b. In exchange for services rendered by Deutscher and Hacket t, a buyer’s premium calculated at 25% (inclusive of GST) of the hammer price. c. Post sale packing, handling, shipping and storage where applicable. d. If payment is made via Visa, Mastercard or American Express, any merchant fees payable by Deutscher and Hackett on the transaction as indicated in the prospective buyers and sellers guide. Payment must be made within seven days of the date of sale in Australian dollars by cash, cheque, direct deposit, approved credit cards or electronic funds transfer using the form and/or trust account details provided at the back of this catalogue. In certain circumstances, extension of payment may be granted at the discretion of Deutscher and Hackett. Once funds have cleared, the proceeds of the sale less the buyer’s Premium, GST and any commission or costs charged as agreed will be remitted to the vendor within thirty-five days of the date of sale provided payment has been received in full. Funds will be held in an interest bearing account by Deutscher and Hackett until remitted to the vendor. Deutscher and Hackett will be entitled to any interest earned during this period. Application for a cultural heritage export licence or any other licence in no way affects the buyer’s obligation to make payment or collection within the periods specified in sections 10 and 13a. 12. Risk and Title: Risk in the lot, including risk of loss or damage, will pass to the buyer on the earlier of: a. the date payment is due, whether or not it has been made; and b. collection by the buyer. The buyer assumes risk for the property in all respects from this date and neither Deutscher and Hackett nor the vendor will be liable for loss or damage occurring after the payment due date. The buyer is encouraged to make arrangements to ensure comprehensive cover is maintained from this date. Title in the lot does not pass to the buyer, even if the lot is released to the buyer, until the buyer has paid all sums owing to Deutscher and Hackett. If a buyer makes a claim against Deutscher and Hackett for damage or loss after sale, the buyer’s premium and the final bid price shall be payable notwithstanding.

13. Freight: a. The buyer may only remove a lot from the Deutscher and Hackett premises once payment has been cleared in full and must be removed no later than seven days after the date of sale. Should items not be removed by this time, storage and insurance costs may be charged to the buyer. If a lot has not been collected within 30 days after the date of sale and alternative arrangements have not been with Deutscher and Hackett, the lot may be re-sold by Deutscher and Hackett without reserve at the next auction and Deutscher and Hackett may set off any amounts owed for storage and insurance costs and its standard commission before remitting the proceeds to the buyer. b. Buyers are required to make their own arrangements for packing, handling, shipping and transit insurance for their property. Deutscher and Hackett does not accept responsibility or liability for the acts or omissions of any third party, such as a shipping agent, whether or not such a party has been recommended or suggested by Deutscher and Hackett. 14. Limited Warranty of Authorship: If a buyer is able to establish that a lot is a forgery in accordance with these conditions for sale within five years of the date of sale, the buyer shall be entitled to rescind the sale and obtain a refund of the hammer price from the vendor. The buyer must return the lot in the state in which it was sold within fourteen days of notifying Deutscher and Hackett of the forgery allegations. For a lot to be established as a forgery, the following conditions must be satisfied: a. the buyer must supply two independent expert testimonies attesting to the forgery. Deutscher and Hackett is entitled to request further expert evidence where it deems the evidence provided to be unsatisfactory; b. there must be no conflict of opinion among accepted experts in the field; and c. the forgery must be able to be proven through means that at the time of publication of the catalogue were commonly employed and that will not damage or otherwise put the lot in jeopardy. The limited warranty and the right to rescind the sale is not assignable and the buyer must have retained title to the lot without disposing of any interest in it up until the buyer notifies Deutscher and Hackett of the forgery allegations. The buyer acknowledges that it has no rights directly against Deutscher and Hackett if a lot is established to be a forgery. 15. Termination, Breach and Legalities: a. Deutscher and Hackett breach: To the extent permitted by law, the sole and maximum remedy to a buyer for breach of warranty is a refund of original purchase price, including buyer’s premium. In such an event the sale contract shall be rescinded and all costs associated with returning the property (in the state in which it was sold) to the premises of Deutscher and Hackett are to be borne by the buyer. Deutscher and Hackett is not liable for any indirect or consequential loss or damage for any matter arising directly or indirectly as a result of the sale. b. Buyer breach: Deutscher and Hackett may, in addition to other remedies available by law, exercise one or more of the following rights or remedies for breach: i. Cancel the sale and retain any payment or property in Deutscher and Hackett custody as collateral or liquidated damages. ii. Charge the buyer interest at the rate of 2% above the rate fixed under section 2 of the Penalty Interest Rates Act 1984 (Vic). iii. Resell the property without reserve at the next auction or privately on five days notice. Any disparity between sale and resale prices, including associated costs such as, but not limited to, legal, storage and sale expenses, will be to the account of the defaulting buyer. iv. Apply any part payment received from the buyer in respect of any lots at its discretion. v. Retain any of the buyer’s property held by Deutscher and Hackett until the buyer has satisfied its obligations to Deutscher and Hackett. vi. Take any other action Deutscher and Hackett deems necessary or appropriate. vii. Refuse to permit the buyer to participate in future auctions. viii. Provide the vendor with the buyer’s details to permit the vendor to take action against the buyer to recover the money. 16. Governing law and jurisdiction: These terms and conditions and any matters concerned with the foregoing fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the state in which the auction is held. 17. Severability: In the event that any provisions of this agreement should be found unenforceable in a court of law, that part shall be discounted and the remaining conditions shall continue in full force and effect to the extent permitted by law.

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EXHIBITS ELEGANCE

EACH OF THE 2,772 BOTTLES PRODUCED FROM THE 2014 VINTAGE IS A CELEBRATION OF THIS NOBLE VARIETY; ONE OF A TINY RELEASE THAT IS DESTINED TO BE REMEMBERED LONG AFTER IT’S BEEN ENJOYED.

jansz.com.au

CATALOGUE SUBSCRIPTION FORM

SALE CODE: VENICE SALE NO.: 064 IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN AND INTERNATIONAL FINE ART MELBOURNE AUCTION 21 APRIL, 7:00 PM LOTS 1 — 80 105 COMMERCIAL ROAD SOUTH YARRA VIC 3141

q Fine Art (Single issue) $45* q Aboriginal Art single issue (Single issue) $45* q Annual Fine Art Auctions (3 issues) $120* q Annual Fine Art & Aboriginal Art Auctions (4 issues) $160*

q Tax invoice required

* Price includes G.S.T. postage and handling. Additional $10 per catalogue for international orders

(Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss) Name (please print)

Business name

Address

City

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Telephone/Home

Fax

Business/Mobile

Post Code

please email, post or fax this completed form to: DEUTSCHER AND HACKETT 105 COMMERCIAL ROAD SOUTH YARRA VIC 3141

tel: 03 9865 6333 fax: 03 9865 6344

Subscription Payment by:

q Visa q AMEX q Mastercard

Name on card

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info@deutscherandhackett.com

151

ATTENDEE PRE-REGISTRATION FORM SALE CODE: VENICE SALE NO.: 064 IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN AND INTERNATIONAL FINE ART

(Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss) Name (please print)

Business name

Address

City

Telephone/Mobile

State

Post Code

MELBOURNE AUCTION 21 APRIL, 7:00 PM LOTS 1 — 80 105 COMMERCIAL ROAD SOUTH YARRA VIC 3141

please email, post or fax this completed form to: DEUTSCHER AND HACKETT 105 COMMERCIAL ROAD SOUTH YARRA VIC 3141

tel: 03 9865 6333 fax: 03 9865 6344 info@deutscherandhackett.com

152

TELEPHONE BID FORM SALE CODE: VENICE SALE NO.: 064 IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN AND INTERNATIONAL FINE ART MELBOURNE AUCTION 21 APRIL, 7:00 PM LOTS 1 — 80 105 COMMERCIAL ROAD SOUTH YARRA VIC 3141

(Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss) Name (please print)

Billing address (PO Box insufficient)

Address

City

State

Post Code

1. 2. Telephone numbers for auction date in order of preference

Facsimile Email

Signature (required)

please email, post or fax this completed form to:

LOT NO.

Date

ARTIST/TITLE

COVER BID*

1. DEUTSCHER AND HACKETT 105 COMMERCIAL ROAD SOUTH YARRA VIC 3141

tel: 03 9865 6333 fax: 03 9865 6344

info@deutscherandhackett.com

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

INTERNAL USE ONLY RECEIVED BY

DATE

TIME

*Not including buyer’s premium or GST (where applicable). Bids are made in Australian dollars. Please refer to the Prospective Buyers and Sellers Guide and the Conditions of Auction and Sale in this catalogue for information regarding sales. By completing this form, I authorise DEUTSCHER AND HACKETT to contact me by telephone on the contact number(s) nominated. I understand it is my responsibility to enquire whether any Sale-Room Notices relate to any lot on which I intend to bid. I also understand that should my bid(s) be successful, a buyer’s premium of 25% (inclusive of GST), will be added to the final hammer price. I accept that DEUTSCHER AND HACKETT provides this complimentary service as a courtesy to its clients, that there are inherent risks to telephone bidding, and I will not hold DEUTSCHER AND HACKETT responsible for any error.

153

ABSENTEE BID FORM SALE CODE: VENICE SALE NO.: 064 IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN AND INTERNATIONAL FINE ART

(Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss) Name (please print)

Billing address (PO Box insufficient)

Address

City

Telephone

State

Post Code

Business/Mobile

MELBOURNE AUCTION 21 APRIL, 7:00 PM LOTS 1 — 80 105 COMMERCIAL ROAD SOUTH YARRA VIC 3141

Facsimile Email

Signature (required)

LOT NO.

ARTIST/TITLE

Date

MAXIMUM BID*

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

please email, post or fax this completed form to: DEUTSCHER AND HACKETT 105 COMMERCIAL ROAD SOUTH YARRA VIC 3141

tel: 03 9865 6333 fax: 03 9865 6344 info@deutscherandhackett.com

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. *Not including buyer’s premium or GST (where applicable). Bids are made in Australian dollars. Absentee bids must be received a minimum of twenty-four hours prior to auction. All absentee bids received will be confirmed by phone or fax. In the event that confirmation is not received, please resubmit or contact our office. Please refer to the Prospective Buyers and Sellers Guide and the Conditions of Auction and Sale in this catalogue for information regarding sales. By completing this form, absentee bidders request and authorise DEUTSCHER AND HACKETT to place the following bids acting as agent on their behalf up to and including the maximum bid specified. Lots will be bought at the lowest possible bid authorised by a bidder in absentia. Should the bid be successful, the buyer will be obliged to pay the final bid price plus buyer’s premium of 25% (inclusive of GST) of the final bid price. DEUTSCHER AND HACKETT provides this complimentary service as a courtesy to clients and does not accept liability for errors and omissions in the execution of absentee bids.

154

INTERNAL USE ONLY RECEIVED BY

DATE

TIME

NOW CONSIGNING forthcoming auctions of important australian + international fine art sydney • 02 9287 0600 melbourne • 03 9865 6333 info@deutscherandhackett.com www.deutscherandhackett.com

27 FEBRUARY – 16 MAY 2021

TICKETS ON SALE AT AGSA.SA.GOV.AU

PRINCIPAL DONOR

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

EXHIBITION PARTNER

image detail Clarice Beckett, Australia, 1887–1935, Beach scene c. 1932–33, Melbourne, oil on canvas, 52.1 x 62.0 cm; CBUS Collection of Australian Art, as advised by Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE, Latrobe Regional Gallery

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IT’S NOT ALWAYS NECESSARY TO DIE TO BECOME AN ANGEL

You can become an art angel in your own lifetime by making a bequest to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. You might be surprised just how many have already made this gesture, contributing to the wealth of art available to all. Why do they insist on such angelic acts? Because they believe in the long term effects art has on our culture and wider community to inform, enrich, nourish and feed. The wonderful collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales could not exist without the loyalty and generosity of our many donors and benefactors. Their bequests, both large and small, benefit the Gallery in a myriad of ways, and can be comprised of money, art or other property or assets. Bequests of art can also display acknowledgement and are exempt from capital gains tax. Why not contact us for further information or to discuss your bequest in confidence, by phoning Jane Wynter, the Head of philanthropy on 02 9225 1818 or email jane.wynter@ag.nsw.gov.au

Jacopo Amigoni Bacchus and Ariadne c1740-2 oil on canvas Gift of James Fairfax 1993

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CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS FA S H I O N

A celebration of Indigenous art, history and culture through contemporary fashion and design.

2 0 F E B RUA RY – 8 AU G U S T 2 0 2 1 First Australians Focus Gallery N AT I O N A L M U S E U M O F A U S T R A L I A CANBERR A | FREE nma.gov.au/piinpi

P R E S E N T I N G PA R T N E R S

L E G A L PA R T N E R

A C C O M M O D AT I O N PA R T N E R

Exhibition organised by Bendigo Art Gallery Grace Rosendale, Seedpods Top and Pant 2019. Linen. Courtesy of the artist, Hopevale Arts and Cultural Centre and Queensland University of Technology. Model: Magnolia Maymuru. Photographer: Bronwyn Kidd.

Forty years since decriminalisation

162

She-Oak and Sunlight Australian Impressionism 2 April – 22 August

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square PRINCIPAL PARTNER

MAJOR PARTNER

SUPPORTERS

Tom Roberts She-oak and sunlight 1889 (detail) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Jean Margaret Williams Bequest, K. M. Christensen and A. E. Bond Bequest, Eleanor M. Borrow Bequest, The Thomas Rubie Purcell and Olive Esma Purcell Trust and Warren Clark Bequest, 2019

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The National New Australian Art

Art Gallery of New South Wales Carriageworks Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

2017/2019/2021

Over 50 artists. 3 locations. the-national.com.au Major Partners

Principal Local Government Partner

Supporting Exhibition Patron

Warwick Evans

Government Partners

164

Betty Kuntiwa Pumani, Antara (detail), 2020, synthetic polymer paint on linen, image courtesy the artist and Mimili Maku Arts © the artist, photograph: Jessica Maurer

165

BUX TON CON TEMP ORARY Wednesday - Sunday 11am - 5pm Free admission

BUXTON CONTEMPORAY Cnr Southbank Boulevard and Dodds Street Southbank VIC 3006 166

buxtoncontemporary.com

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Lot 32

Lot 63

Lot 7

Lot 33

Lot 64

Lot 8

Lot 34

Lot 10

Lot 45

Lot 65

Lot 11

Lot 46

Lot 12

Lot 47

Lot 66

Lot 13

Lot 48

Lot 67

Lot 49

Lot 68

Lot 69

Lot 70

Lot 71

Lot 72

Lot 73

Lot 74

Lot 75

Lot 14

Lot 50

Lot 15

Lot 52

Lot 16

Lot 53

Lot 17

Lot 54

Lot 18

Lot 56

Lot 19

Lot 57

Lot 22

Lot 59

Lot 28

Lot 60

Lot 29

Lot 61

Lot 30

Lot 62

Lot 31

CULTURAL HERITAGE PERMITS Under the provisions of the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act, 1986, buyers may be required to obtain an export permit for certain categories of items in this sale from the Cultural Property Section: Department of Communications and the Arts GPO Box 2154 Canberra ACT 2601 Email: movable.heritage@arts.gov.au Phone: 1800 819 461

RESALE ROYALTY Some lots consigned for this sale may be subject to the Resale Royalty Right for Visual Artists Act 2009 (Cth). Any payments due under the obligations of the Act will be paid by the vendor. © Published by Deutscher and Hackett Pty Ltd 2021 978-0-6483839-8-7

168

index A AH KEE, V. ASHTON, J.R.

J 52

JERREMS, C.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

23, 36, 37

JUNIPER, R.

B BECKETT, C. BLACKMAN, C. BOYD, A. BRACK, J.

K 24, 25, 26 72 29, 31, 63

KAPOOR, A. KATZ, A. KLIPPEL, R.

CAMPBELL, C. COBURN, J. CROOKE, R.

6, 7

SMART, J.

16, 17, 18

48, 66

70 71

MACKENNAL, B.

39, 40

DOBELL, W.

28, 73

FRENCH, L.

G GILL, S.T.

STORRIER, T.

STREETON, A.

21, 42, 43, 44

TILLERS, I 20, 38

TURNER, J.A.

MAGUIRE, T.

MCCUBBIN, F.

MILLER, G.

UPWARD, P.

NOLAN, S.

FONTANA, L.

N F

SPOWERS, E.

T M

DAVIES, D.

SHEAD, G.

11, 54

ROBINSON, W.

L LOUREIRO, A.

32, 33

RENOIR, P.A.

12, 57 76, 77, 78

V 62, 64, 65

VON GUÉRARD, E.

OLSEN, J.

14, 19, 47, 49, 67

WHISSON, K

ONUS, L.

WILLIAMS, F

80 P

PERCEVAL, J.

HERMAN, S.

60, 61

PIGOTT, G.H.

HEYSEN, H.

22, 74, 75

PRESTON, M.

HOUSHIARY, S. HUNTER, R.

9 56

169

170

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