Important Australian and International Fine Art by Deutscher and Hackett

Impor tant Australian and International Fine Ar t AUCTION • MELBOURNE • 1 DECEMBER 2022

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Impor tant Australian and International Fine Ar t Lots 1 – 98

AUCTION • MELBOURNE • 1 DECEMBER 2022

MELBOURNE • AUCTION + VIEWING

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

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SYDNEY • VIEWING

36 gosbell street, paddington, new south wales, 2021 telephone: 02 9287 0600 • facsimile: 02 9287 0611 info@deutscherandhackett.com

melbourne auction

sydney viewing

melbourne viewing

absentee/telephone bids

live online bidding

LOTS 1 – 98 THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 7:00 pm 105 commercial road south yarra, vic telephone: 03 9865 6333 THURSDAY 17 – SUNDAY 20 NOVEMBER 36 gosbell street paddington, nsw telephone: 02 9287 0600 11:00 am – 6:00 pm THURSDAY 24 – WEDNESDAY 30 NOVEMBER 105 commercial road south yarra, vic telephone: 03 9865 6333 11:00 am – 6:00 pm email bids to: info@deutscherandhackett.com telephone: 03 9865 6333 fax: 03 9865 6344 telephone bid form – p. 189 absentee bid form – p. 190 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 managing director / head of finance With a Bachelor of Business Accounting at RMIT, Alex has almost 25 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.

DIANA McPHILLIPS head of online auctions & social media Diana has a Bachelor of Arts (Art History and Theory, History) together with a Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Sydney. She has also completed studies in Interior Design from the New York Institute of Art and Design. As a member of an Australian diplomatic family, Diana has lived extensively overseas and has gained a strong appreciation for the arts and culture.

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 art specialist and senior researcher 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.

ELLA PERROTTET registrar Ella has a Bachelor of Fine Art (Visual Art) from Monash University and studied in both Melbourne and Italy. From 2014, Ella worked at Leonard Joel, Melbourne as an Art Assistant, researcher, writer and auctioneer, where she developed a particular interest in Australian women artists. She is currently studying a Masters of Business (Arts and Cultural Management) at Deakin University with a focus on collection management and research.

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 Lucie Reeves-Smith 0401 177 007 Veronica Angelatos 0409 963 094 AUCTIONEERS 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 SHIPPING Ella Perrottet 03 9865 6333 CATALOGUE SUBSCRIPTIONS Eliza Burton 03 9865 6333

contents various vendors lots 1 – 8

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important works by Lin Onus from the collection of S&P Global, Australia lots 9 – 16

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important Australian Art from the collection of Reg Grundy AC OBE and Joy Chambers-Grundy lots 17 – 19

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various vendors lots 20 – 47

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contemporary art from The Laverty Collection lots 48 – 58

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116

various vendors lots 59 – 79

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132

a collection of works by Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack lots 80 – 94

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160

sporting paintings by Frederick Woodhouse Snr and Jnr from The Laverty Collection lots 95 – 98

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prospective buyers and sellers guide

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182

conditions of auction and sale

page 184

catalogue subscription form

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attendee pre-registration form

page 188

telephone bid form

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absentee bid form

page 190

index

page 203

187 189

JEFFREY SMART

(1921 – 2013) SECOND STUDY FOR MADRAS AIRPORT, 1979 oil on canvas on board 29.0 x 39.0 cm signed lower right: JEFFREY SMART ESTIMATE: $70,000 – 90,000

PROVENANCE Australian Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso) Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above EXHIBITED Jeffrey Smart, Redfern Gallery, London, 7 June – 4 July 1979, cat. 27 Jeffrey Smart, Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney, 8 November – 30 December 1980, cat. 38 Jeffrey Smart, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 26 October – 7 November 1981, cat. 26 LITERATURE Quartermaine, P., Jeffrey Smart, Gryphon Books, Melbourne, 1983, cat. 750, p. 116 McDonald, J., Jeffrey Smart Paintings of the ’70’s and ’80’s, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1990, cat. 195, p. 159 RELATED WORKS Madras Airport, 1979, oil on board, 34.5 x 66.5 cm, private collection, sold Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne, 8 December 2021, lot 1 First Study for Madras Airport, 1979, oil on canvas, 27.0 x 38.0 cm Third Study for Madras Airport, 1979, oil on canvas, 33.0 x 65.0 cm We are grateful to Stephen Rogers, Archivist for the Estate of Jeffrey Smart, for his assistance with this catalogue entry. ‘… Most artists today don’t paint the cars we travel in, factories people work in, roads, road-signs, and airports we all use. I like living in the 20th century – to me, the world has never been more beautiful. I am trying to paint the real world I live in, as beautifully as I can, with my own eye.’1 Although deriving his subject matter from all that would appear disturbing about the modern world – bleak highways, industrial landscapes inhabited by motorised traf fic, and an impersonal contemporary architecture that seems unforgiving to human presence – Smart’s paintings are quite assuredly not commentaries upon urban alienation or the human condition. To the contrary, Smart rejoices in the beauty and oddity he perceives within the contemporary urban environment, translating momentary glimpses of the everyday into impeccably composed harmonies of colour, shape and line – all imbued with originality, irony and an inescapable feeling of expectancy. Elaborating upon his fascination with airports in particular, Smart observed: ‘Aerodromes are beautiful and exciting places, especially

in a side light or on a misty day when they assume a threatening atmosphere.’2 As encapsulated by the superb example on offer, one of the most intriguing aspects of Smart’s airport paintings is the stark contrast between the almost total anonymity of the scenes depicted, and the inordinate specificity of their titles. 3 Frequently observed by the artist through a window while seated on board a plane or in the waiting lounge, these works are invariably populated with generic images of workmen in overalls refuelling aircraft or involved in arcane systems of signalling (as featured here), control towers, airport car parks and observation decks. And yet, titles such as Fiumicino Car Park, 1976; Madras Airport, 1979; Night Stop, Bombay, 1981 and The Terrace, Madrid Airport, 1984 – 85 all suggest very precise points of departure. Like his artistic mentor Cézanne, Smart’s priority has always been the pursuit of the consummate composition and certainly, nowhere is this commitment to disegno or draughtsmanship as the basis of his art more poignantly illustrated than in the evolution of Madras Airport. The crystallisation of a specific ‘moment of enchantment’, the final composition was preceded by at least three oil studies, including the present which documents the artist’s experiments with a reversed format and the substitution of different colours for the figures’ overalls. In the final interpretation, Smart would also omit the partially-obscured observation deck and terminal featured here, replacing it with a similarly half-concealed aircraft waiting on the tarmac to the left and garish pink oil tanker on the right. Significantly, a further figure study in oil of potential poses for the three airport workmen reveals, moreover, that Smart’s partner of forty years, Ermes de Zan, served as the model. That much of Smart’s vast oeuvre fervently celebrates the mechanisms of travel is perhaps not surprising given his lifetime spent as an expatriate. Betraying a sense of place that is at once ambiguous yet strangely familiar, indeed such iconography ‘to some extent reflects his own inveterate travelling as a post-modern figure…’5 As eminent commentator on Smart’s work, Peter Quartermaine elucidates, ‘…For such figures, travel, whether voluntary or enforced, is counterbalanced by an inner sense of loss against which is shored what Salman Rushdie envisages as ‘imaginary homelands’…’6 1. Smart cited in Jeffrey Smart, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1999, p. 20 2. Smart cited in Capon, E., et al., Jeffrey Smart: Drawings and Studies 1942 – 2001, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 2001, p. 102 3. Grishin, S., ‘Jeffrey Smart’s Eternal Order of Light and Balance’, in Jeffrey Smart: Paintings and Studies 2002 – 2003, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 2003, p. 12 4. Quartermaine, P., ‘Imaginary Homeland: Jeffrey Smart’s Italy’, in Jeffrey Smart, 1999, ibid., p. 38 5. ibid. 6. ibid. VERONICA ANGELATOS

ARTHUR BOYD

(1920 – 1999) ROCKY HILLSIDE, SHOALHAVEN, c.1980 oil on composition board 91.0 x 61.0 cm signed lower right: Arthur Boyd inscribed with title verso: Rocky Hillside – Shoalhaven ESTIMATE: $80,000 – 120,000

PROVENANCE Private collection Gould Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso) Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 1994

‘The natural beauty of the Shoalhaven area caused Boyd to marvel constantly. His paintings are a celebration of grandeur and wonder of Nature. It is to Boyd’s credit that a single landscape can inspire such diversity of work. He gives us the impression that there are infinite possibilities, as long as we train ourselves to see.’1 Eager to rediscover his roots, his ‘Australianism’, after more than a decade abroad, in 1971 Arthur Boyd returned to the country of his birth to take up a Creative Arts Fellowship at the Australian National University in Canberra. Over the blazing summer of 1971 – 72, Boyd and his wife Yvonne were invited by the Sydney art dealer Frank McDonald to visit Bundanon for the weekend, staying at a home he shared on the south coast of New South Wales with art historian Sandra McGrath and her husband Tony. Here the artist’s joyful rediscovery of the Australian bush with its stark contrasts and clarity of light was nothing short of an epiphany, and thus in 1974, Boyd purchased the nearby property Riversdale on the banks of the Shoalhaven River. Once again the magic of the dour, untamed Australian landscape became the impetus for his art, and over the subsequent twenty-five years until his death in 1999, Boyd would dedicate himself almost exclusively to capturing the myriad moods of the Shoalhaven in images that are today imprinted upon the national psyche as some of our most beloved and iconic.

Soul-piercing in its beauty, the Shoalhaven region of fered both refreshing solace for the artist’s world-weary eyes, and endless potential as a subject – ‘the variation in the area with its great deep tones and high keys’ bearing strong affinities with music. As Boyd elaborated, ‘in the desert there is only one note, just one low singing note. In this landscape the tonal range – not tonal in the obvious sense of colour, but the actual fact of the horizon which can vary from very high to low, to infinite, depending on your line of vision – makes it a greater challenge. It has a knife-edged clarity. Impressionism could never have been born here, but Wagner could easily have composed here. He could not have composed at Port Phillip Bay. In fact,’ he added with characteristic playfulness, ‘I actually think Wagner lived in the Shoalhaven.’2 Wild and primordial, the region differed completely from the ordered English countryside to which he had grown accustomed and thus, a new vision was required to unlock its tangled mysteries. If previously Breughel and Rembrandt had offered inspiration, now Von Guérard, Piguenit and Buvelot became Boyd’s spiritual mentors. Suffused with warmth and lyricism, Rocky Hillside - Shoalhaven, c.1980 is a superb example of the ‘pure’ Shoalhaven landscapes which – devoid of the mythological creatures and symbolic narrative punctuating versions elsewhere – simply pays homage to the sheer beauty, grandeur and wonder of Nature. Indeed, the work is a poignant reminder of how Boyd, comfortable once more with the eternal diversity of the Australian landscape, ultimately did tame his wilderness: ‘...what was unfamiliar became familiar, what was menacing became friendly, what was awesome became intimate.’3 1. McKenzie, J., Arthur Boyd at Bundanon, Academy Editions, London, 1994, p. 42 2. Boyd quoted in Pearce, B., Arthur Boyd Retrospective, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1993, pp. 26 – 27 3. McGrath, S., The Artist and the Shoalhaven, Bay Books, Sydney, 1982, p. 79 VERONICA ANGELATOS

CHARLES BLACKMAN (1928 – 2018) ASCENDING CHILDREN, 1960 oil on composition board 122.0 x 91.0 cm signed upper left: BLACKMAN ESTIMATE: $200,000 – 300,000

PROVENANCE Brian and Marjorie Johnstone, Brisbane, by 1967 Marjorie Johnstone, Brisbane, 1992 Private collection, Brisbane, a bequest from the above in 1994 LITERATURE Shapcott, T., Focus on Charles Blackman, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1967, pp. 52, 53 (illus.) Shapcott, T., The Art of Charles Blackman, Andre Deutsch, London, 1989, pl. 88, pp. 149 (illus.), 255 and illus. back cover St John Moore, F., Charles Blackman. Schoolgirls and Angels, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1993, p. 20

Artists Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd and Barbara Blackman at the opening of the exhibition Recent Australian Painting, Whitechapel Gallery, July 1961 courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery Archive

‘(Charles Blackman) has produced a large quantity of serious work at an age when most artists have not even approached their formative period. His work has imaginative power and a strong poetic bias… the curiously evocative quality of nearly all Blackman’s painting could easily carry this artist on to a very special place in the Australian art of our time.’1 Writing in Meanjin in 1952 after visiting Blackman’s first exhibition, an informal display of works pinned up on the walls of the coach house where he lived in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn, the artist and art critic Alan McCulloch was impressed. So too, were John and Sunday Reed, keen and informed supporters of modern art who had met the aspiring young artist several years earlier and purchased two paintings and a drawing. Blackman’s work also garnered support from his artistic peers, with Danila Vassilieff buying two pictures, remarking, ‘The bit I like about you is the bit with love in your heart.’2 Blackman’s first solo exhibition in a commercial gallery took place the following year at the Peter Bray Gallery in Melbourne and included a group of his Schoolgirl paintings, which are now regarded as one of the most significant groups of modern works produced in Australia during the immediate post-war years. The later 1950s saw the creation of the

iconic Alice series, and the renowned, evocative paintings of faces and flowers. Blackman’s ability to imbue his pictures with a palpable sense of humanity and emotion was by then widely recognised. As Gertrude Langer wrote in response to his 1958 exhibition in Brisbane, ‘his art… speaks tenderly of suffering and joy, dreams and memories. His colours, brilliant as they are, are not employed for their own sake, but for their emotional import... a painter who speaks to the heart is to be treasured.’3 By the late 1950s, Blackman’s star was in the ascendant. One of his Alice paintings was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 1958, and in 1959 he won the Rowney Prize for drawing. His June 1960 exhibition at the Johnstone Gallery – which by that time had been relocated to the stylish Bowen Hills home of its founders, Brian and Marjorie Johnstone – sold out, realising about £4500 and enabling the Blackmans to buy a house in St Lucia.4 Two months later Blackman was awarded the prestigious Helena Rubinstein Travelling Scholarship and by the following February, he and his family had relocated to London, where they lived for the next five years. 1961 saw three of his works, including Dreaming in the Street, 1960 (National Gallery of Victoria) shown in Recent Australian Painting, the groundbreaking exhibition

Brian and Marjorie Johnstone in their sitting room at Cintra Road, 1965 Johnstone Gallery Scrapbook RBHARC 7/1/7 Australian Library of Art, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane

curated by Bryan Robertson at the Whitechapel Gallery. That same year he represented Australia alongside Brett Whiteley at the Biennale des Jeunes in Paris, and in 1963, was included in a major historical survey of Australian art mounted by the Tate. Ascending Children, 1960 was painted just before Blackman left for London and shows an artist in full creative flight. While the blue dress and golden hair of the central figure recall Blackman’s depiction of Alice in Wonderland, the others subtly allude to his schoolgirls. Indeed, the unusual composition, in which the figures all lean in harmonious unison to the left, was inspired by the sight of children walking to school up a steep Brisbane street.5 The handling of paint is assured, moving seamlessly from passages that are urgent and expressive – such as the figures in the foreground – to others which are realised with the utmost delicacy. Look, for example, at the soft, blurred edges of the figures’ heads and the ethereal quality of the girl on the right, who emerges, almost ghost-like, from the painting’s pale ground. Writing in the 1967 monograph on Blackman, Thomas Shapcott rhapsodised, ‘There is a new assurance about such a painting as Ascending Children which gives it a luminosity no words… can approach… there is a true serenity in this work.’ He continued: ‘Ascending Children… has a quietness and

grace, a gentleness of shape and shade, that assures it of ranking among the most successful essays in this field… (Blackmans’) children walk easily, beautifully, forwards and onwards. It is as if the painter were permitting the frailty of the moment to move to the surface and be caught, in exultation only, in its own sufficiency… What makes the painting truly remarkable, is, of course, the subjecting of diagonal line, in the total picture, to this mood: the mastery of total mood over the technical restraints of pre-ordained dynamic.’6 This painting has an excellent provenance, owned by Brian and Marjorie Johnstone from the 1960s, and then bequeathed to a friend – the current vendor – upon Marjorie’s death in 1994. 1. Alan McCulloch writing in Meanjin, February 1952, cited in Shapcott, T., The Art of Charles Blackman, Andre Deutsch, London, 1989, p. 9 2. Danila Vassilieff, cited in St John Moore, F., Charles Blackman: Schoolgirls and Angels, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1993, p. 17 3. Gertrude Langer writing in the Courier Mail, Brisbane, 18 November 1958, cited in Shapcott, T., Focus on Charles Blackman, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1967, p. 37 4. Shapcott, ibid., p. 48 5. St John Moore, op. cit., p. 20 6. Shapcott, 1967, op. cit., p. 52 KIRSTY GRANT

BRETT WHITELEY

(1939 – 1992) GIRAFFE NO. 1, 1964 –65 bronze on marble plinth mounted on carved wood and brass base 189.0 x 45.0 x 31.5 cm (overall, including base) edition: 1/4 signed at base of bronze: Brett ESTIMATE: $200,000 – 300,000

PROVENANCE Beth Patrick, London, a gift from the artist Private collection, London, a gift from the above in 2005 EXHIBITED Brett Whiteley [Zoo series and Christie series], Marlborough New London Gallery, London, 6 – 30 October 1965, cat. 18 Another Way of Looking at Vincent van Gogh, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 4 – 21 August 1983 (another example) An Exhibition by Brett Whiteley – Eden and Eve, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 1984, cat. 51 (another example) 162 Drawings: Brett Whiteley: 1960 – 85, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney, 1985 (another example) Brett Whiteley: Art & Life, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 16 September – 19 November 1995; Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin, 13 December 1995 – 28 January 1996; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 22 February – 8 April 1996; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 9 May – 16 June 1996; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2 July – 26 August 1996; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, 18 September – 17 November 1996, cat. 126 (another example) A Different Vision: Brett Whiteley Sculptures, The Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney, 1998 (another example) Animals and Birds, The Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney, 2002 (another example) Key Works from the Studio, The Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney, 2004 (another example) Sydney Genesis and Beyond 1955 – 1965, The Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney, September 2005 (another example) 9 Shades of Whiteley, The Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney, 2 December 2006 – 9 September 2007 (another example) Floating World: Landscape, the figure & calligraphy in the art of Brett Whiteley, The Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney, 21 March – 6 September 2009 (another example)

Iconic Whiteley, The Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney, 12 September 2009 – 22 August 2010 (another example) The London Years, 1960 – 67, The Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney, 13 July 2012 – 13 February 2013 (another example) Brett Whiteley Sculpture and Ceramics, The Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney, 5 June – 6 December 2015 (another example) OTHER PLACES: Somewhere else, The Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney, December 2015 – May 2016 (another example) Tributes, The Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney, 13 May – 13 August 2016 (another example) Baldessin/Whiteley Parallel Visions, Ian Potter Centre, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 31 August 2018 – 28 January 2019 (another example) LITERATURE Lynn, E., The Australian, Sydney, 26 – 27 October 1985 (illus.) Gray, R., ‘A few takes on Brett Whiteley’, Art and Australia, Sydney, vol. 24, no. 2, 1986, p. 223 (illus.) Pearce, B., Brett Whiteley: Art & Life, Thames and Hudson in association with the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1995, pl. 45 (illus.), p. 229 Sutherland, K., Brett Whiteley: A Sensual Line, 1957 – 67, Macmillan Art Publishing, Melbourne, 2010, cat. V10, pp. 63, 148, 149 (illus.), 318 Sutherland, K., Brett Whiteley: Catalogue Raisonné: 1955 – 1992, Schwartz Publishing, Melbourne, 2019, cat. 7s, vol. 6, p. 117 (illus. another example), vol. 7, p. 879 RELATED WORKS The three other examples Giraffe No. 1, 1965 (editions 2, 3 and 4/4) are held in the collection of the Brett Whiteley Estate, Sydney (BWS645, BWS1790 and BWS1791) Giraffe No. 2, 1965, brass, marble and carved wood, 223.5 x 22.9 x 22.9 cm, private collection, Sydney We are grateful to Kathie Sutherland for her assistance with this catalogue entry.

Australia) for example, with its collaged objects and built-up shapes, and aspects of the natural world, such as branches, birds’ eggs and nests, sometimes represent themselves rather than being depicted by the artist, as if the beauty of their real-life forms defy transcription. Over his relatively short but highly productive career, Whiteley created sculptures from found objects, while also displaying mastery of more traditional techniques such as carving and casting. Indeed, over time, his large-scale sculptures such as Almost Once, 1968/1991 (otherwise known as ‘The Matchsticks’), sited near the Art Gallery of NSW, and Newcastle Art Gallery’s Black Totem II have become instantly recognisable and much-loved public art works.1 Whiteley arrived in London in 1960 after a 10-month stay in Italy following his awarding of the Italian Travelling Scholarship at the Art Gallery of NSW by judge Russell Drysdale in October 1959. He was quickly embraced by the London art scene as a new talent to watch, spearheaded by the inclusion of three of his paintings in Br yan Robertson’s 1961 ‘Recent Australian Painting’ exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery and the acquisition of his Untitled Red Painting, 1960, from that show, by the Tate Gallery. 2 The Whiteleys initially moved into an apartment at Ladbroke Grove in the west London borough of Chelsea and Kensington, a then workingclass area filled with British and expatriate Australian artists. Their home was not far from 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill – the address where renowned serial killer John Christie murdered at least eight women (including his wife) during the 1940s and early 1950s, hiding their bodies in the garden, and in the walls and under the floorboards of his house. Whiteley became obsessed with the macabre story and undertook extensive research for his series on the case. Drawing obvious influence from the powerfully visceral compositions of his mentor, Francis Bacon (who he met in 1961), Whiteley’s Christie works unflinchingly investigate violence, psychosis, and the nature of evil itself; capturing the fear, pain and anguish of Christie’s victims in the contor ted, writhing forms of female bodies, distor ted to the point of abstraction.

Despite being rightly known and celebrated for his paintings and drawings, Brett Whiteley always extended his art beyond the frame, working in three dimensions when both the idea and its realisation demanded it. Across the artist’s oeuvre, forms occasionally explode from the canvas – in the visual and surface chaos of the multi-panelled painting The American Dream, 1968-69, (Art Gallery of Western

Whiteley created and exhibited his Regent’s Park Zoo works – comprising paintings, sculptures and the screenprint portfolio, My Relationship between Screenprinting and Regent’s Park Zoo between June and August 1965, 1965 – at the same time as the Christie series, its more prosaic subject matter providing a very real antidote to the intensity of the Christie saga. The idiosyncratic juxtaposition of these two very different bodies of work was a bold move for the

Brett Whiteley (Zoo series), Installation view, Marlborough New London Gallery, 1965 documentary photograph in artist’s ‘orange velvet’ notebook (compiled c.1975) Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

young artist, driven entirely by personal need rather than a desire for exhibition coherence. Within the exhibition, the animals provided a positive counterpoint to Christie’s depravity and evil, yet the pent-up energy contained within their physical forms and their appearance, at times, behind the wires of a cage, highlight their role as sentient beings and humankind’s complicity in their ongoing confinement. As Kathie Sutherland has commented: ‘Whiteley’s giraffes, baboons, and apes are alert and express extremes of emotions, seemingly human: melancholy, wariness, anger and curiosity. As a body of work their vitality and awareness of life communicates with the viewer in a way that Christie’s doomed victims, who are silenced, cannot.’3 The Regent’s Park Zoo works also allowed Whiteley to express his extraordinary draughtsmanship and facility of line as he quickly captured the animals in motion. Giraffe No. 1, 1965 was a key part of the exhibition’s menagerie; its thin, abstracted form embodying, rather than simply depicting the animal’s unusual gait and the slow, swinging motion of the giraffe’s body as it moves. The sculpture clearly shows the influence of Giacometti in its expressive modelling and teetering slender form, as the marks of Whiteley’s fingers impress and shape the giraffe and its exquisitely modelled head; imbuing the animal with a sense of inquisitiveness and

charm. Whiteley has seemingly captured the personality of this harmless beast in the graceful curve of its neck and body and the elegant tilt of its head. As time has shown, the artist’s interest in animals was certainly no flash in the pan; Whiteley returned to the animal kingdom as subject throughout his career, with the giraffe appearing in different guises across painting, drawing, prints and sculpture. As Giraffe No. 1 – one of the artist’s first sculptures of this gentle giant, clearly demonstrates, Whiteley’s fascination with animals came from a place of connection, and a lifelong quest for understanding. As he remarked: ‘To draw animals, one has to work at white heat because they move so much, and partly because it is sometimes painful to feel what one guesses the animal ‘feels’ from inside.4 1. Black Totem II was created by Whiteley and completed by Wendy Whiteley OAM after his death. 2. Whiteley had a second work acquired by the Tate in 1964 –Woman in a Bath II, 1963 from his solo exhibition Brett Whiteley at Marlborough New London Gallery. The Collection now numbers 18 works. 3. Sutherland, K., Brett Whiteley: A Sensual Line, 1957 – 67, Macmillan Art Publishing, Melbourne, 2010, p. 123 4. McGrath, S., Brett Whiteley, Bay Books, Sydney, 1979, p. 62 KELLY GELLATLY

HOWARD ARKLEY (1951 – 1999) HIGH FENCED, 1996 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 203.0 x 153.0 cm signed and dated verso: Howard Arkley / 1996 ESTIMATE: $500,000 – 700,000

PROVENANCE Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne at Art Cologne, Germany Gould Galleries, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 1996 Private collection, London, acquired from the above in 2000 EXHIBITED Tolarno at Art Cologne, Art Cologne, Germany, 10 – 17 November 1996 LITERATURE Crawford, A., & Edgar, R., Spray: The Work of Howard Arkley, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1997, p. 130 Howard Arkley Online Catalogue Raisonné: [https://www.arkleyworks. com/blog/2009/11/24/high-fenced-1996/] (accessed 26/8/22) RELATED WORK High Fenced, 1995, synthetic polymer paint on paper, 160.0 x 121.0 cm, private collection, illus. in Crawford, A., and Edgar, R., Spray: The Work of Howard Arkley, Craftsman House, Sydney, 2001, p. 121

Howard Arkley, pictured in the Melbourne suburbs photographer: Martin Kantor © Estate of Howard Arkley

By the time Howard Arkley created High Fenced, 1996, he was beginning to receive international attention for his work, culminating in his representation of Australia at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999. This classic Arkley of a squat suburban house for example, was exhibited by Tolarno Galleries in Germany in 1996 at the prestigious art fair Art Cologne, and his work was also included in group exhibitions in Korea and Singapore that same year. Curated by Timothy Morrell, then Curator of Contemporary Australian Art at Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Arkley’s The Home Show at Venice comprised three major bodies of work – Residential Subdivision, 1994 – 99, Fabricated Rooms, 1997 – 99, and Outside – Inside – Out, 1995, which filled, and seemingly reflected, the low-slung Australian beach house aesthetic of Paul Cox’s Pavilion.1 On entering the space, nine of the artist’s signature paintings of house exteriors were hung to form the imaginary streetscape of ‘Residential Subdivision’, brought together, as the exhibition unfolded, with the door-sized panels of Outside – Inside – Out, whose abstracted designs were inspired by the patterns of domestic security doors and fly screens. 2 The exhibition culminated in the multi-panelled interior scene of Fabricated Rooms, with its characteristic use of explosive colour and its slightly off-kilter, tessellated sense of space, as the viewer moved from left to right, effectively entering, and exploring the rooms of a strangely empty home.

As John Gregory has noted, ‘In conception and design, the show was the culmination of Arkley’s suburban enterprise, fulfilling a long-standing ambition to transform an entire exhibition into a stylised simulacrum of an Australian suburb …’3 Catalogue contributor Marco Livingstone, emphasising the psychedelic look and experience of Arkley’s paintings of suburban houses, described the artist’s images as ‘gloriously, elegantly, deliriously uncouth’ and as a ‘springboard for a heightened sensual and pictorial experience, born of fantasy, daydreaming and escapism.’4 Clearly written with the aim of establishing a sense of connection, recognition and understanding between an international art audience and the artist’s quintessentially Australian images, Livingstone also highlighted Arkley’s connection to familiar Pop artists such as Patrick Caulfield and Richard Hamilton. However, given the positive reception of the exhibition on this global stage, it is fair to assume that an audience well-versed in postmodernism easily recognised and responded to the equivalence of Arkley’s highand low-brow sources, to his investigation of formal concerns with colour, line and pattern, to his experimental nature, and to his deft handling of his materials. As Arkley’s first wife, artist Elizabeth Gower has remarked: ‘He had such control of the airbrush, it was like the sixth finger on his hand. His concentration was intense. One can only marvel at his ability to sustain it.’5

‘The Home Show’ installation, Australian Pavillion, Venice Biennale, 1999 photographer unknown

As the 2011 acquisition by the State Library of Victoria of the substantial Howard Arkley Archive has demonstrated, Arkley was a prodigious collector of references and source material. Clippings of images from magazines, and the artist’s own photographs, collages, doodles and notes fill the pages of countless notebooks, revealing the artist’s seemingly endless capacity for creative juxtaposition and reinvention as forms and patterns appear and are re-worked in different guises, across his oeuvre. Figuration and abstraction sit side by side, and his abiding interest in the construction and presentation of our lives through ‘the home’ is treated with a lightness of touch that has at times been misconstrued as either critique or indifference. As Arkley once said to his long-term studio assistant and fellow artist Constanze Zikos, ‘make what you know, make what you understand.’6 Arkley recognised that life in the suburbs was the reality of most Australians, and he knew them from firsthand experience, having grown up in Surrey Hills and after living in the inner-city for many years, moving to the Melbourne suburb of Caulfield with his partner Alison Burton in 1991. Arkley often based paintings like High Fenced on real estate advertising images, where properties literally put on their ‘best face’ for purchase; their carefully constructed sketches or photographs framed to obscure less attractive features and delete any unnecessary distractions. The unusual angles and compressed space of the work mirror and exaggerate this effect, only allowing the audience a view of the property over the top of the imposing fence and physical access through the slice of driveway

to the right of the composition. Howard Arkley painted his first house painting in 1983 and remained captivated by this embodiment of the suburban dream until his untimely death in July 1999, just one month after the opening of the Biennale. As he enthused: ‘Ordinary houses are full of pattern... the different bricks on the different houses, and the pattern between the gutter, the nature-strip, the footpath, then you have the fence, then you have the lawn, the house, the tiles, then you have the beautiful sky... and I missed the bushes in between... it’s rich.’7 1. The Australian Pavilion was constructed as a temporary building in 1988 to house the exhibition Arthur Boyd: Paintings 1973 – 1988. Australia was allocated the then last site available in the Giardini della Biennale and is now one of only 29 national pavilions within the Biennale Gardens. Despite being a temporary structure, prefabricated in Australia using local materials and shipped to Venice for construction, the Pavilion was used for 26 years. 2. Livingstone, M., ‘Some Kinds of Love: Howard Arkley’s Urban Suburban Environment’, Howard Arkley: The Home Show, Australian Pavilion, 48th Venice Biennale 1999, ex. cat., Australia Council, Sydney, 1999, p. 9 3 Gregory, J. ‘Howard Arkley: The Home Show, Venice Biennale, June – November 1999’, Arkley works: https://www.arkleyworks.com/blog/2009/11/21/howard-arkley-the-homeshow-venice-biennale-june-nov-1999/, accessed 17 October 2022 4. Livingstone, M., op. cit., p. 8 5. Gower, E., ‘Elizabeth Gower statement’, 2006, email to Victoria Lynn, October 2015 in Fitzpatrick A. & Lynn, V., Howard Arkley and Friends, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, Healesville, 2015, p. 43 6. Zikos, C., conversation with Victoria Lynn, July 2015 in Fitzpatrick A. & Lynn, V., op .cit., p. 59. Constanze Zikos was Arkley’s studio assistant from 1984 to 1994 and a postgraduate student of Arkley’s at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne from 1984 to 1986. 7. Gregory, J., Carnival in Suburbia: The Art of Howard Arkley, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2006, p. 9 KELLY GELLATLY

ROSALIE GASCOIGNE (1917 – 1999) BEATEN TRACK, 1992 sawn wood soft drink crates on plywood 122.0 x 110.0 cm signed, dated and inscribed with title verso: Rosalie Gascoigne / 1992 / BEATEN TRACK signed and dated verso [inverted]: Rosalie Gascoigne / 1992 ESTIMATE: $400,000 – 600,000

PROVENANCE Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney (label attached verso) Private collection, acquired from the above in 1992 Christie’s, Sydney, 24 May 2005, lot 38 Private collection, London EXHIBITED Rosalie Gascoigne, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, 15 April – 2 May 1992, cat. 10 Toi Toi Toi, Three Generations of Artists from New Zealand, Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, 23 January – 5 April 1999; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland, New Zealand, 22 May – 4 July 1999, cat. 67 LITERATURE Toi Toi Toi, Three Generations of Artists from New Zealand, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland, 1998, cat. 67, p. 84 (illus.) McDonald, V., Rosalie Gascoigne, Regaro Pty Ltd, Sydney, 1998, pl. 31, pp. 69 (illus.), 114 Gascoigne, M., Rosalie Gascoigne. A Catalogue Raisonné, ANU Press, Canberra, 2019, cat. 428, pp. 10, 253 (illus.), 337, 380, 413

Rosalie Gascoigne Monaro, 1989 sawn and split soft-drink crates on plywood 131.0 x 457.0 cm (overall) The State Art Collection, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth © Rosalie Gascoigne Estate / Copyright Agency 2022

‘Second hand materials aren’t deliberate; they have sun and wind on them. Simple things. From simplicity you get profundity.’1 With her training in the formal discipline of Ikebana complementing her intuitive understanding of the nature of materials, her deep attachment to her environment and later interest in modern art, Rosalie Gascoigne remains one of Australia’s most unique and beloved contemporary artists. Bespeaking a staunchness and scrupulous eye, her works are artful and refined, yet always betray a tangible connection to the outside world, powerfully evoking remembered feelings or memories in relationship to the landscape – they are ‘instances of emotion recollected in tranquillity’ to quote a phrase of Wordsworth’s which was so dear to her. Notwithstanding her formidable reputation today as one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century however, remarkably Gascoigne’s career as a professional artist did not begin until the age of 57 when she exhibited four assemblages in a group show in Sydney. Immediately attracting enthusiastic praise from collectors and critics alike, she was soon offered her maiden solo exhibition at a public institution in 1978 2, and in 1982, was selected as the inaugural female artist to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale where she unveiled, among other works, Scrub Country, 1981 – the first of her now-famous creations constructed from weathered soft-drink crates. A magnif icent example of these shimmering ‘black- on - gold’ assemblages fashioned from hand sawn Schweppes wooden crates, significantly Beaten Track, 1992 was first exhibited in the artist’s

seminal solo exhibition held at Roslyn Oxley Gallery, Sydney in April – May of that year. Heralding Gascoigne’s transition from busy, brightlycoloured works employing several materials towards calmer, more meditative pieces in natural wood, the show remains widely recognised as one of the most ground-breaking of her unconventional career – attested by the fact that at least nine of the works exhibited have subsequently entered prestigious collections internationally including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Gallery of New South Wales; the National Gallery of Victoria; and the Macquarie Bank Collection. Bearing striking stylistic affinities with Gascoigne’s celebrated fourpanel masterpiece, Monaro, 1989 in the collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Beaten Track similarly draws its inspiration from the artist’s immediate surroundings – namely the spacious grazing lands of the Monaro region on the outskirts of Canberra with their seasonal variation, diverse topography and myriad traces of history and use. Yet despite their specific impetus, such compositions notably do not depict or symbolise the local landscape; rather the deft arrangement and tonal variation of the wooden slivers eloquently conveys a larger, more universal sense of place that is, paradoxically, ‘both nowhere and everywhere at once.’3 Eschewing the use of iconography to present the viewer with openings to a number of worlds – and not simply the land as a conventional visual essay where form and subject correspond – thus Gascoigne creates exquisite distillations of the landscape that resonate with a virtually endless allusive power.

Rosalie with her stockpile of soft-drink boxes Photograph by Richard Briggs/Fairfax Syndication

With their rhythmic pattern composed of letters – ‘text transformed into texture’ – such assemblages have, not surprisingly, been described as ‘concrete stammering poems’4, a perceptive analogy given the artist’s predilection for poetry from Shakespeare to Plath. Nevertheless, Gascoigne reiterates that the flickering word fragments, though carefully arranged, are not intended to be read literally: ‘Placement of letters is important, but it’s not a matter of reading the text – it’s a matter of getting a visually pleasing result.’5 Similarly, her titles are also not prescriptive but rather, ‘leave room for the viewer’6 , imbued with various levels of meaning to be deciphered according to the nature of one’s experiences. Accordingly, while ‘Beaten Track’ may seem a fitting description for this unruly path of black lettering laid out against the promise of ‘a yellow brick road’, what also springs to mind is the expression ‘off the beaten track’ – a concept whose appropriateness becomes all the more apparent the longer one gazes at the work. For that is precisely what Beaten Track encapsulates – redolent with poetic possibility, it is a catalyst for ideas not yet encountered, an invitation to venture to places not yet explored. As John McDonald elucidates, Gascoigne’s art ‘…awakens associations that lie beneath the surface of consciousness, inviting a higher degree of sensitivity and attentiveness to the world around us…’7 Indeed, it is this higher awareness, the ability to recognise beauty in the most humble and unprepossessing of materials that Gascoigne demands of her audience. For, as the eye moves through this skilful arrangement searching for information within the weathered

components, and the mind attempts to place dif ferent rules of perspective or build upon the suggestion of the marks, ‘in time we recognise that the only solution is to stop trying to navigate through the forest of symbols and to enjoy the beauty of the trees.’8 1. The artist cited in Edwards, D., Rosalie Gascoigne: Material as Landscape, Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1998, p. 11 2. Survey 2: Rosalie Gascoigne, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 29 April – 4 June 1978 3. Cameron, D., What is Contemporary Art?, exhibition catalogue, Rooseum, Malmo, Sweden, 1989, p. 18 4. Hilty, G., Art Monthly, United Kingdom, September 1997, p. 46 5. The artist cited in MacDonald, V., Rosalie Gascoigne, Regaro, Sydney, 1998, p. 3 6. The artist, cited ibid. 7. McDonald, J., ‘Introduction’, in MacDonald, op. cit., p. 7 8. ibid. VERONICA ANGELATOS

BRETT WHITELEY

(1939 – 1992) DAISIES, 1975 – 76 oil on canvas 65.0 x 53.0 cm signed lower right: brett whiteley original Lichtenstein frame ESTIMATE: $180,000 – 240,000

PROVENANCE Australian Galleries, Melbourne Barry Stern Galleries, Sydney, acquired from the above in February 1978 Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 1978 EXHIBITED Fine Paintings, Tapestries & Sculpture, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 19 April – 3 May 1977, cat. 71 LITERATURE Sutherland, K., Brett Whiteley: Catalogue Raisonné, Schwartz Publishing, Melbourne, 2020, cat. 203.75, vol. 3, p. 315 (illus.), vol. 7, p. 347 RELATED WORK When You Look at Daisies You Look at a Daisy, 1975, pen, ink and collage on paper, 59.0 x 45.0 cm, private collection, illus. in Sutherland, K., ibid., cat. 156.75, vol. 6, p. 314

‘The still life thing only became real the more I wanted to be alone… it was the furthest thing from humans – inanimate objects.’1 Exuding lyricism and sensuousness, Daisies, 1975 – 76 encapsulates well the elegant still life paintings executed by Whiteley during the mid to late seventies which – alongside his grand Matissian interiors and sparkling Sydney Harbour views – represent a highpoint in the formidable oeuvre of this revered Australian artist. Although a genre not commonly embraced by contemporary artists at the time, for Whiteley still life painting offered enormous potential – not only in compositional terms and intellectual challenge, but more poignantly, as a temporary refuge of tranquility for his famously extravagant and troubled psyche. As the artist himself mused, ‘…I see still life as an interim period in which I don’t have any ambition to paint a new subject, or to travel, or to be involved with politics. I don’t have any interest or ambition to impress or to be the last to leave a party… I am interested in a point of trying to restart, restate again… which has always been the way.’2

More modest in scale than his signature Lavender Bay panoramas and noticeably lacking in any artifice or hint of menace, arguably such compositions are among the most exquisitely beautiful of Whiteley’s myriad achievements, imbued with an endearing intimacy, calm and tangible joie de vivre. As Barry Pearce elaborates, paying ‘…tribute to a medley of artists including Bonnard and Morandi… these are the most intensely private of all his paintings, with the momentary perfection of flowers and fruit counterpoised by beads, vases and platters from the day-to-day surroundings of the family.’3 Echoing the gentle, pared-back aesthetic of Giorgio Morandi, here Daisies presents a simplicity that is both absolute and deceptive – at one level the work contains nothing but Buddhist opiate emptiness, at another, it is rich in allusions. For example, the predominantly red and yellow palette may be construed as an homage to the artist’s hero, Vincent Van Gogh, while the Derek Smith footed vase – one of the forms that Whiteley decorated so memorably in oriental blue brushwork – suggests both the bulbous shapes of the Sigean paintings and the curves of a female nude, even the hand-held mirror in the artist’s Archibald Prize-winning magnum opus from the same period, Self Portrait in the Studio, 1976. More abstractly perhaps, the vase may even be perceived as a kind of metaphorical self-portrait – an emptied head topped with a shock of yellow daisy curls. Significantly, when eight such still lifes were first exhibited in Whiteley’s solo exhibition at Australian Galleries, Melbourne in October 1976 – together with several windowscapes, interiors and self-portraits all inspired by his Lavender Bay sanctuary – the show was universally hailed as the most accomplished success of his career. Heralding the artist’s marked departure from art as a reforming medium – from politics, social consciousness and the Rimbaudian notion of life as a contest between good and evil – towards pictures ‘…of balance, purity and serenity’4, indeed the exhibition was described by The Age critic, Maureen Gilchrist, as ‘a headlong plunge into a vision of joy’5, while even the stolid, unflappable Jeffrey Makin felt compelled to extol it as ‘outrageously brilliant’, proclaiming Whiteley ‘the only one unquestionable genius in contemporary Australian art.’6 1. The artist, cited in McGrath, S., Brett Whiteley, Bay Books, Sydney, 1979, p. 185 2. The artist, cited in Pearce, B., Brett Whiteley: Art and Life, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2000, p. 48 3. ibid., p. 36 4. Matisse, cited in McGrath, op. cit., p. 181 5. Maureen Gilchrist cited in McGrath, ibid., p. 186 5. Jeffrey Makin, cited ibid. VERONICA ANGELATOS

BRETT WHITELEY (1939 – 1992) GARDEN, 1975 brush and sepia ink on paper 84.5 x 75.0 cm stamped lower right in black ink with artist’s monogram stamped upper left in red ink with artist’s chop inscribed and dated lower right: further glimpsing in ‘Garden’ – study for large woodcut 21/7/75

8 220928

ESTIMATE: $60,000 – 80,000

PROVENANCE Bonython Art Gallery, Sydney Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney Company collection, Victoria Sotheby’s, Sydney, 7 May 2007, lot 73 Company collection, New South Wales Private collection, Melbourne Private collection, New South Wales, acquired in 2009 EXHIBITED Brett Whiteley: Thirty six looks at four sights on three themes: recent paintings, drawings and carvings, Bonython Art Gallery, Sydney, 24 October – 15 November 1975, cat. 11 (as ‘The Garden’) LITERATURE Sutherland, K., Brett Whiteley: Catalogue Raisonné, Schwartz Publishing, Melbourne, 2020, cat. 141.75, vol. 3, p. 302 (illus.), vol. 7, p. 336 RELATED WORK The Blue Garden, 1975, oil and watercolour on canvas, 75.5 x 61.0 cm, formerly in the collection of Dr Peter Elliott, Sydney

Drawing was the cornerstone of Brett Whiteley’s artistic practice, and his diverse works on paper informed and supported the major paintings and sculptures he produced throughout his lifetime, often exploring alternate compositional emphases. Garden, 1975 is a large drawing in sepia ink of a neighbouring garden viewed from Whiteley’s home in Sydney’s Lavender Bay, ostensibly a design for a future woodcut that was never executed.1 Garden was first exhibited at Bonython Gallery in Sydney, in an exhibition called ‘Thirty Six Looks at Four Sights on Three Themes’, alongside other large works all drawn with brush and ink on paper. Garden was the only one painted using the warm tones of sepia ink. In 1975, Brett Whiteley moved from his studio space in Waverton to a house on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour in Lavender Bay. This now famous house’s panoramic views on to the harbour provided the artist

with a new format for artworks, which he called ‘windowscapes’, and through which he could claim this patch of Sydney as his own private domain. These close views of verdant gardens, atmospheric rain-soaked harbour views, and stepped rows of rooftops, provided Whiteley with a restorative change of pace. Far from the political and philosophical angst of his earlier works, Nancy Borlase noted, Whiteley’s works from this period were imbued with contemplative quality, ‘a fresh appraisal of nature, reflecting a domestic tranquillity and a lifestyle in harmony with the bay.’2 Whiteley described this new impetus as ‘recording… points of optical ecstasy, where romanticism and optimism overshadow any form of menace and foreboding’. 3 Described by the artist within the Bony thon exhibition catalogue as ‘immediate landscapes’, these ‘Window’ paintings used the structure of a window frame to isolate only a section of the spectacular view. Whiteley’s flattened perspective and a graphic stylisation gave the finished image the appearance of a patterned screen, reminiscent of the Asian calligraphic art he so admired. Whiteley’s introspective focus was informed by his admiration for Zen Buddhist philosophy and the meditative process of brush-and-ink calligraphy. Whiteley described Zen as the ‘theology of drawing’4 and viewed this ancient medium as ‘the great unalterable’ 5, its application requiring the utmost confidence and mindfulness. The resulting works on paper bear a spontaneous and fluid quality, swirling with watery primordial and metamorphic potential. Garden, 1975 is a dense and luxuriant view of the leafy environs of Lavender Bay. Compressed into a single plane, the brick confines of this Eden are barely discernible amongst the stippled brushstrokes for each blade of grass and tree leaves of the foreground. In contrast to the ultramarine nocturne of its related painting, Blue Garden, Whiteley uses the white paper to evoke strong sunlight hitting the trees’ canopies. Presenting a lyrical tableau of crowded abundance beneath whimsical billowing clouds, Whiteley’s Garden captures a fleeting vision, and evokes the possibility of contemplative peace within his idyllic environs. 1. Sutherland, K., Brett Whiteley: Catalogue Raisonné, Schwartz Publishing, Melbourne, 2020, cat. 141.75, vol. 7, p. 336 2. Borlase, N., ‘An Unexpected Whiteley’, The Bulletin, Sydney, 23 November 1974, p. 57 3. McGrath, S., Brett Whiteley, Bay Books, Sydney, 1979, p. 168 4. ibid. 5. Drawing and How to Get it On, 1975, illus. in McGrath, ibid., p. 183 LUCIE REEVES-SMITH

Impor tant Works by Lin Onus from the collection of S&P Global, Australia Lots 9 – 16

Important Works by Lin Onus from the collection of S&P Global, Australia Lots 9 – 16

Extraordinarily beautiful and technically flawless, the paintings of Lin Onus (1948 – 1996) exhibit a complex mixture of ideas set around place, ownership and history wherein they occupy a distinctive position in the broader setting of Australian art. Paintings such as those offered here from the collection of S&P Global, Australia have the capacity to transfix the viewer and are full of meaning, what Michael O’Farrell observed as ‘the sheer tactility of Lin Onus… imagery that establishes a carefully balanced dialogue of sensory and mental elements.’1 Renowned for incorporating satire and humour in his early political installations and paintings that challenged cultural hegemonies, it is in these later paintings that Onus demonstrated his Indigenous connection to country. Poetic landscapes of the natural world, combined with subtle traditional iconography, confirmed Onus’ relationship to both his adopted homeland in Arnhem Land and to his own ancestral sites at the Barmah-forest on the Murray River. Growing up in a culturally productive and politically engaged household in Melbourne, Lin Onus could not help but be influenced by the activism of his family. His mother Mary Kelly was of Scottish origin and an active member of the Australian communist party, and his father Bill Onus, a Yorta Yorta man from the Aboriginal mission of Cummerangunja near Echuca, was an important figure in the Aboriginal civil rights movement, whose Aboriginal Enterprises (1952 – 68) provided an outlet for Aboriginal art and craft in defiance of the then national goal of assimilation. In 1957 Bill Onus, together with Doug Nicholls, established the Aboriginal Advancement League in Victoria with a goal to ‘promote cultural renewal and reawaken aboriginal pride.’2 Onus’ cultural education on his Aboriginal side was provided by visits to Cummerangunja with his father, and stories told by his uncle Aaron Briggs, who gave him his Koori name – Burrinja, meaning ‘star’. 3 They would sit on the banks of the Murray River within view of the Barmah Forest – Onus’ spiritual home and the subject of many of his paintings. Leaving school at 14, Lin Onus began his largely self-taught artistic career assisting his father in decorating artefacts. After embarking on a panel-beating apprenticeship, he developed skills working on metal and painting with an airbrush. By 1974, he was painting watercolours and photorealist landscapes and in 1975, he held his first exhibition and began a set of paintings based on Musqito, the first Aboriginal guerrilla fighter, which still hang on the walls of the Advancement League in Melbourne.

While overtones of bullying and racism experienced by Onus in 1960s suburban Melbourne influenced much of his art, the cultural revelations that came from his friendship with respected painter Jack Wunuwun (1930 – 1991), enabled Onus to embrace both his indigenous and non-indigenous heritage. Having first met Wunuwun at Maningrida in 1986 while travelling in his role as the Victorian representative for the Aboriginal Arts Board, his life from that moment was deeply influenced by this encounter with the late Yolngu elder and artist, who adopted Onus as his own son. Over the next decade, Onus made sixteen ‘spiritual pilgrimages’ to the outstation of Garmedi, the home of Jack Wunuwun in Central Arnhem land.4 Wunuwun was able to offer Onus a kind of cultural sanctuary by welcoming him into the Yolngu kinship system. This relationship provided Onus with the opportunity to learn Aboriginal traditional knowledge, which enhanced his own Yorta Yorta experience of the world. Through Wunuwun, Onus was given creation stories that he was permitted to paint and an Aboriginal language he could also access. As Onus noted ‘going to Arnhem Land gave him back all the stuff that colonialism had taken away – Language and Ceremony.’5 Onus acquired his knowledge of symbols, patterns and designs from the community elders, and it seemed to him that this experience of tradition was ‘like a missing piece’ of a puzzle which ‘clicked into position’ for him culturally.6 The resulting personal style juxtaposed the rarrk clan patterns of Maningrida, learnt from the older artist, with a photorealist style of landscape, integrating Indigenous spirituality and narrative with Western representation. The two major paintings consigned from the collection of S&P Global, Australia, Malwan Pond – Dawn, 1994 and Goonya Ga Girrarng (Fish and Leaves), 1995 were acquired from Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in Melbourne. Both present photorealist images of central Arnhem Land wetlands, where the surrounding tall trees are reflected in the cool dark water of the billabong and fish glide just below the surface of the water, affording glimpses of the traditional markings that cover their bodies. Leaves float on the surface and or sink to the bottom, becoming detritus on the floor of the billabong. Reflections are es sential to the ar t of Lin Onus, literally and metaphorically. Both his painting and his social activism address issues of identity, racism and the uneven power relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Onus held a mirror to unresolved social inequality within this country and explored what it

meant to be Australian, while his luminous paintings reflect a desire to create an art that could be appreciated on numerous levels by everyone. His series of watery landscapes of the Arafura Swamp or Barmah Forest which, rich in reflections and ambiguities, substituted the traditional European panoramic view for one of cross-cultural imagery, thus subverting the primacy of Western modes of representation. Six gouache works painted on card also offered here follow a similar structure. Picturesque landscapes contain indigenised creatures that present a duality described by Robert Nelson as a ‘form of symbolic realism’ – noting Onus’ ability to use both the traditional idiom of perceptual art in the landscape tradition, together with fish, frogs and reptiles painted according to Aboriginal conventions.7 Here his gouaches of indigenised frogs, lizards, butterflies and bats set in Australian landscapes become part of the process of reclaiming custodianship of the land and its inhabitants, thus fulfilling a sense of belonging. Lin Onus hoped that ‘history would see him as some sort of bridge between cultures’8 and as articulated by Ian Mclean, ‘[he] successfully used postmodern strategies to infiltrate issues of Aboriginality into everyday Australian life.’ 9 Unifying different cultures, languages and visual perspectives, his distinct and celebrated work reflects both his activism and creative ambitions, with his activism finding its greatest voice through his prodigious talent for painting and his ability to stop people in their tracks with his beautiful yet powerful image making. A self-taught artist living between cultures and communities, Onus found a way to bring together Indigenous and non-indigenous understandings of landscape and in a spirit of reconciliation, to articulate the intersection of two sets of values and points of view. 1 O’Ferrall, M., ‘Lin Onus’ in Australian Perspecta 1991, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1991 p. 80 2. Kleinert, S., ‘Aboriginal Enterprises: negotiating an urban Aboriginality’, Aboriginal History, vol. 34, 2010, see https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p170581/html/ch07. xhtml?referer=1272&page=8, accessed online September 2022 3 Neale, M., Urban Dingo: The Art of Lin Onus 1948–1996, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2000, p. 14 4. ibid., p. 15 5. ibid. 6. Leslie, D., ‘Coming home to the land’, Eureka Street, March – April 2006, https://www. eurekastreet.com.au/article/coming-home-to-the-land, accessed September 2022

Portrait of Lin Onus photographer: David Johns © David Johns

7. Neale, op. cit., 2000, p. 16 8 ibid., p. 21 9. ibid., p. 41 CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE

LIN ONUS

(1948 – 1996) MALWAN POND – DAWN, 1994 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 91.5 x 122.0 cm bears inscription on label verso: Lin Onus / “Malwan Pond – Dawn” 1994 ESTIMATE: $180,000 – $250,000

PROVENANCE Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne (label attached to stretcher bar verso) S&P Global, Australia

In 1986, while visiting Maningrida in Arnhem Land in his role as the Victorian representative for the Aboriginal Arts Board, Lin Onus first met Yolngu elder and respected painter Jack Wunuwun. It was a meeting that would deeply influence the younger artist and forever alter his life and artistic direction. Onus visited Wunuwun at Garmedi, in the artist’s homelands in Central Arnhem land, where Wunuwun adopted Onus into the Murrungun-Djinang clan – the first of what would become annual visits to the outstation, journeys that Onus would call his ‘spiritual pilgrimages.’1 Wunuwun was known for pioneering the rendering of three dimensions and perspective in bark painting by drawing on influences from European art and, in his role as mentor to the younger artist, Wunuwun was able to offer Onus a cultural haven by welcoming him into the Yolngu kinship system. This relationship revealed Aboriginal traditional knowledge to Onus, which enhanced his own Yorta Yorta experience of the world. Through Wunuwun, Onus was given an Aboriginal language he could access, together with creation stories that he was permitted to paint, acquiring a knowledge of symbols, patterns and designs from the community elders. These learnt designs became intrinsic to Onus’ art for the rest of his life where the resulting personal

style juxtaposed the rarrk clan patterns with a western photorealist style of landscape, integrating Indigenous spirituality and narrative with Western representation. Onus’ watery landscapes embrace what Wunuwun described as ‘seing below the surface’2 and function on a number of levels. Rich in reflections and ambiguities these enigmatic views clearly dispensed with the conventional idea of a European panoramic view. A landscape apparently hangs upside down from the sky. Reflected in the still water, the rising dawn sun shines golden on the serpentine tree branches and illuminates the detritus below, while a school of rarrk-covered fish swim both under the water and seemingly through the sky and the branches of the trees. As Margot Neale elaborates, these paintings are ‘deceptively picturesque, for things are not always what they seem. Laden with cross-cultural references, visual deceits, totemic relationships and a sense of displacement, they, amongst other things, challenge one’s viewing position: Are you looking up through water towards the sky, down into a waterhole from above, across the surface only or all three positions simultaneously?’3 Onus’ use of a rarrk overlay can be seen as a process of ‘indigenising the other, of claiming ownership of the land and creatures, and of subverting the primacy of Western systems of representation.4 1. Onus cited in Neale, M., Urban Dingo: The Art of Lin Onus 1948 – 1996, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2000, p. 15 2. Neale, M. et al, Lin Onus: A Cultural Mechanic, Savill Galleries, Melbourne (exhibition catalogue), 2003, p. 1 3

ibid.

4. Neale, op. cit., 2000, p. 16 CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE

LIN ONUS (1948 – 1996) BUTTERFLIES, 1993 gouache on illustration board 49.0 x 37.0 cm signed lower left: Lin Onus ESTIMATE: $35,000 – 45,000

PROVENANCE Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne S&P Global, Australia, acquired from the above c.1995

LIN ONUS (1948 – 1996) BULLA GUKUP (TWO FROGS), 1995 gouache on illustration board 49.0 x 37.0 cm signed lower right: Lin Onus

PROVENANCE Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne S&P Global, Australia, acquired from the above c.1995

ESTIMATE: $40,000 – 60,000

LIN ONUS

(1948 – 1996) GO0NYA GA GIRRARNG (FISH AND LEAVES), 1995 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 122.0 x 91.5 cm signed lower left: Lin Onus inscribed with title on stretcher bar verso: ‘GOONYA GA GIRRARNG’ bears inscription on label verso: LIN ONUS / FISH & LEAVES, 1995 bears inscription on label verso: 1 ESTIMATE: $180,000 – $250,000

PROVENANCE Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne (label attached to stretcher bar verso) S&P Global, Australia EXHIBITED Probably: Bama-Mutjing (Barmah – My Father’s Country), Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, 12 September – 8 October 1995, cat. 1

Goonya Ga Girrarng (Fish and Leaves), 1995 belongs to a sublime body of paintings by Lin Onus featuring transparent watery landscapes that are exceptional in their lyrical beauty. Executed in a peerless photorealist style combining technical virtuosity with indigenous concepts of space and knowledge, they comprise carefully planned layers of imagery – elements of which are sometimes, at least initially, obscured by the reflected sky or landscape. These paintings are poetic and potent statements of Indigenous cultural authority, landscapes of the natural world combined with subtle traditional iconography that confirmed Onus’ relationship to both his adopted homeland in Arnhem Land and to his own ancestral sites at the Barmah-forest on the Murray River.

It was as the Victorian representative of the Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council in 1986 that Onus had the opportunity to visit Maningrida in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, and to meet traditional elders such as Jack Wunuwun who became his adoptive father and mentor. He was given stories and designs that expanded his visual repertoire and enabled him to develop a distinctive visual language from a combination of traditional and contemporary Aboriginal imagery and photorealist landscapes. Blending traditional imagery with photorealism, Onus depicted not only the physical attributes of place, but also its spiritual dimensions, allowing him to address political issues while simultaneously generating contemplative experiences connected with creation, continuity and the eternal. Projecting a dream-like ‘otherworldliness’, the composition features tall spindly gum trees reflected on the waterhole’s surface with the artist’s signature motif of ‘indigenised’ fish decorated in rarrk, swimming between exquisitely rendered layers of fallen russet-coloured leaves both floating on the surface and settled on the billabong floor. Onus’ images are often loaded with cultural history and metaphor. In Goonya Ga Girrarng (Fish and Leaves), this undercurrent is sensed in the rarrk painting on the swimming fish, yet these waterscapes also speak of an everlasting landscape. Reflected in the mirrored surface of the waterways is not only the enduring beauty, but also the fragility of the land and our relationship to it. CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE

LIN ONUS (1948 – 1996) BIRRAKALA (BUTTERFLIES) AT NIGHT, 1993 gouache on illustration board 49.0 x 37.0 cm signed lower right: Lin Onus ESTIMATE: $35,000 – 45,000

PROVENANCE Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne S&P Global, Australia, acquired from the above c.1995

LIN ONUS (1948 – 1996) NGAKAYDJIL (LIZARDS), 1993 gouache on illustration board 49.0 x 37.0 cm signed lower left: Lin Onus

PROVENANCE Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne S&P Global, Australia, acquired from the above c.1995

ESTIMATE:$35,000 – 45,000

LIN ONUS (1948 – 1996) WARRINYA (FLYING FOXES), 1993 gouache on illustration board 49.0 x 37.0 cm signed lower left: Lin Onus ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

PROVENANCE Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne S&P Global, Australia, acquired from the above c.1995

LIN ONUS (1948 – 1996) SPEARGRASS, 1993 gouache on illustration board 49.0 x 37.0 cm signed lower right: Lin Onus

PROVENANCE Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne S&P Global, Australia, acquired from the above c.1995

ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

Impor tant Australian Ar t from the Collection of Reg Grundy AC OBE and Joy Chambers- Grundy Lots 17 – 19

MARGARET PRESTON

(1875 – 1963) MOLONG SHOW, 1946 also known as THE FAIRGROUND mixed media on canvas 42.5 x 54.5 cm signed and dated lower left: M. PRESTON. / 1946 ESTIMATE: $80,000 – 100,000

PROVENANCE Mary Alice Evatt, Sydney David Dyring, Melbourne, a gift from the above, until 1980 Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 5 November 1980, lot 722 (as ‘Country Carnival’) Private collection, Sydney Bridget McDonnell Gallery, Melbourne, acquired from the above Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, acquired from the above in October 1986 Private collection, Melbourne Niagara Galleries, Melbourne The Reg Grundy AC OBE and Joy Chambers–Grundy Collection, acquired from the above in 1998 (stamped and label attached verso) EXHIBITED Society of Artists’ Annual Exhibition, Education Department, Sydney, 24 August – 11 September 1946, cat. 185 Australian art: Colonial to Modern, Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne, 15 – 26 April 1985, cat. 77 (illus. in exhibition catalogue, as ‘The fairground’) Australian Paintings 1824 – 1940, Christopher Day Gallery, Sydney, winter 1985, cat. 45 (illus. in exhibition catalogue, as ‘The fairground’) Australian Women Artists; Paintings, Watercolours and Prints, Bridget McDonnell Gallery, Melbourne, 19 September – 8 October 1986 (as ‘The Fairground’) Blue chip choice, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, March – April 1998, cat. 24 (as ‘The fairground’) Margaret Preston: Art and Life, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 29 July – 23 October 2005; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 12 November 2005 – 29 January 2006; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 18 February – 7 May 2006; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 26 May – 13 August 2006 (label attached verso)

LITERATURE Butler, R., The prints of Margaret Preston, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2005, p. 351 Edwards, D., Margaret Preston Catalogue Raisonné of paintings, monotypes and ceramics, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2005, pp. 184 (illus.), 185, 285 Margaret Preston Catalogue Raisonné of paintings, monotypes and ceramics, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2005, CD-ROM compiled by Mimmocchi, D., with Edwards, D., and Peel, R.

Margaret Preston Japanese submarine exhibition, 1942 oil on canvas 43.2 x 50.8 cm Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

It was during the years of the Second World War that Margaret Preston created some of her most striking paintings, including Aboriginal landscape, 1941 (Art Gallery of South Australia), and Flying over the Shoalhaven, 1942 (National Gallery of Australia). Such works clearly demonstrate her decades-long pursuit of a ‘national’ art for Australia which fused elements of European, Asian and Indigenous techniques. This belief was fur ther intensified by her association with the Jindyworobak group ‘for whom nationalism and the indigenous (cultural, spiritual, environmental) were central themes, and which made Aboriginalism a literary movement’ of the 1940s.’1 In 1942, Preston embarked on a small suite of paintings which critiqued the politics of war which, to her, had reduced Australia to to ‘an intellectually barricaded country and in her mind, less Australian – a country in the which the community was bound in conformity.’2 Although painted soon after the war ended, Molong show, 1946, is directly related these earlier works.

The initial painting of the series is Japanese submarine exhibition, 1942 (Art Gallery of New South Wales) which depicts the authorities’ hastily built display of the wreckage from one of the midget submarines that attacked Sydney Harbour in May 1942, killing 22 people. Posed like a clumsy sideshow exhibit, Preston emphasised the signs warning ‘Do not ask questions’, a stark contrast to Preston’s own attitude to art and life. She also adopts a faux naïve style reminiscent of both folk and children’s art, each of which were of interest to modernist artists at the time. Preston’s indignation towards war-based intellectual hinderances underpinned her rendering of the barricaded General Post Office, Sydney, 1942 (Art Gallery of South Australia), and the impenetrable maze constructed on Narrabeen beach, seen in Tank traps, 1943 (Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery). Utilising a reduced Indigenous palette of black, brown and ochre, these paintings are also some of the most concise socio-political commentaries produced in Australia during the War.

Margaret Preston Tank Traps, 1943 oil on canvas 42.0 x 52.5 cm Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria

By early 1946, most Australian troops had returned home following the cessation of hostilities, and a number of events were organised in celebration, particularly in regional centres. In Molong, located on Wiradjuri lands near Orange in New South Wales, the town organised a ‘Victory Show’ to be held on a holiday weekend in early April, before the more sombre commemoration of Anzac Day. Sited along the Euchareena Road, The Molong Express and Western Districts Advertiser described the crowd as an ‘Atlantic tidal wave’ as they descended on the show, with some 3,500 entries recorded over the three days. 3 In Molong show, Preston focuses on the sideshow alley, with its X-ray demonstrations, vaudeville artists, laughing clowns, merry-go-rounds, and a troupe of performing monkeys – one of which perches on the hand of the small girl at lower right. Many of the exhibitors had participated at the Bathurst show the previous weekend and would no doubt continue to travel to similar shows across the state as the year progressed. In a similar

manner to Japanese submarine exhibition, Preston again employs a faux naïve approach, but the tone here is celebratory, in marked contrast to the cynicism of the earlier work. Of the handful of war-related paintings by Preston, most are now in the collections of major institutions with Molong show being a rare example still in private hands. 1. Edwards, D., Peel, R. and Mimmocchi, D., Margaret Preston, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2005, p. 178 2. ibid., p. 176 3. See The Molong Express and Western Districts Advertiser, 12 April 1946, and 19 April 1946, front page and elsewhere ANDREW GAYNOR

IAN FAIRWEATHER

(1891 – 1974) NIGHT LIFE, 1962 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on cardboard on composition board 66.0 x 92.0 cm bears inscription verso: NIGHT LIFE / “NIGHT LIFE” / BY IAN FAIRWEATHER ESTIMATE: $200,000 – 300,000

PROVENANCE Treania Smith (Mrs Clive Bennett), Sydney, 1963 Jack and Beryl Kohane, Melbourne Niagara Galleries, Melbourne Norman Rosenblatt, Melbourne, acquired from the above Niagara Galleries, Melbourne The Reg Grundy AC OBE and Joy Chambers–Grundy Collection, acquired from the above in 1989 (stamped and label attached verso) EXHIBITED Ian Fairweather, Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 15 – 27 August 1962, cat. 7 VII Bienal de São Paulo, Parque Ibirapuera, São Paulo, Brazil, 28 September – 22 December 1963, cat. 10 (label attached verso, as ‘Vida Nocturna’) Fairweather: A Retrospective Exhibition, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 3 June – 4 July 1965; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 21 July – 22 August 1965; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 9 September – 10 October 1965; National Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 26 October – 21 November 1965; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 9 December 1965 – 16 January 1966; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, 10 February – 13 March 1966, cat. 56 (label attached verso)

LITERATURE Hetherington, J., ‘Ian Fairweather: Gentle Nomad who Lives a Lonely Life’, The Age, Melbourne, 9 June 1962, p. 17 (illus.) Melbourne Herald, Melbourne, 16 August 1962, p. 6 ‘Gentle artist’s choice of nomad lonely life’, Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 16 August 1962, p. 2 ‘The Hermit Painter Hits the Jackpot’, Sun–Herald, Sydney, 19 August 1962, p. 43 Thomas, D., ‘Australia’, VII Bienal de São Paulo, Parque Ibirapuera, São Paulo, Brazil, 1963, pl. 4, pp. 53 – 55 ‘Ian Fairweather’s Bridge of Sighs’, Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 9 September 1965, p. 1 (illus.) Thomas, L., ‘Hand of a Master: From Complexity to Seeming Simplicity’, The Bulletin, Sydney, 4 December 1965, vol. 87, no. 4475, p. 41 (illus.) McGregor, C. (et. al), Australian Art and Artists – In the Making, Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1969, p. 150 (illus.) Abbott–Smith, N., Ian Fairweather, A Profile of a Painter, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1974, p. 136 Bail, M., Ian Fairweather, Bay Books, Sydney, 1981, cat. 176, pl. 96, pp. 180, 183 (illus.), 186, 208, 246 Bail, M., Fairweather, Murdoch Books, Sydney, 2009, pp. 179 – 180 (illus.), 194, 224 Roberts, C. and Thompson, J., Ian Fairweather. A Life in Letters, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2019, pp. 296, 298

1961 – 62 (National Gallery of Australia), which was purchased for the then developing national collection. Night Life, 1962, was bought by Treania Smith, who ran Macquarie Galleries with Mary Turner, and was both an enthusiastic and perceptive collector. 2

Ian Fairweather The Sisters, 1962 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on cardboard on composition board 94.5 x 68.6 cm Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane

While we are familiar with people queuing all night to secure Grand Final tickets or front row seats at a rock concert, the idea of camping out overnight in order to be among the first to buy a contemporary painting comes as something of a surprise. When Ian Fairweather’s exhibition opened at the Macquarie Galleries, Sydney in August 1962 however, that is just what happened. Among the group of determined collectors who waited outside the gallery in driving rain was the art critic, Robert Hughes, who bought Monsoon, 1961 – 62 – later acquired by the Art Gallery of Western Australia – describing it as ‘a pure example of ecstatic motion.’1 The Sydney Morning Herald headline hailed Fairweather as ‘Our Greatest Painter’ and more than half of the sixteen paintings in the show were acquired for public collections, including Epiphany, 1961 – 62 (Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art); Mangrove, 1961 – 62 (Art Gallery of South Australia); and Shalimar,

Fairweather had settled on Bribie Island, off the coast of Queensland, in mid-1953, and lived there in a pair of self-built huts for the rest of his life. The relative contentment he found in this environment was reflected in his artistic output and the following two decades witnessed the production of many of his finest paintings. The critical and commercial success of the 1962 exhibition built on the momentum that had been growing for some years, and that decade saw his art acknowledged in significant ways. Works were included in the landmark exhibition Recent Australian Painting at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (1961), and the European tour of Australian Painting Today (1964 – 65), and in 1965, a major travelling retrospective of his work – which included the painting on offer here – was mounted by the Queensland Art Gallery. Fairweather obviously regarded Night Life highly, selecting it as one of three works, alongside Shalimar and Portrait of the Artist, 1961 – 62 (National Gallery of Australia), with which he represented Australia at the VII Bienial de São Paulo in 1963. A 1962 photograph of Fairweather in his studio hut – pipe in one hand, paintbrush in the other – shows the artist adding the finishing touches to Night Life. The painting is tacked up on a rudimentary, handmade easel, and a collection of paint tins, each of them open and with paint brushes at the ready, sits on a nearby table. The photograph tells us something about the speed and spontaneity with which he worked, and shot in black and white, it also emphasises the strong linear quality which defines the image of three large heads staring out at the viewer. The subject of this work links it to other contemporary paintings such as The Sisters, 1961 – 62 (Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art) and the self-portrait of the same year, although in these works Fairweather’s dynamic gestural approach competes against pictorial representation, and a stronger sense of abstraction prevails. 1. Bail, M., Fairweather, Murdoch Books, Millers Point, 2009, p. 176 2. For further information about the response to the exhibition see Bail, ibid., p. 194 KIRSTY GRANT

Fairweather and Night Life, almost finished, 1962, Bribie Island photographer unknown Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

DANILA VASSILIEFF

(1897 – 1958) THE WEDDING, 1954 oil on canvas 91.5 x 61.0 cm signed lower right: Vassilieff ESTIMATE: $30,000 – 40,000

PROVENANCE The collection of the artist A. G. Morant, Melbourne, 1958, a bequest of the artist Museum of Modern Art and Design, Melbourne, 1959 – 1980 A. G. Morant, Melbourne, returned, 1980 Sue Gough, Queensland, acquired in 1984 Private collection Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 19 April 1994, lot 183 The Reg Grundy AC OBE and Joy Chambers–Grundy Collection (stamped and label attached verso) EXHIBITED Memorial exhibition of the Paintings and sculpture of Danila Vassilieff, Museum of Modern Art and Design, Melbourne, 9 June 1959 Vassilieff: A Retrospective exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures and Watercolours, Heide Park and Art Gallery, Melbourne, 11 August – 22 September 1985; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, cat. 40 LITERATURE St John Moore, F., Vassilieff and His Art, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1982, cat. p300, pp. 110 – 11, 113 (illus., dated ‘1952’), 158 St John Moore, F., Vassilieff: a retrospective exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures and Watercolours, Heide Park and Art Gallery, Melbourne, 1985, p. 27 Bojić, Z., Imaginary homelands: the art of Danila Vassilieff, Andrejević Endowment, Serbia, 2007, pl. 23, pp. 44, 131 St John Moore, F., Vassilieff and his art, Macmillan Art Publishing, Melbourne, 2012, cat. 379, pp. 130, 132, 133 (illus.), 210

The son of a Cossack father and Ukrainian mother, Danila Vassilieff cut an exotic figure in 1930s Melbourne, where he arrived in mid1937, having eloped from Sydney with his third wife. His liberated approach to art-making eschewed formal training and the necessity for fine materials, and his belief that the creative act was something immediate and physical as opposed to being driven by aesthetics and intellect, garnered him enthusiastic friends and followers, especially among the younger artists of the day.1 While some found his direct, expressive style and insistence on painting exactly what he saw as an

assault on good artistic taste, others championed his approach. Writing in the Melbourne Herald, Basil Burdett declared, ‘[Vassilieff’s art] is as different from average Australian painting as chalk is from cheese, but it is the authentic vision of a man of sensibility and power whose vivid sense of life must out, like murder.’2 Vassilieff was a notorious womaniser, ruggedly handsome, charismatic and confident in his charm and appeal. When, in 1947, Elizabeth Hamill offered to buy ‘Stonygrad’, the house he had built in Warrandyte using local, hand-quarried stone, Vassilieff was instantly attracted and famously chased her around the table, saying, ‘You buy the house, you buy me. You have me and the house for the same price.’3 Remarkably, Hamill took up the impromptu offer and the pair were married the following month. The artist’s passion for his new wife is reflected in an extended series of expressive, boldly coloured oil paintings he produced that year which focus on her face, recording her fine features and fair hair.4 It was also at this time that Vassilieff began to carve stone sculptures, taking naturally to the new technique, and making the most of the textural and colour variations offered by his material. Striking in scale, The Wedding, 1954 is part of a series of thematicallylinked paintings which, as Felicity St John Moore describes, reflects Vassilieff’s state of being in the face of the impending breakdown of his relationship with Elizabeth. 5 Unlike earlier paintings where he draws with the paintbrush, leaving much of the white ground exposed, here the panel is completely covered with paint. Strong colour is laid down in decisive and heavily textured brushstrokes, conveying both the physicality and psychologically-driven energy of his approach. The emotion of the moment is visible in the face of the groom and his figure dominates the scene, looming above the diminutive bride, who wears a long yellow gown and white veil, her gloved hand holding a posy of red and white flowers. Vassilieff moved between the depiction of more realistic imagery and a distinctive, immediately recognisable style of expressionism during these years, and it is in works such as The Wedding that the absolute originality of his vision and the power of its expression are most fully communicated. 1. See St. John Moore, F., Vassilieff and His Art, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1982, p. 42 2. Burdett, Basil, Herald, Melbourne, 16 September 1937, cited in St John Moore, F., Vassilieff and His Art, Macmillan, Melbourne, 2012, p. 46 3. Vassilieff cited in St John Moore, 2012, ibid., p. 91 4. Eight of these portraits are in the Rosenblatt Family Collection, Melbourne: see Miekus, Tiarney, ‘Artist Danila Vassilieff was selling his house. There was just one catch’, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 August 2020, accessed online, 17 October 2022 5. St John Moore, 2012, op. cit., p. 130 KIRSTY GRANT

Impor tant Australian and International Fine Ar t Property of various vendors Lots 20 – 47

TOM ROBERTS

(1856 – 1931) PORTRAIT OF EILEEN, c.1892 VERSO: COSTAL LANDSCAPE oil on wood panel (double–sided) 19.5 x 25.5 cm signed and inscribed lower left: T.L.M/ Tom Roberts ESTIMATE: $120,000 – 160,000

PROVENANCE Private collection, Sydney Rushton Fine Arts, Sydney, 7 July 1987, lot 83 (as ‘Portrait of Elaine’) Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne Private collection, Brisbane Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne, 9 May 2007, lot 32 Private collection, Sydney

‘Big Picture’, notable for their portrayal of character and life. During the 1890s he completed a series of male portraits on cedar or oak panels – of composers, musicians, actors, all carried out with a Whistlerian elegance and finesse. His portraits of women are invariably full of charm and beauty, whether a lady of fashion as in The Paris Hat, 1892 (New England Regional Art Museum, Howard Hinton Collection), or a disarming child such as Lily Stirling, c.1890 (National Gallery of Victoria).

EXHIBITED Selected Australian Impressionist Paintings, Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne, 18 April – 12 May 1990, cat. 3 (illus., as ‘Elaine’, c.1896)

We are grateful to Brenda Martin Thomas, wife of the late David Thomas AM, for kindly allowing us to reproduce David’s research and writing in this catalogue entry.

The present portrait is identified as Mrs Eileen Tooker on the basis of its similarity to Roberts’ celebrated work, Eileen, 1892, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. (Significantly, the Gallery purchased Eileen the year it was painted, making it, together with Aboriginal HeadCharlie Turner, c.1892, the first works by Roberts to enter a public collection.) Both profile portraits of this striking Irish woman depict the same strong facial features, prominent nose and chin, similar hairstyles and large hats. Moreover, the beautifully fresh, smaller version on offer has all the immediacy of a study from life – pink flesh tones and red and white highlights against a darkly warm background. Roberts often enjoyed the profile, adopting it for a number of other portraits of the time, including the already mentioned The Paris Hat, At the Post Office, 1892 and Portrait of a Lady, 1892, whose features are not entirely unfamiliar. His male portraits for 1892 included Sir Henry Parkes (Art Gallery of South Australia) and Sir Charles Windeyer.

Tom Roberts was a gifted portrait painter who created grand images of bushrangers and shearers that have entered the national pantheon. For The Opening of the First Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia by H.R.H. The Duke of Cornwall and York (Later King George V) 9 May 1901, 1903 (Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra) he was required to sketch and paint nearly three hundred portraits, working directly from the model. Numerous other portraits date from before and after this

The reverse of the panel has an equally vivid, broadly handled landscape, possibly of New South Wales – its smallness of scale in no way diminishing its bravura performance. Notably, from the summer through to autumn of 1891, Roberts was at Corowa painting his iconic A Break Away, 1891 (Art Gallery of South Australia) and the landscape here betrays a similarly sun-drenched atmosphere, with the deep blue waters suggesting a river estuary or, perhaps a coastal location.

LITERATURE Cotter, J., Tom Roberts and the Art of Portraiture, Thames & Hudson, Melbourne, 2015, pp. 20, 21 (illus. Coastal Landscape) 238, 243 (illus. Portrait of Eileen)

WALTER WITHERS

(1854 – 1914) ELTHAM, c.1898 oil on wood panel 22.0 x 20.5 cm bears framer’s label verso: Robt R. Stanesby, Yarra Street, Geelong ESTIMATE: $30,000 – 40,000

PROVENANCE Estate of Mrs I. Higgins, Geelong (pupil of Walter Withers) Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne Deutscher~Menzies, Melbourne, 26 November 2003, lot 128 Savill Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso) Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne, 9 May 2007, lot 54 Private collection, Sydney

In the face of parental opposition to his desired career as an artist, Walter Withers came to Australia from England in 1883, working initially as a jackaroo before settling in Melbourne where he enrolled at the National Gallery School. Continuing art studies begun earlier at London’s Royal Academy and South Kensington Schools, there he met fellow students Louis Abrahams and Frederick McCubbin, as well as the older Tom Roberts – all of whom became lifelong friends – earning him the nickname ‘The Orderly Colonel’ as a result of his efficient manner and efforts to organise his colleagues.1 After a brief sojourn abroad studying at the Académie Julian in Paris alongside Australian expatriates E. Phillips Fox, Tudor St George Tucker and John Longstaff, Withers subsequently returned to Australia in 1889, soon moving to Heidelberg outside Melbourne, where he rented Charterisville, ‘a fine old stone mansion with a large barn and stables… a wild romantic garden… a broken fountain, and an odd pedestal here and there [which] suggested the glory of other days.’ 2 When the lease was taken over in 1894 by Phillips Fox and Tucker, who ran a school there offering instruction in plein air painting, the location became a popular gathering place for local artists. Renowned as an artist ‘who went out [in] to nature and made sincere and successful attempts to represent her varying moods’3, Withers’ art was widely acclaimed during this final decade of the nineteenth century when Eltham, c.1898 was most likely painted. In 1894, the National Gallery of Victoria had purchased A Bright Winter’s Morning, 1894 for its permanent collection and Tranquil Winter, 1895 was acquired the following year.4 The Storm, 1896 (Art Gallery of New South Wales) was awarded the inaugural Wynne Prize for landscape painting in 1897 – for which he received a generous payment of £40 – and in 1900

Withers won the prestigious prize again. A measure of international acknowledgement came too, with the inclusion of Tranquil Winter in the colonial art exhibition in London in 1898. Many of Withers’ subjects were areas close to his home – especially around Heidelberg and later, Eltham – locations he could walk or cycle to, which he reportedly often did with a prepared canvas and lightweight, portable easel slung over his shoulder.5 Heidelberg was like a small, rural village when Withers lived there during the 1890s, providing many picturesque views which he recorded in oil paint and watercolour. This changed as the city and suburbs grew and in 1903, with funds earned from a major commission to paint a series of narrative panels for the majestic home of pastoralist W. T. Manifold at Camperdown in western Victoria, Withers and his family moved to Eltham. Located about twenty kilometres north-east of Melbourne, Eltham offered a country environment and experience, with access to the city via a recently established railway service. As Fanny Withers wrote, ‘Purchasing a cottage there, with an orchard attached, he built for himself a charming Studio, the windows of which open on to a bit of Virgin Bush, where stand stately white gums of great beauty’.6 Having worked in and around Eltham previously, it was an area Withers knew well, and the decision to live there permanently proved to be productive for his art, offering limitless sources of inspiration, as the present work attests. ‘Every form of subject was there before him, with the added charm of rural figures at work in the paddocks, as tending their animals near the homesteads, as following the cows towards the milking sheds; in riding their horses to the creek for water. All these incidents were noted by the painter.’7 1. For Withers’ full biography, see Clark, J., and Whitelaw, B., Golden Summers: Heidelberg and Beyond, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1985, pp. 28 – 29 and Andrew Mackenzie, ‘Withers, Walter Herbert (1854-1914)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University at https://adb.anu.edu/biography/withers-walterherbert-9156/text16183 2. Whitelaw, B., ‘Melbourne’s Answer in the 90s – ‘Charterisville’’ in Clark & Whitelaw, op. cit., p. 172 3. 'Art of Walter Withers’, The Argus, Melbourne, 29 July 1919, p. 6 4. A Bright Winter’s Morning, 1894 was purchased in 1894 and then exchanged with the artist for Tranquil Winter, 1895 the following year. A Bright Winter’s Morning was reacquired for the NGV collection in 1956 when it was bequeathed by Mrs Nina Sheppard. 5. Mackenzie, A., Walter Withers: The Forgotten Manuscripts, Mannagum Press, Lilydale, 1987, pp. 24, 30 6. ibid, p. 27 7. ibid. p. 130 KIRSTY GRANT

FLORENCE FULLER

(1867 – 1946) PORTRAIT OF A CHILD, c.1889 oil on canvas 61.0 x 50.0 cm bears inscription on frame verso: Portrait of a Child Florence A. Fuller ESTIMATE: $30,000 – 40,000

PROVENANCE Robert Law, Melbourne, acquired in the 1890s Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED Winter Exhibition, Victorian Artists’ Society, Grosvenor Galleries, Melbourne, 4 May 1889, cat. 88 LITERATURE ‘Winter Exhibition of the Victorian Artists' Society’, The Argus, Melbourne, 15 May 1889, p. 9

Florence Fuller was acclaimed as an art prodigy in mid to late 1880s Melbourne. She came to attention initially for completing unfinished portrait commissions after the premature death of her uncle, major late colonial artist, Robert Dowling, and opened a professional art studio in Melbourne before she was twenty. Between 1886 and 1892, her figure work and genre subjects were greatly admired, although reviewers equally credited her for plein air landscapes, still lifes, flowers and formal portraits. Such early recognition was formalised when she was awarded a prize for the best portrait in oils by an artist under 25 at the Victorian Artists Society exhibition in 1888.1 Notably Arthur Streeton likewise received a prize for his oil paintings and landscapes in the same competition. Fuller was uniquely mobile and cosmopolitan for a late Victorian to Edwardian Australian woman artist. By 1900, she had worked in Melbourne, South Africa, Paris, London before settling in Perth in 1904 – only to leave for India in 1908, where she lived and painted at Adyar, the headquarters of the Theosophical Society. From 1905 onward this organisation became a dominant pivot in her professional and personal life. After returning to London in time to march with her colleague Annie Besant in suffragette protests in 1911, she finally settled in Australia by 1919.

Exhibited alongside such celebrated works as Frederick McCubbin’s Down in his Luck, 1889 (Art Gallery of Western Australia); Arthur Streeton’s Golden Summer, Eaglemont, 1889 and Conder’s Hot Wind, 1889 (both in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia), the present Portrait of a Child, c.1889 was one of five works exhibited by Fuller in the 1889 Victorian Artists Society exhibition at the Grosvenor Galleries. A hitherto unseen painting from her Melbourne period, Portrait of a Child is a continuation of Fuller’s engagement with the lives of poor and marginal children in settler Australia that has expanded current understanding of late 19th century Australian art as seen in Weary, 1888 (Art Gallery of New South Wales) and Paper Boy, 1888 (National Gallery of Victoria). Possibly this work is Desolate, a now unknown work, that was mentioned in the press in 1891 as both being a companion to Weary and, also having found a buyer in Melbourne. Both works were typical of the subjects of care and concern that ‘touch... an appreciative chord in the hearts and tastes of the fine art patrons of Australia.’2 In 18 8 8 Fuller painted a much -admired genre scene Gently reproachful, a working-class girl mending her brother’s clothes, set in the interior of a poor room. 3 There is a clear synergy to Portrait of a Child which is likewise set in an empty and bare room, and features the young girl engaged in domestic labour – in this case churning butter. Fuller’s strong social conscience comes to the fore as the viewer’s sympathy is directed to young girl hard at work, with nothing to distract or comfort her, seated in a somewhat claustrophobic, dreary and impoverished kitchen that lacks any of the happy bric-a-brac, silverware, candlesticks, crockery of McCubbin’s Kitchen Interior, Old King Street Bakery, 1884 (Art Gallery of South Australia). Alternatively, could the Portrait of a Child have been intended as a genre scene referring to popular narratives of Cinderella or Victor Hugo’s Cosette, sharing the profound existential misery of each character? Fuller’s picture again makes viewers rethink and extend what is known and expected from Australian artists in the 1880s and 90s – and equally, changes the parameters about what is known and expected from Australian women in the plein air circle. 1. The Leader, Melbourne, 19 May 1888, p. 29 2. Illustrated Sydney News, Sydney, 9 May 1891, p. 11 3. ‘Victorian Artists Society: The Spring Exhibition’, The Age, Melbourne, 16 November 1888, p. 8 DR JULIETTE PEERS

ISO RAE

(1860 – 1940) UNE TRICOTEUSE (A KNITTER), c.1909 oil on canvas 59.0 x 43.0 cm signed lower right: ISO RAE ESTIMATE: $40,000 – 60,000

PROVENANCE Jules de Beaumont, France, acquired directly from the artist, c.1909 Thence by descent Private collection, France Thence by descent Private collection, France

social realism as ‘the painter of the people.’3 Alder’s influence on both Rae and Rix Nicholas can be keenly felt in their humanistic portraits recording the ordinary lives of the women of Étaples while the men were out at sea. Models were apparently plentiful and would pose well for a small payment, either in the studio or in the picturesque gardens that lie hidden behind the street doors.4

EXHIBITED 55 e Exposition de la Société des Amis des Arts de Douai, Douai, France, 1909, cat. 222

The young knitter stands alone in a garden, absent mindedly attending to her domestic chores, perhaps while she watches over children at play. She wears a simple outfit, her hair uncovered without the traditional calipette (Breton bonnet). Using lilac tones highlighted with impasto white and pale pink pigment, the figure of the woman blends harmoniously with the immersive green hues of her background. Rae pays particular focus to light and texture, from the soft modulated greens of the moist garden to the structural deep pleats of the woman’s blouse and coarse knitting dangling from her hands. Her emphasis on the tactile qualities of both the paint and the landscape is shared with other exponents of Australian Impressionism. 5 The large scale of the figure and absence of a horizon line is characteristic of Rae’s work of this period, as can be seen also in the format of Young Girl, Étaples, c.1892, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. The flush of youth and private smile of this young woman hint to an inner life beyond her immediate domestic travail and creates a peaceful and intimate atmosphere with the viewer.

Following formal training at the National Gallery School in Melbourne alongside Frederick McCubbin, Tom Roberts and Jane Sutherland, Isobel Rae and her sister Alison travelled to Paris in 1887 with their mother, intending to further their promising artistic studies.1 Although they would encounter many visiting compatriots in the vibrant expatriate artistic colony of Étaples, a fishing port on the north-western Opal Coast of France where they settled in 1893, they were never to return to Australia. Iso Rae remained unmarried and was closely attached to her family. Her impressionist paintings depicted the humble fisherfolk of the village with compassion and respect for the local culture and customs. In 1906, fellow expatriate artist Grace Joel praised Rae’s ability to ‘paint outdoor figure subjects with rare charm and poetry.’2 Une Tricoteuse (A Knitter), c.1909 is one such work – a tender portrait of a young local peasant woman knitting in the garden, lost in reverie, and bathed in brilliant sunlight. In the same manner as leading impressionists back home, Iso Rae mostly worked in the open air, direct from the motif. Utilising life-drawing skills acquired at the progressive Académie Colarossi in Paris, Rae achieved some level of success in the style of genre painting, regularly sending paintings to the Old Salon, the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, the Royal Society of British Painters and other local salons. In the summer of 1910 when her former National Gallery classmate Hilda Rix Nicholas arrived in Étaples, Iso Rae obtained a studio space for her in the garden of Monsieur and Madame Monthuys-Pannier, adjacent to one occupied by Jules Adler, a successful French genre painter known for his style of

After its exhibition in a local salon in Douai in 1909, Une Tricoteuse was purchased by a well-regarded local magistrate who collected paintings from this region including others by Frits Thaulow, William Gore, and Henri Le Sidaner. Having been passed down within his family in France, this is the first time that the painting has been seen in Australia. 1. Finucane, P. and Stuart, C., Odd Roads To Be Walking, Red Barn Publishing, Ireland, 2019, p. 27 2. Joel, G., cited in Field, I., Letters from Alison and Iso Rae, Ivory Print, Victoria, 2011, p. 92 3. Travers, R., Hilda. The Life of Hilda Rix Nicholas, Thames and Hudson, Melbourne, 2021, p. 45 4. As related by artist Jane Quigley in ‘Picardy: A Quiet Simple Land of Dreamy Beauty Where Artists Fine Much to Paint’, The Craftsman, London, vol. XII, June 1907 5. Gray, A. and Hesson, A. (eds.), She-Oak and Sunlight: Australian Impressionism, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2021, p. 188 LUCIE REEVES-SMITH

JOHN PETER RUSSELL (1858 – 1930) A BLOSSOM TREE, BELLE–ÎLE, 1887 oil on canvas 61.5 x 46.5 cm signed, dated and inscribed lower left: …’To my friend Monsieur Dufour Those friends thou hast, grapple them to thy heart with hooks of steel / Belle Ile 1887/J. P. Russell’ ESTIMATE: $150,000 – 200,000

PROVENANCE Monsieur Dufour, France, acquired from the artist in 1887 Private collection Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 17 April 1989, lot 301 Private collection Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 19 April 1993, lot 346 Jack Manton, Queensland Thence by descent Jennifer Manton, Sydney Estate of the above, Sydney

John Peter Russell Almond tree in blossom (Amandier en fleur), c.1887 oil on gold ground on canvas on plywood 46.2 × 55.1 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

John Russell holds a unique place in Australian art history for his close association with avant-garde circles in 1880s Paris and his firsthand acquaintance with some of the masters of European Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. As a student at Fernand Cormon’s atelier in Paris in the mid-1880s, Russell worked alongside Émile Bernard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and later, Vincent van Gogh, with whom he established an enduring friendship.1 On a summer break from Paris in 1886, Russell spent several months on Belle-Île, one of a group of small islands off the coast of Brittany. It was here that he met and befriended Claude Monet who he saw working en plein air, famously introducing himself by asking if he was indeed ‘the Prince of the Impressionists.’ Uncharacteristically, Monet allowed Russell to watch him work and on occasion, to paint alongside him, experiences that provided the young Australian artist with an extraordinary insight into the techniques and working method of one of the founders of the Impressionist movement. The influence on Russell was significant and the paintings he made in Italy and Sicily only a few months later show him working in a new style, using a high-keyed palette (from which black had been banished entirely) and his compositions made up of strokes of pure colour. 2 In addition to showing him how to use colour as a means of expressing a personal response to the subject, Monet’s example also highlighted for Russell the importance of working directly from nature. 3

Inherited wealth afforded Russell freedoms that others did not have and inspired by the possibilities of Belle-Île for his art and his life, he bought land overlooking the inlet of Goulphar. Writing to Tom Roberts in October 1887, he said, ‘‘Well my dear TR I’m about finished with studios & will jump out of Paris as soon as possible. The tone of things don’t suit me… I am about to build a house in France. Settle down for some five years. Get some work done. It will be in some out of the way corner as much as a desert as possible.’4 Russell lived on the island until 1909 and the subjects it offered – especially the sea and rugged coastline – encouraged what Russell scholar, Ann Galbally, described as an ‘intensity of vision’ in which experimental brushstrokes and his committed pursuit of pure colour captured the distinctive changing light and atmospheric conditions of the environment.5 Russell had a deep interest in Japanese art and this is reflected in A Blossom Tree, Belle Île, 1887 and a number of other related paintings of spring blossoms made around this time, including The Garden, Longpré-les-Corps-Saints, 1886 (private collection) and Almond Tree in Blossom, 1887 (National Gallery of Victoria). Russell had seen Japanese ceramics and bronzes in the 1879 – 80 Sydney International Exhibition, but a broader interest was stimulated by van Gogh who collected Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints (as did his brother,

Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890) Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, February 1890 oil on canvas 73.3 x 92.4 cm Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Theo, and Monet) – developing a collection which numbered in the hundreds – and encouraged him to do the same.6 Russell absorbed the lessons of Japanese ukiyo-e design, introducing flattened pictorial space, distortions of traditional perspective and dramatic cropping of subjects to his compositions. Almond Tree in Blossom, 1887 (National Gallery of Victoria) employs bold cropping and a close-up view of the blossom-covered branches, which are flattened in space against a solid but shimmering background of powdered bronze paint, itself a reference to the gilded backgrounds of Japanese screens.7 In this painting, the dramatic reflection of the tree trunk connects the reedy foreground, the central band of water, and the distant grassy bank – with a small cottage pictured just right of the tree – within a tightly compressed space. Prominently positioned at the front of the picture plane and filling the entire top section of the canvas, the blossoming tree and its beauty is Russell’s focus. The delicacy and transience of this seasonal flowering provides a poignant contrast to the dedication Russell inscribed to his friend Monsieur Dufour, which reads, ‘Those friends thou hast, grapple them to thy heart with hooks of steel.’

example of the chosen artist’s work, capture developmental changes (if any) and show any shift of emphasis in style, period or location’.8 Many paintings from the Manton Collection were subsequently acquired for the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. 1. Although Russell did not see van Gogh again after he departed for Arles in the south of France in early 1888, their friendship continued via extensive correspondence. See Galbally, A., A Remarkable Friendship: Vincent van Gogh and John Peter Russell, The Miegunyah Press, Carlton, 2008. 2. Taylor, E., ‘John Russell and friends: Roberts, Monet, van Gogh, Matisse, Rodin’, Australian Impressionists in France, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2013, p. 60 3. Prunster, U., ‘Painting Belle-Île’, Prunster, U., et al., Belle-Île: Monet, Russell and Matisse, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2001, p. 31 4. Russell to Tom Roberts, 5 October 1887, cited in Tunnicliffe, W., (ed.), John Russell: Australia’s French Impressionist, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2018, p. 193 5. Galbally, op cit., p. 15 6. Tunnicliffe, op. cit., p. 39 7. Taylor, op. cit., p. 57 8. Manton, J., ‘Genesis’ in Australian Painters of the Heidelberg School: The Jack Manton Collection, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1979, p. 148 KIRSTY GRANT

This painting has a notable provenance, having been one of several works by Russell in the Jack Manton Collection of Australian Impressionist Art. Begun in 1961, the collection aimed to ‘include the best possible

RUPERT BUNNY

(1864 – 1947) JOUEURS DE CROQUET (LUXEMBOURG), c.1909 oil on canvas 81.5 x 54.0 cm signed lower left: Rupert CW Bunny ESTIMATE: $50,000 – 70,000

PROVENANCE Private collection, France Nevill Keating Pictures, London, 2000 Christie’s, London, 16 December 2008, lot 5 Private collection, United Kingdom EXHIBITED Société Internationale de Peinture et Sculpture, Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, 1910, cat. 22 LITERATURE Gérard-Austin, A., The Greatest Voyage: Australian Painters in the Paris Salons, 1885 – 1939, doctoral thesis, Université Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne, March 2014, vol. 2, pp. 18, 83, 128 (illus.) Thomas, D., The Life and Art of Rupert Bunny, A Catalogue Raisonné in Two Volumes, Thames & Hudson, Melbourne, 2017, vol. 2: cat. O290, p. 43 (as ‘Jeux de Croquet, Jardins du Luxembourg’)

One of the most internationally successful Australian artists of his generation, Rupert Bunny was born in Melbourne and first trained at the National Gallery School, before settling permanently in Paris during the early 1890s where the belle époque was at its height. By 1904, he had become the first Australian artist to receive an honourable mention in the Société des Artistes Français; was elected a Sociétaire of various French exhibiting institutions; and enjoyed the prestige of being the only Antipodean artist until then to have his work acquired by the French State, with Après le bain, c.1904 purchased from the New Salon for the Musée de Luxembourg (now the Musée d’Orsay). While Bunny continued to evoke an opulent, often indolent elegance in his works produced around the fin-de-siècle, by the pre-war years his paintings were evolving towards a more modern focus upon Parisian outdoor leisure, ‘la chasse au bonheur’. Accordingly, around 1909 Bunny embarked upon a series of works in which his abiding preoccupation with colour and light was mediated by a new emphasis on anecdote in a signature Parisian location – the Luxembourg Gardens – where he

frequently sketched with fellow expatriates Phillips Fox and his wife Ethel Carrick, and Kathleen O’Connor. Yet while portraying the same gentle life of the affluent bourgeoisie, Bunny’s tonally denser oils such as the exquisite Jouers de Croquet, Luxembourg, c.1909 diverge from the lighter, more freely executed interpretations of O’Connor and Carrick Fox in particular – both of whom believed that the modern path lay in embracing Impressionism and its drive towards the fragmentation of form.1 By contrast, Bunny’s paintings from this period such as the closely related In the Luxembourg Gardens, c.1909 (Art Gallery of New South Wales); Luxembourg Gardens, c.1908 – 10 (Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art, Perth); and Bridge (Luxembourg), c.1909 (private collection, Melbourne) are distanced from immediate experience, declaring themselves products of the studio and intellect. Notwithstanding such commitment to studio practice however, his small pochades which formed the basis for many of the final compositions – alongside numerous pencil impressions produced by Bunny en plein air (and contained in his Villa Lilli sketchbook in the National Gallery of Victoria) – reveal that in the Luxembourg Gardens at least, the practices of the tonal academic and the Impressionist were merging. 2 Capturing brilliantly the spirit and élan of Parisian society in these prewar years, Jouers de Croquet, Luxembourg, c.1909 attests to the way in which Bunny successfully created an art appropriate to his time and the conditions of modernity – assimilating avant-garde modes into establishment practice. Transforming the prosaic into the poetic, thus Bunny offered contemporary audiences a vision of the everyday exuding joie de vivre and ‘…a peaceful remoteness from the ‘sturm and drang’ of modern life’. As leading French art critic of the day Gustave Geffroy observed of the artist’s celebrated solo exhibition at Galerie George Petit, Paris later that decade, Bunny’s paintings express ‘the luminous joy of daylight… and the pleasure of living in the shadow of trees looking out on a festival of sunshine… [He] is a realist and a visionary, an observer of truth and a poet of the world of dreams.’4 1. Edwards, D., ‘From fin de siècle to belle époque’ in Edwards, D et al., Rupert Bunny: Artist in Paris, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2009, p. 81 2. ibid. 3. Sydney Morning Herald, 22 September 1911, p. 7 4. Geffroy, G., ‘Rupert Bunny: Introduction’, Exposition Rupert C.W. Bunny, Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, 1917, n. p. VERONICA ANGELATOS

ELIOTH GRUNER

(1882 – 1939) THE BUSTLE OF LIFE, 1914 also known as MARTIN PLACE, SYDNEY oil on wood panel 14.0 x 23.0 cm signed and dated lower right: E. GRUNER / 14 bears inscription verso [partially obscured]: … Hobart / 1914.

ESTIMATE: $45,000 – 65,000

PROVENANCE Mildred Lovett (Mrs Stanley Paterson), Hobart, acquired directly from the artist, 1914 Gordon Esling, Sydney James R. Jackson, Sydney, 1951 Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 7 May 2001, lot 121 (as ‘Paris’) Savill Galleries, Sydney Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above EXHIBITED Society of Artists’ Annual Exhibition, Society’s Rooms, Queen Victoria Markets, Sydney, November 1914, cat. 165 (as ‘The Bustle of Life’, lent by Mildred Lovett) Elioth Gruner Memorial Loan Exhibition, National Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 17 April – 31 May 1940, cat. 213 (as ‘Martin Place’, label attached verso, lent by Mrs S. Paterson) We are grateful to Steven Miller, Head of the Edmund and Joanna Capon Research Library and Archive, Art Gallery of New South Wales, for his assistance with this catalogue entry.

Elioth Gruner’s The Bustle of Life, 1914, is a painting filled with light and activity, intensified by its modest scale. Gruner stood next to the General Post Office (GPO) building and painted the view looking up the incline, creating what is known as an enfilade view in the process. Originally called Moore Street, though also known colloquially as ‘Post Office Street’ until the early 1920s, Martin Place no doubt follows an original track laid down by the Gadigal people as they took a short cut overland through what are now the Botanic Gardens, trekking between the two fishing grounds of the contemporary Circular Quay and Woolloomooloo Bay. The location was only 200 metres from the small gallery that Gruner managed in Bligh Street, and judging by the sunlight and midday shadows, probably began life as a paint sketch on one of his lunchbreaks, later finished in his studio. Encouraged by his mother, Gruner displayed an early talent for art and, by the age of 12, was attending drawing lessons with Julian Ashton, enrolling formally at his art school two years later. In 1912, he worked at the Fine Arts Society’s gallery and part-time as school assistant

to Ashton, but with the advent of World War One, the gallery closed and Gruner relied on teaching and painting sales to survive. He lived precariously, as recounted by John Brackenreg many years later, when Gruner told him that in 1913 ‘I had tuppence left in my pocket, so I walked in to Bondi Junction to catch a tram into city, wondering whether I had any luck to sell a picture (at The Society of Artists’ annual exhibition). (W)hen I got there they had sold the lot.’1 This was a 120-guinea windfall for the struggling artist. It is plausible that his colleague at the Julian Ashton Art School, the artist Mildred Lovett, acquired The Bustle of Life directly, as it was lent by her in November 1914 to the Society of Artists’ Annual Exhibition, Sydney. Lovett (Mrs Stanley Paterson) owned the work until at least 1940, following Gruner’s Memorial Loan Exhibition at the National Gallery of New South Wales. Interestingly, the label verso also indicates ownership by two more artists who were both colleagues and friends of Gruner: Gordon Esling (1897 – 1973) and by 1951, James R. Jackson (1882 – 1975). Starting with the arched colonnade of the GPO (opened 1874) at lower right, Gruner looks east up Moore Street from the George Street corner. Midway is the Pitt Street crossing where thoroughfare became a narrower laneway leading to Castlereagh Street and beyond. The tall building beyond the GPO housed the Reuters news agency, and in the distance may be seen the spire of St Stephen’s church. On the left stand a variety of office buildings containing shipping agents, government departments, accountants, dentists and other professional workers. Fashionable people, street barrows, and horses with carts populate the rest of Gruner’s scene. This vista was radically changed by the early 1930s when the Place was widened and lengthened with a number of buildings, including St Stephen’s, demolished in the process. Controversially, the church was then rebuilt in Macquarie Street resulting in the lamented demolition of Burdekin House, long considered the most beautiful colonial house in Sydney. As such, Gruner’s The Bustle of Life, Sydney presents a lost moment in time – one of the last days of summer pleasure before the catastrophe of the war erupted in August. Within weeks, this scene had transformed into a major centre for volunteer soldier registration and was later filled with passionate crowds debating the divisive issue of conscription. In 1918, crowds again descended on Martin Place to celebrate the long-awaited Armistice. 1. John Brackenreg, 1982, cited in Pearce, B., Elioth Gruner 1882 – 1913, Art Gallery New South Wales, Sydney, 1983, p. 14 ANDREW GAYNOR

ELIOTH GRUNER

(1882 – 1939) ST. TROPEZ, 1924 oil on board 35.0 x 44.5 cm signed, dated and inscribed lower right: E. GRUNER / FRANCE / 1924 inscribed with title verso: St. Tropez ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000

PROVENANCE J. Cannell, New South Wales, c.1928 Thence by descent Brian Cannell, New South Wales, by 1940 W. D. Gordon, Sydney Spink Auctions, Sydney, 8 October 1980, lot 144 Private collection, Sydney EXHIBITED Salon National des Beaux Arts, Grand Palais, Paris, 1928 Loan Exhibition of the works of Elioth Gruner, National Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 21 December 1932 – 21 February 1933, cat. 99 Elioth Gruner Memorial Loan Exhibition, National Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 17 April – 31 May 1940, cat. 26 (lent by Mr. Brian Cannell) Elioth Gruner Memorial Loan Exhibition, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 5 July – 4 August 1940, cat. 38 Elioth Gruner 1882 – 1939, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 13 July – 4 September 1983, cat. 45 (label attached verso) LITERATURE Art in Australia, The Recent Work of Elioth Gruner. Deluxe Edition, Third Series, Ure Smith Publishing, Sydney, no. 27, March 1929, pl. 23 (illus.) Pearce, B., Elioth Gruner 1882 – 1939, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1983, cat. 45, p. 47 RELATED WORK Aloes, St Tropez, c.1924, oil on canvas on board, 37.0 x 35.5 cm, in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

In 1923, Elioth Gruner sailed for London with financial assistance from his friend and patron, the collector Howard Hinton. This was the fulfilment of Gruner’s great desire to see the works of European artists in the flesh. A prodigy of Julian Ashton’s art school, Gruner later ran a small gallery in Bligh Street, Sydney that focussed solely on Australian painting. By the time he left the country, he had also been awarded the Wynne Prize three times and would subsequently win four more. With this in mind, Gruner was asked to manage a large touring exhibition of Australian art to be shown in London – to which he reluctantly agreed. Titled Exhibition of Works of Australian Artists, it was a show dominated

by Australian plein air landscape paintings, which sensationally put Gruner at the sharp end of noted British artist Sir William Orpen, who roundly criticised Gruner in front of his paintings – unaware that he was the artist. Realising his mistake, Orpen then – more supportively – gave him a range of suggestions about form, composition and technique. It is to Gruner’s credit that he took these comments seriously. At the exhibition’s end, and possibly in company of Roy de Maistre, he travelled to Paris where, counter-intuitively to his previous studies, he absorbed himself in the work of Cézanne and Gauguin. From Paris, he went to St Tropez and set himself a series of post-impressionist challenges seen in a discrete number of works, of which St Tropez, 1924 is an early example. One of Cézanne’s most influential statements was that a landscape painting is not real life; it is an image of real life. He flattened planes, stressed the importance of structure, and interrogated the use of paint. Cézanne’s art was the basis for cubism and in many ways, St Tropez recalls George Braque’s famous Houses at l’Estaque, 1908 (Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art), as Gruner crowds his middle ground with the jostle of houses located near the town square, each reduced to a basic planar form. Importantly, his overall small output of work was due to the ‘considerable time (he spent) in the careful pre-consideration of his subject matter and, frequently, a long time in the execution of his picture.’1 In St Tropez Gruner looks toward the Chapelle de la Miséricorde built in 1645 by a quasi-official religious order called the ‘black penitents.’ His subject choice of houses and the domed bell tower is already a marked change as, prior to Europe, urban buildings rarely featured in Gruner’s paintings (one example being The Bustle of Life, 1914, see lot 26) with stray barns and rustic cottages appearing instead. In St Tropez, however, they are the focus, a radical departure for such an artist. In reality, the Chapelle’s tower is glazed with green and gold tiles but here, Gruner reduces it to two small sections of soft brown. The distant mountains over the bay are likewise simplified to two solid tones of blue, echoed by a further two roof lines of purpled shadow. Gruner returned in 1925 and began a fresh take on the Australian landscape. In 1929, his long-time supporter, Art in Australia magazine, published an issue devoted to his work. Reproduced were four of his St Tropez paintings, including this lot, plus one from a boat trip to Capri. 2 1. Burdett, B., ‘The Later Work of Elioth Gruner’, Art in Australia, Sydney, 3rd series, no. 27, 1 March 1929, n.p. 2. A fifth St Tropez painting is also known. ANDREW GAYNOR

WILLIAM DOBELL

(1899 – 1970) APPLES ON A CLOTH, 1932 oil on composition board 29.0 x 36.0 cm signed lower right: DOBELL ESTIMATE: $30,000 – 40,000

PROVENANCE Camille Gheysens, Sydney Lawsons, Sydney, 16 September 1979, lot 247 (as ‘Still Life – Apples’) Private collection, Sydney EXHIBITED William Dobell Retrospective, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 15 July – 30 August 1964, cat. 21 (label attached verso) William Dobell Exhibition, Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria, 13 – 23 November 1964 (label attached verso)

In 1929, the year William Dobell travelled to London, Margaret Preston wrote that modernist artists of the day used still life compositions as sites for solving artistic problems, akin to a laboratory table.1 In this, she updated a principle that had an important precedent in Dutch art of the seventeenth century where their famed vanitas paintings focussed on profusions of flowers, food and objects traditionally weighted by the inclusion of an insect, skull or rotting fruit as an allusion to human mortality. Such works also provided artists the freedom to experiment with composition, form, tone and proportion, as Preston had noted. Less moralistic still lifes subsequently became widely popular through artists such as Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and Henri Fantin-Latour before Paul Cézanne broke down the academic template with his tables of cloths and apples which seemed to dissolve in a welter of broken brush marks. Whilst never a true modernist himself (though he came to admire Van Gogh and Renoir), Dobell absorbed many of the ideas and approaches of such artists as he developed his own distinctive, personal style of painting in Europe, enabled by his award of a Travelling Scholarship with two-year financial stipend.

In London, Dobell enrolled at the Slade School of Art and quickly impressed his teachers, Henry Tonks and Philip Wilson Steer, by winning the school’s first prize for figure painting with an intensely naturalistic Nude study in the collection of Newcastle Regional Art Gallery. In his spare time, he haunted London’s major galleries, examining the paintings of Rembrandt, Goya, Daumier, El Greco and others, a practice he continued when travelling through Holland and Paris in mid-1930. The following year, which included a month’s stay in the Belgian town of Bruges, he painted a second Nude, an image startlingly different from the earlier work, with the figure now used solely ‘as a surface that reflects light, and as a vehicle for the expression of a rhythmic sense.’2 Dobell continued to explore this strategy over the following year and Apples on a cloth, 1932, is clearly aligned, with its folded cloth and tangled fringe pulsing with light, illuminated seemingly from within as much as without. There are clear echoes of Rembrandt, particularly in the scumbled white paint, whilst the painterly vigour recalls another of Dobell’s favourites, the Belarusian expressionist Chaïm Soutine. Apples on a cloth was likely painted in Bayswater, possibly at the studio leased by the artist Fred Coventry, and the modesty of the subject gives an indication of the straightened financial circumstances that Dobell now faced following the cessation of his stipend. In a radio interview many years later, he stated that he felt compelled to continue in earnest, that ‘I’d been sent over on scholarship and I should not come back until I could show I’d gained something from it, benefited by the trip.’3 With captivating results such as the present Apples on a cloth, as well as Selfportrait, and the jewel-like Boy at a basin, all from the same year (the latter two now in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales), Dobell’s enlightened decision and continued dedication underpinned his subsequent career as one of this country’s leading artists of the twentieth century. 1. See Margaret Preston, ‘aphorism no 46’, 1929 in Sydney Ure Smith and Leon Gellert (eds.), Margaret Preston recent paintings 1929, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1929. 2. Gleeson, J., William Dobell, Thames and Hudson, London, 1964, p. 25 3. William Dobell, interview with Garth Nettheim, 9 July 1963, cited in Bevan, S, Bill: the life of William Dobell, Simon and Schuster, Sydney, 2014, p. 67 ANDREW GAYNOR

CLARICE BECKETT

(1887 – 1935) BEAUMARIS SUNSET, c.1928 – 32 oil on pulpboard 29.5 x 41.5 cm signed lower left: C. Beckett ESTIMATE: $30,000 – 40,000

PROVENANCE Private collection Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 28 July 1998, lot 154 Private collection, Melbourne Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne (label attached verso) Private collection, Canberra, acquired from the above in 1999 EXHIBITED Annual Collectors’ Exhibition 1999, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, 5 June – 3 July 1999, cat. 38 (illus. in exhibition catalogue)

Clarice Beckett is renowned for her sustained, early modernist vision of Melbourne, particularly focussed on the coastline near her home in the Bayside suburb of Beaumaris. When asked why she never desired to travel overseas, she replied ‘I have only just got the hang of painting Beaumaris after all these years, why should I go somewhere else strange to paint?’1 Beaumaris sunset is a wonderful example of her work, featuring the rugged coast at the end of Dalgetty Street, where the artist lived. The upper layers of the headland are comprised of Black Rock sandstone which has eroded over time to reveal the lower basalt level. Middens and hand-dug wells from the Bunurong people remain in clear evidence along the cliff’s base, as does a plethora of important marine fossils in the shallow waters offshore (now protected). The headland and its near neighbours also feature in such notable works as Tom Roberts’ Slumbering sea, Mentone, 1887 (National Gallery of Australia); and Arthur Streeton’s Fossil bay, flood tide, 1925 (private collection). In Beckett’s view, the falling light of sunset and the mirrored surface of the still waters emphasise the brooding aspect of the headland, with the lone tree to the left recalling the composition of Japanese woodblock prints. A small number of her works feature similarly placed trees, such as View across the Yarra to Government House, c.1931, and Trees beside the Yarra River, c.1925. 2

Beckett 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.’3 On their advice, she enrolled Clarice (and her sister Hilda) in 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.’4 Beckett was prolific and 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.’ 5 Beckett’s fame has since increased to such an extent that almost every one of the country’s major institutions now own examples of her work. She was, in the words of the artist Sir William Dargie, ‘a pure and perfect artist in her own way, one of the finest ever to work in Australia.’6 1. Hollinrake, R., Clarice Beckett: the artist and her circle, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1979, p. 21 2. View Across the Yarra Towards Government House, c.1931, oil on board, 25.5 x 35.5 cm, Deutscher and Hackett, Twenty Important Women Artists + Selected Australian and International Fine Art, Melbourne, 10 November 2021, lot 9; Trees beside the Yarra River, c.1925, oil on pulpboard, 25 x 35.5 cm, Deutscher and Hackett, Important Australian + International Fine Art, Sydney, 14 September 2022, lot 77 3. Hollinrake, R., ‘Painting against the tide’, The Age, Melbourne, 3 April 1985, p. 16 4. Elizabeth Colquhoun, cited in Juliet Peers, 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 5. Max Meldrum, cited in ‘Work of Clarice Beckett’, The Age, 5 May 1936, p. 9 6. Dargie, Sir W., ‘Introduction’ in Homage to Clarice Beckett (1887 – 1935): Idylls of Melbourne and Beaumaris, Rosalind Humphries Galleries, Melbourne, 1971 ANDREW GAYNOR

RUSSELL DRYSDALE

(1912 – 1981) COMPOSITION, 1937 watercolour and pencil on paper 48.0 x 68.0 cm signed and dated lower right: Russell Drysdale ‘37 ESTIMATE: $30,000 – 40,000

PROVENANCE George Bell, Melbourne Thence by descent Antoinette Niven, Melbourne, the artist’s daughter Private collection, Melbourne Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne, 29 August 2012, lot 53 Private collection, Sydney EXHIBITED The Drawings of Russell Drysdale, 1980 Perth Survey of Drawing, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 21 February – 15 March 1980; and then touring to Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 12 April – 18 May 1980; Brisbane Civic Art Gallery and Museum, Brisbane, 2 July – 1 August 1980; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 6 September – 19 October 1980 LITERATURE Klepac, L., The Drawings of Russell Drysdale, 1980 Perth Survey of Drawing, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 1980, cat. 6, pl. 3, pp. 53, 68 (illus.) Eagle, M., and Minchin, J., The George Bell School: Students, Friends and Influences, Deutscher Art Publications, Melbourne, 1981, p. 96 (illus.) Klepac, L., The Life and Work of Russell Drysdale, Bay Books, Sydney, 1983, pp. 197, 365, pl. 8 (illus. as ‘Composition (Nudes)’) Klepac, L., Russell Drysdale The Drawings, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 2012, pp. 22 (illus.), 167

We are grateful to Brenda Martin Thomas, wife of the late David Thomas AM, for kindly allowing us to reproduce David’s research and writing in this catalogue entry. Composition, 1937 comes from the time Russell Drysdale was at the George Bell Bourke Street school where the achievements of Paul Cézanne were much admired. Thus, not surprisingly perhaps, the work displays Drysdale’s then considerable interest in the French master, reproductions of whose work he had seen at Gino Nibbi’s Leonardo Art Shop. Fellow student Geoff Jones recalled Drysdale ‘coming into the studio one day ‘full of excitement. He’d seen more Cézanne prints at Nibbi’s of such good quality you could see the paint surface.’1 It was a period of intense learning, as Drysdale later remarked, ‘Every influence

around the place flooded me, and I seized it.’2 This lively influence of Cézanne on the early work of Drysdale is seen at its best in Composition 1937. While present in other watercolour drawings of the time such as The Card Players, 1935/37 and Stacking Wood, Heidelberg, 1937, Composition has a special grandeur about it. Recalling in subject and composition the great Bathers paintings of Cézanne, Drysdale’s female forms are likewise pleasingly rotund. Moreover, the vibrancy of the composition is achieved by a similar interplay between dynamic diagonals and the vivacity of the lights and darks across the picture plane. Frieze-like, it has a certain classical, monumental quality which one associates with grand large-sized compositions or murals. This same quality can be found in other works of 1937, including the pen, ink and water colour Sketch for Tempera Composition and the oil painting Men Mixing Concrete, both of which were included in the Dr ysdale retrospective exhibition at the Ar t Galler y of New South Wales in 1960. Another important influence was Ian Fairweather. Drysdale, like his fellow students, was greatly impressed by Fairweather’s work, as seen in the design and flowing, arabesque lines of Composition. In recollection, Drysdale said, ‘I was affected by Fairweather because he was to me the first example of a draughtsman that I’d seen. He had a quality that to my uninformed mind was unmistakable.’3 Writing the foreword to the exhibition of drawings at Joseph Brown’s Gallery in 1981, Patrick McCaughey observed, ‘Russell Drysdale’s gifts as a draughtsman were recognised from the start and they have remained central to any understanding and appreciation of his art.’4 Composition reveals the influence of Bell’s teaching and the work of Cézanne and Fairweather on the gifted Drysdale at an important stage in his development. They are the attire, as it were, in which he then clothed his progressive realisation of his prodigious talent leading to the extraordinary individuality of his images of outback Australia and Australians. A key step in this development, Composition is, accordingly, a very commanding work in its own right. 1. Jones cited in Eagle, M., and Minchin, J., The George Bell School: Students, Friends and Influences, Deutscher Art Publications, Melbourne, 1981, p. 96. Drysdale’s interest went so far that he even bought a copy of Fritz Novotnoy’s book on Cézanne, published that same year of 1937. 2. Drysdale, film transcript interview, Visual Arts Board, Australia Council, Sydney, 1975, cited in Klepac, L., The Life and Work of Russell Drysdale, Bay Books, Sydney, 1983, p. 25 3. Drysdale cited in Eagle, op. cit., p. 96. Significantly, Drysdale owned one of Fairweather’s paintings at this time. 4. McCaughey, P., ‘Foreword’, Russell Drysdale Drawings 1935 – 1980, Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne, 1980, n.p.

IAN FAIRWEATHER

(1891 – 1974) PEKING WALLS, 1948 gouache and pencil on paper 41.5 x 46.0 cm (sheet) signed indistinctly lower left: Fairweather ESTIMATE: $70,000 – 90,000

PROVENANCE The Redfern Gallery Ltd., London (label attached verso) Mrs Ruth Keating, London, acquired from the above in 1948 Thence by descent Private collection, USA EXHIBITED Ian Fairweather, Redfern Gallery, London, 28 October – 20 November 1948, cat. 40

No Australian twentieth century artist understood Asia better than Ian Fairweather. It began in improbable circumstances as a prisoner of war. He enlisted in the British Army in June 1914 and, within two months of arriving in France, was captured by the Germans. He read works by E. F. Fenollosa and Lafcadio Hearn (two distinguished scholars on Japan), illustrated prisoner-of-war magazines and attempted unsuccessful escapes. Back in London he studied at the Slade School of Fine (1920 – 24) while attending evening classes in Japanese and Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies. By 1929, he was in Shanghai and remained in China until 1932. His peripatetic nature, restless curiosity and affection for China saw him return there in 1935 where he was ‘completely at home with (his) fellows.’1 Travel to other places followed, from South East Asia to Calcutta – and regardless of location, Chinese subjects continued. It was a necessary and essential part of his personality. Indeed, the idea for Monastery, 1961 (National Gallery of Australia) remained in his memory for more than two decades before it was realised. 2 In Peking Walls, 1948 we find Fairweather’s synchronised approach to painting, one which would evolve into larger, grand paintings during the sixties. Both however have the same underpinning: Chinese thought and experience, and his unmistakable, idiosyncratic technical fluency. Drawing with paint is used extensively across mediums – from paper to card and wooden panels, calligraphic-like gestures over layered

surfaces result in final irregular painting, a finished work. Fairweather’s observation is always one of creative approximation, forever avoiding the dullness of literalism. 3 There is no suggestion of a clichéd, exotic Western unfamiliarity in Peking Walls where stereotypes might suffice. Fairweather was too immersed in Chinese culture, philosophy, language and art to fall into some kind of Asian Grand Tour romanticism. While certain subtle inflections suggest a nod to Matisse and the French Nabis – for example, painted lineal suggestions and blotchy shapes of colour – there are specific Chinese characteristics in works such as these as well. There are also similarities with Peking Tea Room, 1936 (Art Gallery New South Wales) – it clearly complements Peking Walls but is one of many later iterations of subjects that remained a perpetual echo. What might appear as Fairweather’s clumsiness of execution as an individual stylistic trait, is actually an aesthetic virtue shaped by his understanding of Chinese painting. As Pierre Ryckmans notes in his discussion of spiritual deficiency and finish in Chinese painting, ‘… technical virtuosity and seductiveness in a painting are considered vulgar, as they precisely suggest the slick fluency of a professional answering a client’s commission and betray a lack of inner compulsion on the part of the artist.’4 Peking Walls is the clear, continuing and evolving expression born from his visits to China in the 30s. Fairweather paints vastness and intimacy, figures in the foreground to a mid-ground market canopy. The painted lineal sweeps in halftones are interspersed with his familiar use of a rich ultramarine or, in Fairweather’s specific case, Reckitt’s blue.5 1. Abbott-Smith, N., Ian Fairweather: profile of a painter; University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1978, p. 27 2 Capon, J., ‘The China Years’ cited in Bail, M., et al., Fairweather, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1994, p.63 3. For a specific analysis of Fairweather’s approach see, Fisher, T., The Drawings of Ian Fairweather, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1997, pp. 4 – 7 4. Ryckmans, P., ‘The Amateur Artist’, in Bail, op. cit., pp. 15 – 23 5. Roberts, C. & Thompson, J., (eds.), Ian Fairweather: A Life in Letters, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2019. This publication provides a rich, first-person account in letters from the artist, many of which are about China. DOUG HALL AM

LLOYD REES

(1895 – 1988) COUNTRY ROAD, MOUNT RANKIN, NEAR BATHURST, 1948 oil on canvas on board 29.0 x 37.0 cm signed and dated lower left: L. Rees 48 inscribed with title verso: COUNTRY ROAD, MOUNT RANKIN, NEAR BATHURST. ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

PROVENANCE Artarmon Galleries, Artlovers, Sydney (label attached verso) Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 1995

The year 1948 was a difficult one for Lloyd Rees marked by a sequence of severe nervous breakdowns that left him bedridden and depressed for days on end. When energised, he would find sustenance by travelling with his wife Marjory to the coast at Werri (where they built a house in 1947) or to the gently sloped lands around Bathurst, New South Wales, on the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri people. Marjory was born in the town and much of her family resided there which meant that Rees could be comfortably looked after as he recovered. Naturally, his expeditions painting in the nearby hills were also a tonic to his fragile condition. He would later recount that ‘we would travel to Bathurst at the beginning of the winter – the early vacation – and again towards the end of winter. And I have memories of waking up in complete stillness at my brother -in-law’s at Mount Rankin, some 8 miles out of Bathurst – in the early days devoid of electricity, or any of those sorts of amenities.’1 In 1942, Rees was honoured with a Retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and his friend John Young was quoted in the foreword, noting that Rees ‘has a rarefied sense of light… he is an inspiration to those who share his experience and perhaps an example to those who have personal vision but fear to state it in their own way.’2 Rees exhibited twice in the Archibald and Wynne Prizes in the following years, and in 1946, was appointed as a part-time teacher at the School of

Architecture at the University of Sydney. He had visited Europe for a year between 1923 and 1924, which ignited his great love for the Italian landscape and reinforced his respect for works of the European masters, particularly Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Rees saw in the Bathurst hills and the nearby Macquarie Plains ‘a landscape more French than English rural landscape, because it has not been divided by hedges.’3 In Country road, Mount Rankin, near Bathurst, 1948, the view does indeed feel European with its subdued tenor, and Rees likely established his vantage point in Wattle Tree Lane, an unsealed road which leads to the summit. By this time, he had ceased his practice of direct plein air painting and would undertake a preparatory sketch on site, later finished in the studio where he believed ‘a different person seems to take over, the picture on the easel dominates and everything else fades away.’4 He would allow the paintbrush to dictate how the final image would eventuate, often adding, deleting or moving details in the search of direct painterly form. For example, in Country road, Mount Rankin, near Bathurst, the normally verdant green of winter pastures are reduced to more sombre tones, and it is likely Rees adjusted the position of one of the two houses to act as counter-balance for its companion. The ambiguous dark shadows across the road likewise provide a horizontal emphasis which contrasts the soft curves of the road, trees and hills, and the feathered edges of the blustery clouds overhead. 1. Lloyd Rees in Lloyd Rees: an artist remembers, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1987, p. 55 2. John Young cited in ‘Lloyd Rees’, Lloyd Rees Loan Exhibition, National Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1942, p. 6 3. Lloyd Rees, op. cit. 4. Rees, L., Peaks and Valleys: an autobiography, Collins, Sydney, 1985, p. 227 ANDREW GAYNOR

LLOYD REES

(1895 – 1988) HILLS OF BATHURST, c.1944 oil on canvas 46.0 x 76.5 cm signed lower left: L REES ESTIMATE: $60,000 – 80,000

PROVENANCE Macquarie Galleries, Sydney (partial label attached verso) Private collection Christie’s, London, 4 June 1985, lot 281 Geoff K. Gray, Sydney, 3 March 1986, lot 163 Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne Wesfarmers Art Collection, Perth, acquired from the above in 1986 (label attached verso) Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne, 29 August 2012, lot 5 Private collection, Sydney EXHIBITED Society of Artists Annual Exhibition, Education Department Gallery, Sydney, 24 August – 11 September 1946 Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne, 1986 The Song of the Lamb: The Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 19 August – 2 October 1989 LITERATURE Society of Artists Book 1946–7, Ure Smith Pty Ltd, Sydney, 1947, p. 57 (illus.) Ure Smith, S. (ed.), Present Day Art in Australia, Ure Smith Pty Ltd, Sydney, 1949, (rev. ed.), p. 23 (illus.) Gooding, J., Topliss, H., Sharkey, C., and Horridge, N., The Song of the Lamb: The Wesfarmers Collection of Australian Art, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 1989, p. 91 (illus.)

We are grateful to Brenda Martin Thomas, wife of the late David Thomas AM, for kindly allowing us to reproduce David’s research and writing in this catalogue entry. In his mastery of the landscape, Lloyd Rees imbued his paintings with life and atmosphere, overflowing with memories. Through the tilled soils and ancient buildings in his paintings of France, Italy and Greece, Rees celebrated man’s beneficial presence over the millennia. In Australia he brought that same humanising element to his work, of houses, haystacks and other evidence of habitation, as is so evident in Hills of Bathurst, c.1944. The fruitfulness of his views is matched by the fertility of his imagination, rich in romantic associations and bathed in light that is almost palpable. Brett Whiteley, who greatly admired Rees’s art, described his paintings as ‘completely real descriptions, yet abstract

at the same time.’1 The formal qualities of his work are as appealing as the recollections they evoke. Landforms swell and whisper of fertility and the goodness of the earth. Of landscape painting, Rees wrote, ‘In the first case the inspiring moment would come from nature; a glimpse of exciting shapes and forms, or a passing mood of light or air. These would be fixed in memory by a sketch... and from this the picture would grow.’2 The painting, of course, ‘has an inner life of its own, independent of the subject matter’ and grew freely in the studio. The light in Hills of Bathurst evokes the living past – of Australia's oldest inland settlement, where gold was first discovered, rich in beauty and memories. His first major painting of the area was the evocatively spellbinding Evening on the Bathurst Hills, 1936 in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. It is the soft evening light when nature enticingly attires herself in gentler robe as encroaching shadows tempt and tantalise. Over the following years he painted the Bathurst region at various times and seasons. Evening Landscape, Orange, 1943, also in the Sydney Gallery’s collection, suggests that it was painted from a spot near to the painting on offer. 3 Related in time and mood, they share a breadth of sky, easy horizon line, and scattering of houses, all handled in a similar colour scheme. The scene must have appealed greatly to Rees for in 1944 he painted September Landscape, Orange. Betraying even more affinities with our painting, its season of rebirth and renewal is more pronounced through the enveloping golden light.4 Rees created a magical mixture of springtime and evening calm in Hills of Bathurst, a twilight of recollections touched with wistfulness. His Bathurst landscapes stretch from the mid-thirties through to the sixties – often of autumn and spring when nature is at her lyrical best. Certain places had a special appeal for Rees – Bathurst on the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, Gerringong on the south coast’s Illawarra region, and San Gimignano in Tuscany being prominent. He returned to them time and again in his art. Bathurst and its beautiful countryside held particular appeal as his wife Marjory was ‘a Bathurst girl.’ 1. Whiteley, B., cited in Artists Salute Lloyd Rees on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 1985, p. 7 2. Rees, L., The Small Treasures of a Lifetime, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1969, p. 150 3. Evening Landscape, Orange, 1943, oil on canvas on plywood, 40.0 x 50.5 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, was a 1943 Wynne Prize finalist. 4. September Landscape, Orange, 1944, oil on canvas, 38.0 x 48.0 cm, in the collection of Mrs John Baillieu of Melbourne, when included in Rees’s 1969 retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The work was also exhibited in Herald Exhibition of Present-Day Australian Art, Melbourne, 1945 and illustrated in Present Day Art in Australia 2, Ure Smith Pty Ltd, Sydney, 1945, p. 70

ARTHUR BOYD

(1920 – 1999) CHRIST WALKING ON THE WATER, c.1947 – 48 oil on composition board 67.0 x 85.5 cm signed lower right: Arthur Boyd ESTIMATE: $60,000 – 80,000

PROVENANCE Stanley Coe Gallery, Melbourne John and Sunday Reed, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 1951 Blue Boy Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Adelaide, acquired from the above in the late 1970s Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne, 28 November 2012, lot 26 Private collection, Melbourne EXHIBITED Paintings by Arthur Boyd, Stanley Coe Gallery, Melbourne, 18 – 27 September 1951, cat. 9 A Melbourne Collection of Paintings and Drawings, Museum of Modern Art of Australia, (Heide) Victoria, 30 September – 10 October, 1958, cat. 25 LITERATURE The Bulletin, Sydney, vol. 72, no. 3737, 26 September 1951, p. 25 Philipp, F., Arthur Boyd, Thames and Hudson, London, 1967, cat. 3.19, pp. 140, 142, 243 (dated 1950 – 52) Reid, B. (ed.), A Melbourne Collection of Paintings and Drawings, Publication No. 1, Museum of Modern Art of Australia, Victoria, 1958, p. 68 Bungey, D., Arthur Boyd: A Life, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2007, pp. 253, 393, 398 We are grateful to Brenda Martin Thomas, wife of the late David Thomas AM, for kindly allowing us to reproduce David’s research and writing in this catalogue entry. Arthur Boyd’s early biblical paintings in oil and tempera found their ‘crowning and completion’ in The Grange murals of 1948 – 49.1 Biblical themes continued to appear in his ceramic paintings of 1949 – 52 and the arresting ceramic sculptures of 1952 – 53 which followed. Tragically, the mural paintings at Harkaway, with their narratives of The Prodigal Son and Susannah, are now known only through photographs and a restored fragment held by the National Gallery of Australia although there are many treasured examples in public and private collections. Memorable among the former are The Golden Calf, 1947 (Art Gallery of Ballarat, Victoria), The Expulsion, 1947 – 48 (Art Gallery of New South Wales) and The Mining Town (Casting the Money Lenders from the Temple), c.1946 – 47 (National Gallery of Australia). Of the painted ceramics, the related work, Christ Walking on the Water, 1950 – 52 is also in the Sydney collection.

For Boyd, it was a period of much experiment and stunning achievement as he combined the study of the techniques of the Old Masters with the richly creative influences of Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Tintoretto, and Rembrandt. In The Grange murals, the influence of Rembrandt and Tintoretto come to the fore, painted with ‘a warm Venetian richness.’2 This ‘Venetian affinity’, especially that of Tintoretto, is evident in Christ Walking on the Water, c.1947 – 48 suggesting that the likely date for the oil painting is the late forties rather than early fifties, as previously given. In his scholarly 1967 catalogue of Boyd’s works, Franz Philipp gave a questioned date of 1950 – 52, adding – ‘The owner believes that the painting is from approximately the same time as the two ceramic paintings (cat. 6.17, 6.23) based on it’ – however, Philipp groups this work in the catalogue of 19 Biblical Paintings, dated 1945 – 50. 3 The ‘owner’ referred to by Philipp were John and Sunday Reed, this being the first work by Arthur Boyd purchased by the couple. Darleen Bungey, in her biography of the artist, notes ‘In 1951 the Reeds… ‘plucked up the courage’ to buy ‘a small painting of Christ walking on the water because [they] like the figure of Christ a lot.’’4 Boyd’s 1951 solo exhibition at the Stanley Coe Gallery, Melbourne, in which Christ Walking on the Water was cat. 9, also included five additional major works of biblical subjects of the mid to late 1940s – namely Moses Throwing down the Tablets, 1946; Jacob’s Dream, 1947; Angel Spying on Adam and Eve, 1947 – 48; Expulsion, 1947 – 48; and Moses Leading the People. Since Philipp omits the 1951 Stanley Coe exhibition in his publication, he may have assumed the Reeds acquired the work from the 1953 Peter Bray exhibition. However, Christ Walking on the Water was not included in the catalogue for that exhibition. Impor tantly, the st yle of the oil painting Christ Walking on the Water suggests a time when the Tintoretto/Venetian influence was at its height. 5 This is seen in its freedom of execution, dramatic use of chiaroscuro, emotionally charged brushstrokes, Mannerist ambiguity of space, and the dialogue of hands. Significantly, the prominence of the yellow garment worn by Christ recalls that of the patriarch in the Prodigal Son and of Susannah in The Grange murals. Moreover, this single, dominant foreground figure is another innovation of 1947 – 48. Boyd’s inclusion of Melbourne on a watery skyline, gives the work that added validity of an Australian setting, while providing an ironic touch of the Venice of the south. 1. Philipp, F., Arthur Boyd, Thames and Hudson, London, 1967, p. 56 2. ibid., p. 56 3. ibid., p. 243 4. Bungey, D., Arthur Boyd: A Life, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2007, p. 253 5. Of Tintoretto, Franz Philipp noted ‘... whose influence on Boyd’s art had been in ascendancy for some years; it reaches its greatest fullness in The Grange murals’: see ibid., p. 56

MARGARET OLLEY

(1923 – 2011) UNTITLED (STILL LIFE WITH DAISIES AND GRAPES), 1979 oil on composition board 53.5 x 83.5 cm signed lower left: Olley ESTIMATE: $40,000 – 60,000

PROVENANCE Eva Breuer Art Dealer, Sydney, 2005 (label attached verso) Private collection, Canberra Menzies, Sydney, 11 May 2017, lot 36 Private collection, Melbourne LITERATURE The Olley Project, [https://ehive.com/collections/5439/ objects/498395/white-still-life-with-daisies-andgrapes-image-flipped] (accessed 26/10/22)

‘…I can think of no other painter of the present time who orchestrates his or her themes with such richness as Margaret Olley. She is a symphonist among flower painters; a painter who calls upon the full resources of the modern palette to express her joy in the beauty of things.’1 A much-loved, vibrant personality of the Australian art world for over 60 years, Margaret Olley exerted an enduring influence not only as a remarkably talented artist, but as a nurturing mentor, inspirational muse and generous philanthropist. Awarded an Order of Australia in 1991 and a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2006, Olley featured as the subject of two Archibald-Prize winning portraits (the first by William Dobell in 1948, and the second by contemporary artist Ben Quilty in 2011, just prior to her death) and was honoured with over 90 solo exhibitions during her lifetime, including a major retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1997. Today her work is held in all major state and regional galleries in Australia, and the myriad contents of her Paddington studio have been immortalised in a permanent installation at the Tweed Regional Gallery in northern New South Wales, not far from where Olley was born. Bequeathing a legacy as bountiful as the subject matter of her paintings, indeed her achievements are difficult to overstate – and reach far beyond the irrepressible sense of joy her art still brings. A striking example of the still-life scenes for which Olley remains widely celebrated, Untitled (Still Life with Daisies and Grapes), 1979 encapsulates well the way in which she repeatedly turned to the quotidian for inspiration, excavating her domestic setting to uncover

the beauty inherent in everyday life. Featuring a celadon green tea set juxtaposed against an earth-coloured background to accentuate its curved patterning and enlivened by the inclusion of fresh grapes and blue daisies to inject colour and life, significantly the composition belongs to a decade in Olley’s career that was defined by an increased experimentation with the spatial and chromatic possibilities of her art. For, notwithstanding the apparent randomness of her arrangements, fundamental to such compositions was her masterful ‘curation’ of elements to create a harmonious, perfectly balanced image – an aesthetic directly inspired by her firsthand experience of the theatre in 1948 when she assisted with painting the sets for Sam Hughes’ productions of Shakespeare’s Pericles and Cocteau’s Orphée (designed by Jean Bellette and Sidney Nolan respectively). Observing the actors being instructed to enter the stage and count twenty seconds before speaking their lines, the young artist soon came to appreciate the importance of creating space for oneself; as she fondly recalls, ‘space is the secret of life… it is everything.’2 Paying homage to the great European masters of her métier such as Vermeer, Bonnard, Matisse and Cézanne, thus Olley meticulously orchestrates the various components of her exquisite still lifes as if characters on a stage – objects both commonplace and beautiful, shuffled this way and that, plunged into deep shadow or transformed by lighting. Leading the viewer’s eye and mind through an intimate, deeply personal drama that resonates with the artist’s delight in her domestic surrounds, each composition reveals the very essence of her identity; as Barry Pearce elucidates, ‘…to live with a Margaret Olley painting is to experience the transfiguration of a passionate, highly focused personality into art. In her paintings, the space surrounding each bowl of fruit, each vase of flowers, and through which the eye traverses a cacophony of surfaces such as patterned carpets, modulated walls, and cluttered tabletops, resounds with her presence. These are reflections of the things she loves, and which embellished the centre of how she prefers her existence to be.’3 1. Gleeson, J., ‘Introduction’, Margaret Olley, The Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane, 1964, n.p. 2. Margaret Olley cited in Pearce, B., Margaret Olley, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1996, p. 14 3. Pearce, B., ‘Margaret Olley Retrospective’, State of the Arts, Sydney, August – November 1996, p. 5 VERONICA ANGELATOS

MARGARET PRESTON (1875 – 1963) BOTTLE BRUSH (2), 1946 colour monotype 35.0 x 37.5 cm (image) signed, dated and inscribed with title below image: Bottle Brush – Monotype Margaret Preston

EXHIBITED A Century of Collecting 1901 – 2001, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, 29 March – 28 April 2001 (as ‘Bottlebrush (2)’) Margaret Preston, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 29 July – 23 October 2005 and touring in 2006 to; Ian Potter Centre, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (label attached verso)

ESTIMATE: $12,000 – 18,000 PROVENANCE Gwen Morton Spencer, Sydney, by 1949 312 Lennox Street Gallery, Melbourne The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above by 1986

LITERATURE Ure Smith, S., Margaret Preston’s Monotypes, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1949, p. 65 Butler, R., The Prints of Margaret Preston: A Catalogue Raisonné, Australian National Gallery & Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1987, cat. 336, p. 259 (illus.) Edwards, D., Peel, R. and Mimmocchi, D., Margaret Preston, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2005, pp. 210 (illus., as ‘Bottlebrush’) 284 Margaret Preston Catalogue Raisonné of paintings, monotypes and ceramics, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2005, CD–ROM compiled by Mimmocchi, D., with Edwards, D., and Peel, R.

MARGARET PRESTON (1875 – 1963) KANGAROO PAW ETC, c.1930s hand coloured woodcut print 36.0 x 36.5 cm (image) 45.0 x 41.5 cm (sheet) signed with initials lower left: M. P. signed and inscribed below image: Kangaroo Paw etc woodcut Margaret Preston

PROVENANCE Brian and Marjorie Johnstone, Brisbane Marjorie Johnstone, Brisbane, 1992 Private collection, Brisbane, a bequest from the above in 1994

ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000

NORA HEYSEN (1911 – 2003) SELF PORTRAIT, 1971 oil on canvas 87.0 x 67.0 cm signed and dated lower left: Nora Heysen / 1971 ESTIMATE: $18,000 – 25,000

PROVENANCE Estate of the artist, Sydney Thence by descent Stefan Heysen, South Australia, the artist’s brother Thence by descent Private collection, South Australia LITERATURE Bogle, D., ‘Nora Heysen: Out of the shadows’, The Advertiser, Adelaide, 26 March 2019, illus. RELATED WORK Study for Self Portrait, charcoal and oil on card, 40.5 x 31.5 cm, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

MARGARET OLLEY (1923 – 2011) ORANGES (STILL LIFE), 1963 oil on canvas 60.0 x 76.0 cm signed and dated lower left: Olley 63

PROVENANCE Brian and Marjorie Johnstone, Brisbane Marjorie Johnstone, Brisbane, 1992 Private collection, Brisbane, a bequest from the above in 1994

ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

RAY CROOKE

(1922 – 2015) SUNDAY, THURSDAY ISLAND, 1960 oil and tempera on composition board 76.0 x 121.0 cm signed lower left: R Crooke inscribed verso: LATE AFTERNOON/ THURSDAY IS ESTIMATE: $40,000 – 60,000

PROVENANCE Brian and Marjorie Johnstone, Brisbane Marjorie Johnstone, Brisbane, 1992 Private collection, Brisbane, a bequest from the above in 1994

the artist’s desire to create ‘a romantic form of expression based upon imagination and emotion’2, indeed such works give precedence to mood over action or narrative to examine, rather, the fundamental relationship between man and nature.

EXHIBITED North of Capricorn, The Art of Ray Crooke, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Queensland, 21 November 1997 – 4 January 1998; and touring (label attached verso)

Fundamental to such conscious ordering of forms towards an aesthetic ideal is Crooke’s enduring preoccupation with tonal relationships, contours and silhouettes, and the dramatic juxtaposition of dark against light. Indeed, despite his richly decorative and highly developed sense of colour, one only need compare such tropical landscapes with those of his artistic predecessor, Paul Gauguin, to discern ‘the differences between an artist working through tone and one who worked through colour.’3 Underpinning the strength and authenticity of his vision, thus the image here is built up from a dark ground organised around tonal relationships to reveal a carefully constructed scene, with the two female protagonists bathed in the soft dappled sunshine that streams through the veranda from the sparkling harbour beyond. Imbuing the work with a powerful sense of mystery and curious timelessness, it is this sensation of clear defining light which gives stature to islander life and reveals Crooke’s abiding interest in the dignity of man. Betraying strong affinities with the art of Florentine Renaissance masters Giotto and Piero della Francesca in their quest to locate the eternal in the present moment – that point of intersection between time past and time to come – Crooke’s meditations accordingly invite his audience to experience the art of stillness, to appreciate the flow of time in its purest, most metaphysical sense. For, as James Gleeson astutely asserts, that ‘special kind of magic’ in Crooke’s paintings ‘only begins to work when one has discovered the stillness and the silence that lies at the heart of everything he paints... This stillness is not the mere stillness of arrested motion, but the projection of a mind preoccupied with deep and permanent things.’4

LITERATURE Smith, S., North of Capricorn, The Art of Ray Crooke, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Queensland, 1997 pp. 14, 47 (illus.)

‘…Crooke’s paintings reveal a humility of attitude which does not seek the unusual but achieves it. If his paintings of Australia’s tropical North and the native people going about their simple daily tasks or sitting as monuments in the deep shadow of their huts, spell such an enchantment, it is because poetical truth is deeper than ordinary vision.’1 Drawing inspiration from a lifetime of experience living in Northern Queensland and the adjacent Melanesian islands, Ray Crooke is celebrated for his quiet but intensely evocative landscapes which emphasise the monumental simplicity and laconic grace of people shaped by their environment. Whether engrossed in daily rituals, glimpsed in the cool of shaded rooms or ensnared within webs of light and shade beneath jungle vegetation, his compositions bear a strong sense of locality, describing with unprecedented accuracy this remote region and the unique light that so distinguishes it. Yet while his finished compositions, such as the serene Sunday, Thursday Island offered here, appear as ‘snapshots’ or portraits of specific places, they are nevertheless ‘the remembrance of things past’, emerging from his mind’s eye following the disciplined distillation of observed fact previously explored through studies and sketches. Encapsulating

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1. Langer, G., The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, 8 November 1967 2. Smith, S., North of Capricorn: The Art of Ray Crooke, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville, 1997, p. 7 3. Gleeson, J., ‘Introduction’, Ray Crooke, Collins, Sydney, 1972, n.p. 4. ibid. VERONICA ANGELATOS

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JON MOLVIG

(1923 – 1970) SLEEPING LUBRA, 1958 oil on composition board 76.5 x 102.5 cm signed and dated lower right: Molvig 58 ESTIMATE: $30,000 – 40,000

PROVENANCE Estate of Alan Waldron, Brisbane The Johnstone Collection, Brisbane Christie’s, Brisbane, 5 June 1994, lot 14 Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane Private collection, Brisbane, acquired from the above EXHIBITED Jon , The Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane, 28 April – 15 May 1959, cat. 4 Jon Molvig: Maverick, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 14 September 2019 – 2 February 2022 LITERATURE Churcher, B., Molvig - the lost Antipodean, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1984, cat. 207, pp. 74, 77 (illus.) Hawker, M., Heiser, B., Helmrich, M., and Littley, S., Jon Molvig: Maverick, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2019, pp. 16, 108 (illus.), 178

‘Because he has been so difficult to categorize, Molvig has often been overlooked by historians and curators, and there are few artists about whom such confusion has reigned. Yet, at the full stretch of his talent, he has produced images so powerful and urgent that they have that quality of all good art: they remain in the mind in all their original clarity.’1 From a working-class family in Newcastle, Molvig experienced an unsettled childhood and then served in New Guinea and the Philippines during World War II. He studied art in Sydney before travelling to Europe where he encountered the German and Norwegian expressionists whom he believed were more influential on his practice than his Australian contemporaries… In 1955, Molvig would settle in Brisbane for the better part of his adult life. At the time, the only formal courses for emerging artists involved particularly rigid and rigorous technical training, and little consideration of style. From a studio in Kangaroo Point, which was run by John Rigby (who had inherited it from Margaret Cilento), Molvig offered an alternative. At the same time as teaching a growing cohort of rapt students, Molvig developed his own distinctive style, one that Betty Churcher called ‘a lucid and accomplished expressionism.’2 An intensely complicated artist and individual, Molvig was a relentless innovator and his experimentation could be brilliantly iconoclastic. In Robert Hughes’ The Art of Australia, the young critic singled out Molvig:

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‘His art exalts the vitality of the first moment of perception,’ Hughes wrote, noting that while the artist’s style was mutable, his exploration of new techniques and approaches was nonetheless strategic. 3 A formidable presence on the Brisbane art scene during the late 1950s and 1960s, indeed Molvig’s work was provocative, and as inspiring to his students as it was insistent and uncompromising… Churcher divided this part of his career into two periods: tumultuous and complex pictures from the late 1950s and early 1960s – punctuated by a series of landscapes that built on his visit to Central Australia in 1958 – and his ‘Eden industrial’ pictures, inspired by Newcastle.4 Discussing Sleeping Lubra, 1958 and another closely related work from this period titled Untitled Portrait: Sleeping Aboriginal Woman and Child, 1958, Churcher notes that ‘…the allegorical quotient ensured that Molvig was able to operate on a level of meaning that went beyond the image. In both paintings an Aboriginal woman in a pink dress lies in a parched landscape under a hot sky. The anthropomorphic curves and furrows that had animated the surface of Ayer’s Rock in Centralian Landscape have hereby been given specific human form, and like the legendary women from the Aboriginal Dreaming, they seem at the very point of metamorphosis, when their bodies will be converted forever into the features of the landscape. They could also be a metaphor for the desert: the arid land that stretches out like a baited trap, set with opalescent colour to seduce the eye and lure the foolhardy or unwary to their death.’5 Significantly, Sleeping Lubra, 1958 was recently included in the major retrospective exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane from 2019 – 20. In the accompanying publication, Jon Molvig: Maverick, the first significant monograph on the artist since 1984, curator Michael Hawker elaborates, ‘…In works such as Sleeping Lubra, 1958, the figures are not just part of the landscape, they embody it. In Sleeping Lubra, the woman’s languid arm in the foreground has the contours of a dry creek bed while her torso and hips echo worn ridges and deep valleys. Molvig enhances this idea of embodiment in his use of colour – the ochre-like, chalky pinks, oranges, greys and charcoals immediately suggest the distinctive hues of the outback.’6 1. Betty Churcher cited in Jon Molvig: Maverick, Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2019, p. 94 2. Churcher, B., Molvig -The Lost Antipodean, Penguin Books, 1984, p. 47 3. Hughes, R., The Art of Australia, Penguin Australia, Melbourne, 1984, p.43, cited in Saines, C., ‘Foreword’ in Jon Molvig: Maverick, op. cit. ibid., p. 9 4. Saines, ibid. 5. Churcher, 1984, op. cit., p. 73 6. Hawker, M., ‘John Molvig: Restlessness of Vision’, in John Molvig: Maverick, op. cit., p. 16

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ALBERT NAMATJIRA

(1902 – 1959) SAND HILL BOUNDARY, c.1950s watercolour on paper on card 32.0 x 52.0 cm signed lower right: ALBERT NAMATJIRA bears inscription verso: 1 bears inscription with title on backing verso: SAND HILL BOUNDARY CB 80 ESTIMATE: $25,000 – $35,000

PROVENANCE Frank S. & Winifred M. Wright, Melbourne, acquired c.1950s Thence by descent Winifred B. Calder, Melbourne, acquired from the above in the 1980s The Estate of W. B. Calder, Melbourne

Although an accomplished craftsman producing poker work decorated woomeras, boomerangs and wooden plaques, it was not until viewing an exhibition of watercolours by Victorian artists Rex Battarbee and John Gardner at the Hermannsburg Mission in 1934, that Albert Namatjira truly embarked upon painting as a profession. Immediately captivated by the medium, Namatjira pleaded to be taught watercolour techniques and eventually Battarbee agreed to Namatjira accompanying him on two month-long expeditions in 1936 through the Palm Valley and MacDonnell Range areas. And thus began the cultural exchange that was to become a defining feature of their long relationship; Battarbee instructing Namatjira about the Western technique of watercolour painting, and in turn, Namatjira imparting his sacred knowledge about the subjects they were to paint, namely the land of the Western Aranda people, his ‘Dreaming’ place. So impressive was Namatjira’s skill that Battarbee remarked after only a brief period, ‘I felt he had done so well that he had no more to learn from me about colour.’1 Success and recognition quickly followed and Namatjira was launched into the spotlight as a cultural ‘icon’ – internationally acclaimed and admired for his innovative, vibrantly coloured desert landscapes that encouraged ‘new ways of seeing the Centre.’

and fame continuing throughout his lifetime, praise for Namatjira’s skilful adaptation of a Western medium was inevitably accompanied by a bitter twist; his paintings ‘…were appreciated because of their aesthetic appeal, but they were at the same time a curiosity and sign that Aborigines could be civilised.’ 2 Ironically such perceived ‘assimilation’ would later bring his art into disrepute with Namatjira virtually ignored by the Australian art establishment during the 1960s and 70s. Fortunately, the Papunya Tula Aboriginal art ‘renaissance’ and cultural politics of reconciliation during the 80s prompted long overdue reassessment of Namatjira’s unique contribution, and more recently, he has received the recognition he so deserves with three biographies published, and three major exhibitions mounted by public galleries, including a retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia in 2002 to celebrate the centenary of his birth, Seeing the Centre: The Art of Albert Namatjira 1902 – 1959. Not only striking in their aesthetic appeal, Namatjira’s achievements such as Sand Hill Boundary, c.1950s also resonate with important personal symbolism for the artist as statements of belonging – as coded expressions embodying the memory and sacred knowledge of traditional ancestral sites, his ‘dreamings’ or totem places. As Belinda Croft elucidates, ‘Albert’s Gift’ was more far-reaching than simply the tangible legacy of his art, ‘…more than the sum parts of watercolour paints on paper. It is an essence that resides in the strength of Namatjira’s work – his courage, his sorrow, his spirituality – in these days of ‘reconciliation’, but most of all, in the spiritual heritage of every indigenous person in Australia.’3 1. Morphy, H., Aboriginal Art, Phaidon Press, London, 1998, p. 268

If today synonymous with our vision of the Australian outback, Namatjira’s art nevertheless experienced many vicissitudes over the course of the last century. Although his first solo exhibition in 1938 at the Fine Arts Society in Melbourne was a sell-out success, with popularity

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2. ibid., p. 270 3. Croft, B., ‘Albert’s Gift’ in French, A., Seeing the Centre: The Art of Albert Namatjira, 1902 – 1959, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2002, p. 148 VERONICA ANGELATOS

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ALEXANDER ARCHIPENKO (1887 – 1964, Ukrainian/American) THE PEARL graphite, ink and gouache on paper 41.5 x 54.0 cm signed lower right: Archipenko ESTIMATE: $15,000 – 20,000

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PROVENANCE Zabriskie Gallery, New York (label attached verso) Kahlbetzer collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 1981

ANDY WARHOL (1928 – 1987, American) COW, 1976 colour screenprint on wallpaper 115.5 x 76.5 cm signed lower right: Andy Warhol edition: unlimited with approximately 100 signed in felt pen in 1979 published by Factory Additions, New York printed by Bill Miller’s Wallpaper Studio inc., New York ESTIMATE: $12,000 – 18,000

PROVENANCE The Blaxland Gallery, Sydney Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 1991 EXHIBITED Modern Art Pavilion, Seattle Centre, Washington, 18 November 1976 – 9 January 1977 (another example) LITERATURE Feldman, F., and Schellmann, J., Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962–1987, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, third edition, 1997, cat. 11.12A, pp. 59 (illus., another example), 266, 276

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BANSKY

born 1974, British GANGSTA RAT, 2004 colour screenprint 49.0 x 35.0 cm (sheet) edition: 232/350 published by Pictures on Walls, London numbered and embossed with blindstamp lower right ESTIMATE: $40,000 – 60,000

PROVENANCE Private collection, Queensland, acquired in Brighton, U.K., c.2005

Personified rats have been an enduring motif in street artist Banksy’s oeuvre, often depicted in slapstick freeze frames and comically dressed to reflect salient contemporary issues in Britain and abroad. Understood by many to be a homage to Blek le Rat, Xavier Prou, the French pioneer of stencil art, Banksy’s rodent alter-egos exist on the fringes of society. Living invisibly in alleyways and undergrounds, much like clandestine graffiti artists, for Banksy these animals have come to symbolise freedom and resilience. Like many of his artworks, the Gangsta Rat, 2004 of this limited-edition screenprint first appeared stenciled directly onto a wall, in the London suburb of Farringdon in 2004. Shortly thereafter, with the artist-run publishing cooperative Pictures on Walls, Bansky printed Gangsta Rat in black and red in an edition of 350, with an additional 150 prints hand-signed. Circumventing commercial gallery structures, examples of these prints were sold directly to buyers through the internet and pop-up exhibitions. While Banksy created over 30 different street artworks using rats in the 1990s,1 Gangsta Rat was the first design to be screenprinted, preceding the other ‘Rat Pack’ editions such as Love Rat, Placard Rats – holding signs emblazoned with ‘Because I’m Worthless’, ‘Welcome to Hell’ and ‘Get out while you can’ and Radar Rat.

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With hands held aloft and a look of surprise etched into its white face, Gangsta Rat appears to have been caught playing dress-up. Wearing a side-ways New York Yankees baseball cap, an earring and chain medallion necklace, the rat sits beside a Boom Box portable stereo system, imitating the flashy style of American hip hop and rap artists of the 1980s. Tagged in dripping red spray paint above the rat are the letters iPOW, referencing Bansky’s print publisher Pictures on Walls and imitating the nonsensical marketing jargon of large corporations in the early 2000s. Banksy’s trussed-up rat derides both the opportunistic bastardisation of popular culture to sell products, and the mindless rat-race of consumer culture. Banksy, who like a latter-day Robin Hood remains officially anonymous, became a household name around the world with a reach far beyond the Bristol underground scene from which he emerged in the early 1990s. In 2018, he memorably made headlines after one of his works appeared to self-destruct just after selling at auction in London for over a million pounds, thus playfully reinforcing the artist’s apparent disdain for the commercial structures of the art world. The elusive artist’s work, whether stenciled on a nondescript brick wall of a housing estate or screen-printed on archival paper, is instantly recognisable for its cutting social satire, whimsical popular culture references and subversive aphorisms. 1. Banksy, Wall and Piece, Century, London, 2005, pp. 86 – 87 LUCIE REEVES-SMITH

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DEL KATHRYN BARTON

born 1972 I GIVE MYSELF TO YOU….. CONSTANT WONDER, 2017 oil on canvas 86.0 x 64.0 cm signed and dated lower left: 2017 / – del / kathryn / barton – ESTIMATE: $40,000 – 60,000

PROVENANCE Private collection, Sydney, a gift from the artist in 2017

Del Kathryn Barton’s sumptuously patterned portraits of women and chimeric goddesses explore intertwined representations of female vulnerability and power. Combining a three-quarter profile with a polychromatic stylised aesthetic, I Give Myself to You.…. Constant Wonder, 2017 belongs to an ongoing series within Barton’s oeuvre, ever evolving with the incorporation of new artistic devices and gestures. Her mature portraits draw inspiration from High Renaissance portraiture of the fashionable elite and are often imbued with the unsettled eroticism of modern European artists, such as Egon Schiele and Louise Bourgeois. Despite sharing the same wide watery eyes, these poised and tight-lipped protagonists are far removed from the childlike beings of Barton’s earlier works. They have aged alongside the artist, retaining otherworldly attributes which signify their belonging to the artist’s vivid phantasmagorical world. One of Australia’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, Del Kathryn Barton’s practice is today multi-disciplinary, encompassing even an audacious and surreal full-length feature film, Blaze, released earlier this year as part of the Sydney Film Festival. Notwithstanding these varied artistic pursuits, the intricate and meditative act of drawing still underpins all of Barton’s work. Raw and instinctual, Barton’s wandering inky lines trace the spindly fingers and angular elfin features of her subjects and the outer edges of delicately modulated liquid shadows. This signature illustrative quality is contrasted within I Give Myself to You….. Constant Wonder by the varied textures of the whorls of the subject’s spray-painted hair, veil of pearly polka-dots, and the thick materiality of the imbricated orange background. The clean, white

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ground of Barton’s canvas becomes the figure’s pale skin, overlaid with washes of paint, tonally warm and seductively candy-coloured. This is a modern portrait of a young woman dispassionately emerging from her magical realm. While she bears no plumed hybridity or multiple limbs, this protagonist is no less an enchantress, her ethereal strangeness is hidden within her enormous eyes. Staring blankly into the distance, the subject of this portrait does not communicate with the viewer, nor is alert to her bright surroundings. Like her sisters, she looks both inward and outward, voyaging beyond the mundane towards a cosmic realm. She is transfixed, awestruck by an unknowable plane of consciousness, her large eyes unblinking and swirling with visual delirium. She shares a steely impenetrable expression with the other figures from her world, even in larger compositions while contorted into tantric poses or voyaging on giant rodents through astral planes. Chastely presented, our subject has her hands held up enquiringly, framing her face to express some unknown significance. These ‘fluttering hands’ appear frequently in Barton’s works, inferring a certain spiritual or sacred atmosphere, a quasimedieval mysticism.1 Painted in 2017, this portrait shares affinities with the hypnotic works shown the same year in Barton’s first solo exhibition in New York. Like the fierce subjects of those paintings, here the sitter acts as a semihuman bridge between the viewer and the more terrifying creatures of Barton’s universe. Gesturing cryptically and peering into the abyss, she encourages us to proceed with caution, abandoning ourselves to the wonderful sensory experience of this world and beyond. 1. Wallis, P., ‘Matrix of Desire’, Del Kathryn Baton, The Highway is a Disco, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2017, p. 5 LUCIE REEVES-SMITH

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47 BRONWYN OLIVER (1959 – 2006) SASH, 1994 copper 28.0 x 193.0 x 11.5 cm ESTIMATE: $50,000 – 70,000

With a fabric made of ruched sheet metal tightly bound with riveted struts, the long and narrow swag that is Sash, 1994 twists and strains, the warmth of its patinated copper evoking a living form enclosed within its sheathed package. This sculpture belongs to a small group of selfcontained closed forms within Bronwyn Oliver’s oeuvre of latticed copper wire sculptures, poignantly evoking the artist’s own sense of geographical dislocation and protective remove. This sculpture also, however, conveys the possibility of metamorphosis, the potential of an unseen life force to break free of its cocoon.

EXHIBITED Recent Work by Bronwyn Oliver, The 1994 Moët & Chandon Fellow, Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne, 21 October – 16 November 1995, cat. 5

There is a rich history of wrapped and bound forms in Western Art, from Michelangelo’s sculptures of bound slaves to Christo’s contemporary environmental interventions1, often illustrating tensions between constriction and escape, concealment and unveiling. This dichotomy has been a persistent thread within Bronwyn Oliver’s practice. Getting Through, one of her early performance pieces during a bush retreat with Marina Abramovic and Ulay in August 1981, featured Oliver trapped within a phonebooth, tied up with ropes. From within Oliver attempted to call her peers, asking them to release her binds from the outside. Many years later, Oliver’s series of closed form ‘Mute’ sculptures were similarly impregnable, containing a secret void within, tightly shielded from outside intervention.

LITERATURE Fink, H., Bronwyn Oliver: Strange Things, Piper Press, Sydney, 2017, p. 114

Sash was created in Hautvillers, a village in Épernay, France, during Bronwyn Oliver’s year-long residency between 1994 – 1995. She had been the first sculptor to win the Moët & Chandon Art Fellowship some

PROVENANCE Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne Western Mining Corporation, Melbourne BHP Billiton, Melbourne, acquired within WMC Collection, June 2005 Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 24 November 2008, lot 1 Private collection, Sydney

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months earlier. By then, already one of Australia’s finest contemporary sculptors, Oliver had a dedicated following of private collectors and erudite critics. Armed with the tools of her trade and an unfortunately insufficient grasp of the French language, Oliver arrived in Épernay with the determined intention to ‘concentrate on my work away from my commitments. I can experiment with new techniques. I hope to get a forge there. This is not a year to waste.’2 It was only towards the end of her stay that she was able to fulfil this wish, with a delivery of oxyacetylene equipment allowing experimentation with sheet metal as opposed to copper shim, described by the artist as a ‘relief after weeks of fine, detailed concentration to be able to swing a hammer over an anvil.’3 Oliver has laboriously sewn and stitched the skin of this sculpture with fire and a rivet gun, endowing the warm material with a haptic quality of folded cloth. This quality is further magnified by the contrast between an uneven crystalline patination against Oliver’s regular criss-crossed binds. In describing her most successful works, Bronwyn Oliver remarked that with a perfect combination of concept, medium and execution, the sculpture would ‘sing’, and using a ‘poetry of association’, would transcend conventional markers of time and space.4 The instinct to grapple with poetic associations is human, and a carefully laid trap that Bronwyn Oliver, as Ariadne, has woven for her audience. She drew inspiration from organic matter, prehistoric and ancient artefacts, and through a manipulation of surface texture and colour, was able to ‘incorporate the element of time’5 in her copper forms. The works of this

small series all share a pleated surface inspired by a ‘dreadful sculpture seen at the Musée d’Orsay in 1990 – 91, a sculpture of a gladiator, in bronze, wearing ruched leggings, with musculature taut beneath the surface of the cloth.’6 Evoking an abandoned archaeological hoard or an ancient bundle of possessions wrapped for ease of carrying, Sash also expresses the nomadic transience of Oliver’s brief but stimulating sojourn in France. 1. Ian Howard, Oliver’s first art teacher, recalls having given a talk in Inverell on the subject of Christo’s Little Bay project in 1969, when he first met Oliver as a child. Fink, H., Bronwyn Oliver – Strange Things, Paper Press, Sydney, 2017, p. 11 2. The artist cited in Owen, S., ‘Career by Default’, The Sun-Herald, 13 February 1994, p. 142 3. The artist cited in Fink, op. cit., p. 114 4. Sturgeon, G., Contemporary Australian Sculpture, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1991, pp. 73 – 74 5. Oliver, B., ‘A Contemporary Australian Artist in France’, Explorations, The Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations, Melbourne, December 1990, p. 27 6. The artist, cited in Bunyan, M., ‘Review of The Sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver at TarraWarra Museum of Art’, Art Blart, 28 January 2017 LUCIE REEVES-SMITH

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Contemporar y Ar t from The L aver t y Collection Lots 48 – 58

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EMILY KAME KNGWARREYE

(c.1910 – 1996) UNTITLED (ALALGURA/EMU COUNTRY), 1989 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 150.0 x 120.5 cm bears inscription verso: artist’s name and Delmore Gallery cat. E013 bears inscription on label verso: Kngwarreye, E / Alalgura – Emu Country / CS ‘98 ESTIMATE: $150,000 – 200,000

PROVENANCE Commissioned by Delmore Gallery, via Alice Springs in 1989 Coventry Gallery, Sydney Private collection, Sydney Hogarth Galleries, Sydney The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in September 1995 EXHIBITED Emily Kngwarreye, Coventry Gallery, Sydney, 8 May – 2 June 1990, cat. 7 Southern Reflections – Ten Contemporary Australian Artists, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1998; Kulturhuset (Cultural Centre) Stockholm, Sweden, 1998; Stenersen Museum, Oslo, Norway, 1999; Göteborgs Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden, 1999, cat. 7 Mapping Our Countries, Djamu Gallery, Australian Museum at Customs House, Sydney, 9 October 1999 – 27 February 2000 LITERATURE Cross, E., Southern Reflections – Ten Contemporary Australian Artists, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1998, cat. 7, p. 21 (illus.) Beyond Sacred: Australian Aboriginal Art: The Collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 90 (illus.), 339 Beyond Sacred: Australian Aboriginal Art: The Collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, edition II, Kleimeyer Industries Pty Ltd, Melbourne, 2011, pp. 96 (illus.), 389 ‘All the paintings of Emily Kngwarreye, so spectacular and diverse in style, express a central theme – that of her identification with the earth and land itself: Anmatyerre country, the country of the yam and the emu’.1 When describing the first paintings on canvas produced by Kngwarreye such as Untitled (Alalgura/Emu Country), 1989, Judith Ryan sees a connection to, as well as an evolution from her earlier batiks, noting that these canvases ‘retain the linear network as an underlayer or foundation, but the dots that were subsidiary in her batik come to the surface… lines and dots converge in a dense field of irregular textured marks which create a sense of depth.’2

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Recorded as E013 in the Delmore Gallery index of works, Untitled (Alalgura/Emu Country) was the second of eight paintings by Emily Kngwarreye produced at Delmore Downs Station in December 1989. One month later, towards the end of January 1990, the painting was consigned for sale at Coventry Gallery in Sydney. 3 A significant early work, Untitled (Alalgura/Emu Country), 1989, conveys the artist’s custodial responsibility for the Yam and the Emu, reflecting Kngwarreye’s connection to country and Women’s ceremonies through body painting and dance. Here the tracery of grey and milky white lines signifies the meandering roots of the yam below the earth with the tracks of the travelling emu above moving between nesting sites. The underlying linear pattern is submerged by in a profusion of overlapping dots painted in a limited palette of ochres (red, yellow and white), together with soft blues and pinks. Fundamentally, this work depicts the relationship between the emu and country. Beneath the soil the bush yam is ready for digging, while above, there is a flurry of movement as the male emu moves across the landscape feeding on various seeds, simultaneously shepherding his chicks into areas where the yam thrives. From the very beginning ‘Emily Kngwarreye was noticeable for the dedication and passion which she applied herself… her work stood out for its spontaneity and verve’4 ,and her legacy in the history of twentieth century Australian art cannot be overstated. The body of work produced in the final stage of her life radically altered the way in which we view and appreciate modern Aboriginal art. Stemming from a lifetime of making art, where the visual and performative aspects are as important as language, her paintings reveal a deep affinity to country and a devotion to women’s ceremony in song, dance and the ceremonial painting of bodies. Celebrating the ever-changing seasonal variations in her homeland of Alhalker and the related spiritual and domestic obligations to country, Kngwarreye’s painting demonstrates the interconnectedness of life, landscape and culture. 1. Isaacs, J., ‘Anmatyerre Woman’ in Emily Kngwarreye Paintings, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1998, p. 12 2. Ryan, J., ‘Emily Kngwarreye in the National Gallery of Victoria’ in Emily Kngwarreye Paintings, ibid., p. 79 3. Information from the Delmore Gallery database, provided by Janet Holt, October 2022 4. Jenny Green cited in Hart, D., Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Paintings from 1989 – 1995, exhibition catalogue, Parliament House, Canberra, 1995, n.p. CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE

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PADDY NYUNKUNY BEDFORD

(c.1922 – 2007) MENDOOWOORRJI – MEDICINE POCKET, 2005 ochres and pigments with synthetic binder on linen 150.0 x 180.0 cm signed with initials verso: PB bears inscription verso: date and Jirrawun Arts cat. PB8-2005-234 ESTIMATE: $140,000 – 160,000

PROVENANCE Jirrawun Arts, Kununurra, Western Australia The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in August 2005 EXHIBITED Paddy Bedford, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 6 December 2006 – 15 April 2007, and touring, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 12 May – 22 July 2007; Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria, 11 August – 16 September 2007; University Art Museum, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 16 November 2007 – 1 March 2008 LITERATURE Storer, R., Paddy Bedford, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2006, pp. 114 (illus.), 158 Beyond Sacred: Australian Aboriginal Art: The Collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 233 (illus.), 343 Beyond Sacred: Australian Aboriginal Art: The Collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, edition II, Kleimeyer Industries Pty Ltd, Melbourne, 2011, pp. 246, 247 (illus.), 394

Crafting his own unique representations of country, the paintings of Paddy Bedford evoke rocky escarpments, rivers and other amorphous features of the Kimberley landscape, whilst at the same time containing a learned and poetical knowledge of the land and its creation stories. His formal language is characterised by a symbiotic relationship between bold forms and an elegant, balanced composition. While Bedford’s earlier work engaged the use of natural ochres to depict his environment, his later work employed a more restrained and pared-back palette, initially using only black and white, but later incorporating grey and pink washes, applied to canvas before the previously administered layer of paint had dried, a process known as ‘wet on wet’. Paddy Bedford (c.1922 – 2007), also known as Goowoomji-Nyunkuny in his own Gija language, is one of the most important Indigenous Australian artists. Painting his first works on left-over building materials in 1998, aged 75, he soon became recognised as an innovator and

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influential artist through his unique depictions of East Kimberley history, and for evolving the artistic tradition forged earlier by Rover Thomas and Paddy Jaminji. Mendoowoorrji – Medicine Pocket, 2005 refers to the stretch of hills between Thoonbi and Thoowoonggoonarrin, to the south-east of Bedford Downs. Medicine Pocket was an important camping area pre-colonisation because of its ‘living water’. This region is replete with brooks and waterways flowing through open land and bordered by hills. Like so much of his work, our painting conveys Bedford’s intricate knowledge of his country, its features, topography, and sacred narratives. This land belongs to the artist’s mother’s dreaming, where in mythological times two men fought with sticks and became part of the landscape at Wanggarnaban (the place where Wanggarnal the crow camped, when she was a woman in the dreaming or Ngarranggarni in gija language). Bedford recalled ‘Mendoowoorr country is not far, the country they call Mendoowoorrji. My uncles (my mother’s brothers) were all Mendoowoorr country owners. They have all died now. They are all buried now. It is alright, the country belongs to me now. That is why I can paint this country, because of my old people.’1 This painting was purchased by Colin and Liz Laverty directly from Jirrawun Arts, Kununurra in late August 2005 soon after it was finished. Paddy Bedford and Colin and Liz Laverty had formed a strong friendship very early on in the artist’s career, with the Laverty’s acquiring his first four recorded paintings made on discarded scraps of plywood in September 1998. During the following decade they acquired another 35 paintings by the artist, often having the opportunity to purchase works prior to exhibition. Paintings and gouaches by Paddy Bedford held in the Laverty collection have been loaned regularly to survey and other exhibitions featuring Bedford in Australia, and internationally. In 2006, Paddy Bedford’s oeuvre was honoured with a grand retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney where this work was displayed. Bedford’s first international retrospective exhibition took place in 2009 at the Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal art in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Since then, his work has been on display at several exhibitions worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris; and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. 1. The artist in conversation with Frances Kofod, in Paddy Bedford, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2007, p. 134 CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE

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MIRDIDINGKINGATHI JUWARNDA SALLY GABORI (c.1924 – 2015) DIBIRDIBI COUNTRY, 2009 synthetic polymer paint on linen 198.0 x 102.5 cm bears inscription verso: artist’s name, title, medium and Mornington Island Arts and Crafts cat. 4304–L–SG–0509 ESTIMATE: $18,000 – 25,000 PROVENANCE Painted in 2009 on Mornington Island for Mornington Island Arts and Crafts Raft Artspace, Darwin The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in September 2009

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EXHIBITED Sally Gabori – a new language in paint, Raft Artspace, Darwin, 13 August – 5 September 2009, cat. 3 Laverty 2, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, New South Wales, 14 May – 14 August 2011 LITERATURE Beyond Sacred: Australian Aboriginal Art: The Collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, edition II, Kleimeyer Industries Pty Ltd, Melbourne, 2011, pp. 377 (illus.), 395

MIRDIDINGKINGATHI JUWARNDA SALLY GABORI (c.1924 – 2015) DIBIRDIBI COUNTRY, 2009 synthetic polymer paint on linen 198.0 x 102.5 cm bears inscription verso: artist’s name, title, medium and Mornington Island Arts and Crafts cat. 4206–L–SG–0409 ESTIMATE: $18,000 – 25,000 PROVENANCE Painted in 2009 on Mornington Island for Mornington Island Arts and Crafts Raft Artspace, Darwin The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in September 2009

EXHIBITED Laverty 2, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, New South Wales, 14 May – 14 August 2011 The Colin and Elizabeth Laverty collection – a selection of Indigenous and non–Indigenous art exhibition, Geelong Gallery, Victoria, 18 February – 15 April 2012 LITERATURE Beyond Sacred: Australian Aboriginal Art: The Collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, edition II, Kleimeyer Industries Pty Ltd, Melbourne, 2011, pp. 382 (illus.), 395

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KEN WHISSON

(1927 – 2022) UNTITLED (CARLTON CAFÉ KITCHEN), 1969 oil on composition board 86.5 x 61.0 cm ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000

PROVENANCE Watters Gallery, Sydney The Collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, Sydney, acquired from the above in July 1987 Deutscher and Hackett, Sydney, 5 April 2017, lot 66 The Laverty Collection, Sydney EXHIBITED The Colin and Elizabeth Laverty collection – a selection of Indigenous and non–Indigenous art exhibition, Geelong Gallery, Victoria, 18 February – 15 April 2012

Untitled (Carlton Café Kitchen), 1969 was acquired in 1987 by the celebrated art connoisseurs, Colin and Elizabeth Laverty who frequently selected numerous works by an artist with the aim of charting his or her development. Ken Whisson was a particular favourite, and at one time the Laverty collection would have held around a dozen or more examples of his works spanning his career. Like many Whisson collectors, they began with his mid-career paintings and then worked back to acquire earlier examples, many of which had remained unsold prior to the mid-1970s when the artist first began to achieve commercial success. The present example is perhaps one of the earliest in their collection. Collecting Whisson’s paintings was largely driven by Elizabeth rather than Colin – who had a particular predilection for abstract art. Elizabeth was the figurative arm of the collecting duo and in view of this it is not surprising that their two sensibilities should find common ground on the surface of Whisson’s work, for few artists tread the line between pure abstraction and figuration with the dexterity of Ken Whisson.

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The present example is untitled as Whisson wants his audience to approach the painting with a completely open mind. He encourages us to discover the painting the way he did – to appreciate its painterly forms and colour values as they evolved on the surface. In this instance, as a concession to the viewer he offers a secondary title included in parenthesis, ‘Carlton Café Kitchen’. It is tempting to construct a reading around this, and why not? The interior as he depicts it is stark and minimal, the surface is divided by upper and lower slabs of colour. Within the space which we assume to be a café, two figures gyrate in typical Whisson fashion. One figure appears to be behind the black square, possibly a counter or stove – perhaps cooking, with the dark form above a plume of smoke. The second figure approaches the counter, possibly as a customer or fellow worker in the café’s kitchen. The real contrast and the substance of the work is the opposing treatments between the organic flesh forms of the humans and the rigid architecture of the workplace. In the late 1960s, Whisson returned from abroad and moved into the bohemian suburb of Carlton. Untitled (Carlton Café Kitchen) was painted at time when the suburb had rich migrant community – jazz music, discussion about art and politics, and anti-Vietnam war sentiment filled the air. Cafes and speakeasies were the natural places for political discourse, and therefore for a political junkie such a Whisson, it follows that these places would be a natural subject for the artist. Any politics, be they local or international, about art and science were central to Whisson’s life and work and accordingly, he would have been a regular voice at rallies gathering and debates – willing to take on even the most passionate adversary with his fever pitch beliefs. Whisson’s works from this period are not for the faint hearted; they are rigorous, uncompromising propositions that challenge the viewer to set aside preconceived ideas about what a painting should be and instead, to wrestle them towards the fantastic, uncharted world of what a painting could be. HENRY MULHOLLAND

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RICHARD LARTER (1929 – 2014) L.C.H (LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE) NO. 3, 1963 synthetic polymer paint on composition board 91.5 x 122.0 cm signed with initials and dated lower left: RL 63 signed and inscribed with title verso: R.A.S. $400.00 / The Human Image / Title “L.C.H. No. 3” / R. Larter, Lot 2 Bringelly / Rd., / L V D DENHAM / N.S.W ESTIMATE: $8,000 – 12,000 PROVENANCE Martin Browne Fine Art, Sydney The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in June 1991

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EXHIBITED Richard Larter – Paintings, Watters Gallery, Sydney, 9 – 26 July 1969, cat. 6 Good Grief! Richard Larter in Canberra Ever!, Abraxas Gallery, Canberra, 28 May – 15 June 1975, cat. 1 Stuart Gerstman Galleries, Melbourne, 6 March – April 1984 An Exhibition At Two Venues To Celebrate Richard Larter’s Seventieth Birthday, Watters Gallery, Sydney, 4 – 22 May 1999, cat. 7 LITERATURE Catalano, G., ‘The earlier paintings of Richard Larter’, Art and Australia, Ure Smith, Sydney, vol. 11, no. 1, July – September 1973, p. 70 (illus.)

DICK WATKINS born 1937 EPISTROPHY, 1973 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 122.0 x 162.5 cm signed, dated and inscribed with title verso: “EPISTROPHY” ⁄ DICK WATKINS ⁄ 1973

PROVENANCE David Bluford, Sydney The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in December 1986

ESTIMATE: $12,000 – 18,000

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AIDA TOMESCU born 1955 HEARTLAND I, 2015 oil on canvas 101.5 x 76.5 cm signed, dated and inscribed with title verso: Aida Tomescu / ‘Heartland I’, 2015 / oil on canvas

PROVENANCE Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney (label attached verso) The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in November 2015 EXHIBITED Eyes in the Heat, Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney, 7 – 28 November 2015, cat. 11 (illus. in exhibition catalogue)

ESTIMATE: $12,000 – 18,000 LITERATURE Wolff, S., ‘Eyes in the Heat’, The Art Life, 17 November 2015 [https://theartlife.com.au/2015/ eyes-in-the-heat-2/] (accessed 21/06/22)

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PETER BOOTH born 1940 PAINTING, 1984 oil on linen 61.5 x 96.5 cm signed and dated verso: BOOTH 1984 ESTIMATE: $18,000 – 24,000

PROVENANCE Pinacotheca Gallery, Melbourne The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in December 1984 RELATED WORK Painting 1984, 1984, oil on canvas, 198.0 x 305.0 cm, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, illus. in Smith, J., Peter Booth Human Nature, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003, cat. 34, p. 72

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LOUISE WEAVER born 1966 WHEN I DANCE WITH YOU I GET IDEAS, 2002 hand crocheted cotton synthetic fibre, cotton and silk embroidery thread, paillettes, glass beads, aluminium settings and jet 50.0 x 70.0 x 25.0 cm ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000

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PROVENANCE Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in October 2002 EXHIBITED Darren Knight Gallery, Melbourne Art Fair, Melbourne, 2 – 6 October 2002

GWYN HANSSEN PIGOTT (1935 – 2013) SILENT STILL LIFE, 1994/2012 woodfired porcelain seven pieces (three bottles, two beakers and two bowls) rearranged by the artist, 2012 32.0 x 68.0 x 16.0 cm (overall) each stamped at base with the artist’s roundel

EXHIBITED Gwyn Hanssen Pigott. Recent Work, Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney, 4 – 29 April 1995 (illus. on exhibition catalogue cover in former 8–piece arrangement) Singular Views, Dowse Art Museum, New Zealand, 11 July – 18 October 1998, cat. 1 (in former 8–piece arrangement) Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: A Survey, 1955 – 2005, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 4 November 2005 – 19 March 2006, cat. 100 (in former 8–piece arrangement)

ESTIMATE: $12,000 – 18,000 PROVENANCE Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in March 1995

LITERATURE McDonald, J., ‘Arts’, Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 29 April 1995, p. 16A (illus., in former 8– piece arrangement) Lewis, R., ‘Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: Recent Work’, Object, Sydney, no. 3/4, 1995, p. 35 (illus., in former 8–piece arrangement) West, M., ‘The Feminine: Five Patterns’, Object, Sydney, no. 4, 1998, p. 55 (illus., in former 8–piece arrangement) Smith, J., Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: A Survey, 1955 – 2005, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2005, cat. 100, pp. 63 (illus.), 108 (in former 8–piece arrangement)

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Impor tant Australian and International Fine Ar t Property of various vendors Lots 59 – 79

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PADDY NYUNKUNY BEDFORD

(c.1922 – 2007) CAMEL GAP, 2004 ochres and pigments with synthetic binder on composition board 80.5 x 100.5 cm signed with initials verso: PB bears inscription verso: Jirrawun Arts cat. PB CB 3-2004-17 ESTIMATE: $45,000 – 65,000

PROVENANCE Jirrawun Arts, Kununurra, Western Australia The Estate of Paddy Bedford Bonhams, Sydney, 21 November 2011, lot 3B Private collection, Sydney EXHIBITED Paddy Bedford: Crossing Frontiers, Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art (AAMU), Utrecht, The Netherlands, 8 October 2009 – 11 April 2010 LITERATURE Storer, R., Paddy Bedford, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2006, p. 161 (illus.) Petitjean, G., et al., Paddy Bedford: Crossing Frontiers, Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art (AAMU), Utrecht, The Netherlands, and Snoeck Editions, Heule, Belgium, 2009, p. 95 (illus.) RELATED WORK Camel Gap, 2004, ochres and pigment on linen, 150.0 × 180.0 cm, in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program by Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, 2012

‘Paddy Bedford’s paintings articulate a complex dialectic between modern materials and traditional pictorial conventions, contemporary experience, and ancient belief systems’.1 Drawing from two very different sources of knowledge, and painting with a deep sense of history and cultural responsibility, Paddy Bedford mapped the rich history of the east Kimberley using stories from his father’s, mother’s and uncle’s country. Within his canvases, historical events together with the more mundane stories about daily life on cattle stations co-exist with profound and lyrical understanding of the land and its creation stories. Bedford explored the important stories from its past whilst painting the bones of the landscape with the waterholes, stockyards and roads that he traversed throughout his life. Painted in 2001, Camel Gap, documents an evolution in the artist’s painting style, moving beyond the more familiar ochre representations of country produced by earlier East Kimberley artists, and predicting his further innovative changes in palette and technique. Camel Gap, also known as Gernawarliyan to the local Gija people, is found in the traditional country of the artist’s mother. Located to the south-east of Bedford Downs station and adjacent to Marty’s bore, a few kilometres east of the Springvale – Lansdowne Road, it is a place where in mythological times, the goanna Garndoowoolany camped in the ngarranggarni (Dreaming). Garndoowoolany called out to Marranyi, the dingo, whom he saw at the top of the hill. It was here that Marranyi got stuck and became part of the rock. Its English name refers both to the shape of the hill and, also to the Afghan cameleers who, in the early twentieth century, travelled past this place on their journey south from the port at Wyndham to remote Kimberley communities and further afield for trade. 1 Michael Dolk cited in Storer, R., ‘Paddy Bedford’ in Michael, L., Paddy Bedford, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 2006, p. 11 CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE

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GINGER RILEY MUNDUWALAWALA

(c.1936 – 2002) LIMMEN BIGHT COUNTRY, c.1990 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 172.5 x 188.0 cm bears inscription verso: artist’s name and Alcaston Gallery cat. AK853 ESTIMATE: $50,000 – $70,000

PROVENANCE Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in March 1991 This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Alcaston Gallery.

‘‘My mother’s country is in my mind.’1 Distinguished by their daring palette, dynamic energy and strongly flattened forms, Riley’s bold, brilliantly coloured depictions celebrating the landscape and mythology of his mother’s country are admired among the finest in contemporary Indigenous art. Emerging at a time when barks were the familiar output for his Arnhem Land country and Papunya Tula paintings were considered the norm, his striking interpretations not only challenged, but irrevocably changed, preconceived notions of Indigenous art – thus earning him the moniker ‘the boss of colour’ by artist David Lar will. Notably influential upon such idiom was Riley’s chance encounter during his adolescence with celebrated watercolourist Albert Namatjira, whose non-traditional aesthetic and concept of ‘colour country’ left an indelible impression upon the young artist. Encouraged by ‘…the idea that the colours of the land as seen in his imagination could be captured in art with munanga (white fella) paints’, 2 it was not, however, until three decades later that Riley would have the opportunity to fully explore his talent when the Northern Territory Open College of TAFE established a printmaking workshop in the Ngukurr Aboriginal Community (formerly known as the Roper River Mission). Notwithstanding his mature age of 50, Riley rapidly developed his own highly sophisticated style and distinct iconography and, after initially exhibiting with the other Ngukurr-based painters,

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soon established an independent career at Alcaston Gallery. Enjoying tremendous success both locally and abroad over the following sixteen years before his untimely death in 2002, Riley received a plethora of awards including the inaugural National Heritage Commission Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 1993 and an Australia Council Fellowship in 1997 – 98, and in 1997, was the first living indigenous artist to be honoured with a retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Capturing the saltwater area extending from the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria along the Limmen Bight River to the weather-worn rocky outcrops known as the ‘Four Arches’, Limmen Bight Country, c.1990 offers a stunning example of Riley’s heroic landscapes. Pivotal to the composition is Garimala, the mythological Taipan who, according to the ancestral dreaming, created the Four Arches – an area regarded as ‘… the centre of the earth, where all things start and finish’3 – and lives in the waterhole nearby. Here the mythological serpent is transformed into Bulukbun – the angry, fire-breathing ‘serpent-dragon’ – and envisaged in duplicate, rising above the Four Arches depicted in ochre with vegetation atop, while the cobalt blue sky beyond is framed by yellow chevrons, a motif derived from Riley’s Yidditja ritual body paint designs. A vibrant celebration of the joy of belonging to the saltwater country of the Mara people, indeed the work embodies Riley’s powerful vision of his mother’s country as a mythic space – a mindscape whose kaleidoscope of dazzling colours and icons continually evoke wonder and mystery in the viewer with each new encounter. 1. Riley cited in Ryan, J.,Ginger Riley, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1997, p. 15 2. Riley cited ibid. 3. Riley, ibid., p. 29 VERONICA ANGELATOS

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ROGER KEMP

(1908 – 1987) UNTITLED, c.1981 oil on canvas 208.0 x 250.0 cm bears inscription verso: COVENTRY ESTIMATE: $40,000 – 60,000

PROVENANCE Estate of the artist, Melbourne, until 2000 Eastgate & Holst, Melbourne Private collection, Perth, acquired from the above in 2005 EXHIBITED Director’s Choice, Eastgate & Holst, Melbourne, September 2005 Abstraction 21, Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne, 16 October – 20 November 2021, cat. 7 LITERATURE Makin, J., ‘Stars blossom in spring’, Herard Sun, 19 September 2005, p. 96 (illus.)

‘Whether the forms are the circle and square or the cruciform image… the cycle of Kemp’s experience returns again and again to the same states of being. Energy and rhythm are everywhere apparent and their passage into structural form provides one of the enduring formal and iconographic themes of his art.’1 Grounded in geometry and mediated by gesture, Roger Kemp’s bold abstract paintings are unique within late twentieth century Australian art, revealing both the singular vision and expressive hand of their maker. Kemp’s purpose also set him apart. There is no narrative in his work, no obvious figuration or representational aim. He sought instead, to express a deeper meaning through his art, a personal perspective ‘that alluded to the timeless and universal, a means to articulate his experience of a higher truth.’2 Dedicating himself to painting full-time from 1966, the 1970s was a critical decade in Kemp’s career, which saw his practice widely acknowledged and celebrated. His work was included in the inaugural Sydney Biennale in 1973, he was awarded an OBE for services to Australian art in 1977, and in 1978, a group of works was acquired

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for the developing national collection. By this time, Kemp had also established a strong relationship with Marianne Baillieu, who ran Realities Gallery in Melbourne, and she energetically championed his work, presenting it in successful commercial exhibitions and placing it in important private and public collections. Slowed down by a stroke in 1980, Kemp had to relearn the use and control of his body, but his motivation and creative drive remained strong. Initially working on a small scale, he was soon producing vast mural-sized paintings which had become such a signature element of his oeuvre during the previous decade. Further accolades and recognition were to follow, including a commission (completed in 1984) to produce a suite of large-scale tapestries for the Great Hall at the National Gallery of Victoria. Hanging against towering bluestone walls beneath Leonard French’s stainedglass ceiling, the Kemp tapestries were well known to visitors to the gallery for decades to come. Created around 1981, this untitled painting exemplifies the expressive dynamism and graphic power of Kemp’s work. His familiar palette of dusty blues and purples is combined here with vibrant shades of red, orange and pink, which are arranged, mosaic-like, into a series of geometric shapes. A red cruciform in the lower left of the canvas and four floating circles dominate the composition, but jostling against smaller, less structured blocks of colour and areas of expressive, gestural painting in the background, they are held in a finely balanced equilibrium. Black and white painted lines define the forms and animate the image, emphasising the feeling of movement across the painting’s surface which vibrates with a palpable sense of energy. The scale on which Kemp worked demanded that painting was a very physical act and, beginning with a preparatory sketch to outline the composition, he then worked freely, as this painting shows, ‘without traces of mannerism, artifice or guile… There was no apparent struggle, no erasures or revisions.’3 1. McCaughey, P., Roger Kemp: Cycles and Directions 1935-1975, Monash University, Melbourne, 1978, n.p. 2. Heathcote, C., A Quiet Revolution: The Rise of Australian Art 1946 – 1968, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1995, p. 7 3. See Heathcote, C., The Art of Roger Kemp, Macmillan, Melbourne, 2007, p. 140 KIRSTY GRANT

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KEN WHISSON

(1927 – 2022) CITYSCAPE / DEEP DREAM, 1994 oil on canvas 110.0 x 120.0 cm signed, dated and inscribed with title verso: Ken Whisson / Perugia 22/1/94 / + 16/2/94/ + 18/3/94 / Title: “Cityscape / Deep Dream” ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

PROVENANCE Watters Gallery, Sydney (labels attached verso) Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 1997 EXHIBITED Ken Whisson paintings & drawings, Watters Gallery, Sydney, 22 October – 8 November 1997, cat. 7 (illus. in exhibition catalogue)

By the time Ken Whisson came to paint Cityscape / Deep Dream, 1994, he had been living permanently in Italy for 17 years and settled into the rhythm of painting and sending the paintings back to Australia for annual solo exhibitions. During these years, the artist was at last comfortable and at ease with commercial and critical success. He was also able to travel abroad more freely and made the most of his annual trips to Australia. He would usually stay a couple of months and visit relatives and friends in most major cities, as well as making trips into the country. A look over the dates of many Whisson works reveals the European winter was a very productive time and it is no coincidence that these periods of high productivity followed his trips abroad. His memories and recollections from his time away would be perfect material for an artist who draws deeply on what he has seen, and how he now sees it. The present work was painted between January and March 1994 following Whisson’s return to Italy. The upper area of the work appears to represent the vertical forms of a city, with details such as buildings, trees and chimneys represented by drapes of low-key colour. Two large clouds threaten to obliterate the sunrise. An abstracted subterranean world beneath presents an alternate perspective which appears open, airy and accessible. We are drawn into the interior of the city and feel the human scale of doors windows, walls and space. So, on one level

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we have the real experience of the entering the city as we fit into its domestic scale, and on another we have the imagined reality of the city, looming large, towering above. There is a familiarity about Whisson’s landscapes for they are constructed of essential matter-of-fact fragments of memory that most of us share; trees are green, roads are grey and so are clouds. Cows have four legs and a tail, so do dogs – but cows are bigger. Birds have wings and fly up and around, they are hard to see because they move fast and blur when they fly. Of course, in reality the details of these examples are nuanced; no two greens or two trees or two cows are ever exactly the same, but their essential values in terms of form, patterns, mass and colour, which trigger memories are generally shared ones. In Whisson’s landscapes, everyday features become stylised versions of themselves. It is his ability to take these and add weight, mass and shape that creates the common denominator through which we view these paintings; it is what causes them to appear familiar and evocative. This is the level on which Whisson works; he is exploring the mechanics of memory, which is something we all share. An image of a particular tree for example can trigger memories, as far back as childhood, in an instant. A particular shade of colour can evoke an avalanche of recollection from a holiday, a place or an event. Once the door is open, memory floods the mind to create fragmented narratives, which Whisson presents as layers of colour, form and line. His completed paintings are a form of mental cubism. Over a lifetime, Whisson quietly cemented his place in the canon of Australian painting. And until his sudden death at 94 in February this year, was painting daily with a fierce enthusiasm. The consistency of his output over many decades is unmatched and his often-polarising paintings are simply unique in Australian art. His 2012 retrospective exhibition held at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art and the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Victoria, was a brilliant and uplifting testimony to his importance. HENRY MULHOLLAND

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ROSALIE GASCOIGNE (1917 – 1999) COW ANTICS, 1976 printed cardboard (cut–out and reassembled Norco butter logos) on weathered wood panel 35.0 x 50.5 cm signed with initials and dated verso: R.G. ’76 ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000 PROVENANCE Gallery A, Sydney Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 1976 Deutscher~Menzies, Melbourne, 28 August 2002, lot 145 (as ‘Norco Cows’) Private collection, Canberra

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EXHIBITED Rosalie Gascoigne – Assemblage, Gallery A, Sydney, 11 September – 2 October 1976, cat. 41 (as ‘Cowantics’ [sic.]) LITERATURE Macdonald, V., Rosalie Gascoigne, Regaro Pty Ltd, Sydney, 1998, p. 106 Gascoigne, M., Rosalie Gascoigne. A Catalogue Raisonné, ANU Press, Canberra, 2019, cat. 105, pp. 169 (illus.), 317, 414 RELATED WORK Norco Cows, 1976, printed cardboard (cut–out and reassembled Norco butter logos) on weathered wood panel, 44.0 x 73.0 cm, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

JOHN COBURN (1925 – 2006) ANNITOWA LANDSCAPE, 1999 oil on canvas 100.0 x 130.0 cm signed lower right: Coburn signed, dated and inscribed with title verso: JOHN COBURN / ANNITOWA LANDSCAPE / 1999

PROVENANCE Private collection, Melbourne Shapiro Auctioneers, Sydney, 5 May 2017, lot 24 Private collection, Queensland RELATED WORK Annitowa Landscape, 1999, lithograph, 42.0 x 63.5 cm, edition of 25, in the collection of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart

ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

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CONSTANCE STOKES (1906 – 1991) WOMAN IN A GARDEN, c.1981 oil on composition board 53.5 x 45.0 cm signed lower right: Constance Stokes ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000 PROVENANCE Estate of the artist, Melbourne Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 2021

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EXHIBITED Constance Stokes Retrospective Exhibition, Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Victoria, 1985, cat. 12 (labels attached verso) Constance Stokes, Eastgate Gallery, Melbourne, 30 May – 4 July 1990, cat. 23 Constance Stokes 1906 – 1991, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 3 March – 19 May 1993, cat. 16 (label attached verso) Constance Stokes 1906 – 1991, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, 30 November 2021 – 18 March 2022 (illus. in exhibition catalogue, p. 6) LITERATURE Burke, J., Constance Stokes: Retrospective Exhibition, Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Victoria, 1985, p. 22 (illus.) D’Albrera, L. W., Constance Stokes: Art and Life, Hill House, Melbourne, 2015, pp. 156, 159 (illus.)

DONALD FRIEND (1915 – 1989) THE JETTY gouache, watercolour, ink and gold leaf on paper on board 47.5 x 61.5 cm signed and inscribed with title lower right: The Jetty. / Donald Friend bears inscription verso: 2

PROVENANCE Holdsworth Gallery, Sydney Private collection, Sydney LITERATURE d’Alpuget, B., Monkeys in the Dark, Aurora Press, Sydney, 1980 (illus., front cover)

ESTIMATE: $18,000 – 24,000

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JOHN BRACK (1920 – 1999) STUDY FOR NUDE WITH NIGHTGOWN, 1957 pencil on buff paper 48.5 x 33.0 cm signed and dated lower right: John Brack / 57 ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000 PROVENANCE Brian and Marjorie Johnstone, Brisbane Marjorie Johnstone, Brisbane, 1992 Private collection, Brisbane, a bequest from the above in 1994

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EXHIBITED Exhibition by John Brack: Paintings and Drawings of the Nude, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 12 – 29 November 1957, cat. 19 John Brack, Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane, 26 April – 13 May 1960 LITERATURE Grishin, S., The Art of John Brack, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1990, vol. 2, cat. p73, pp. 49, 202 (illus., as ‘p67’) RELATED WORK Nude with Nightgown, 1957, oil on canvas, 90.5 x 40.5 cm, private collection, sold Deutscher and Hackett, Sydney, 28 August 2018, lot 5

ROBERT DICKERSON (1924 – 2015) REDFERN BOY, c.1958 oil on composition board 91.5 x 60.5 cm signed lower left: DICKERSON bears inscription verso: RRBNN ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

PROVENANCE Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane Private collection, Brisbane, acquired from the above in 1995 EXHIBITED The Private Collection in Brisbane, Brisbane City Hall Art Gallery and Museum, Brisbane, 1 – 30 June 1990 (label attached verso) 40 Years – 40 Paintings, Philip Bacon Galleries 40th Anniversary, Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane, 18 February – 15 March 2014, cat. 22 (label attached verso)

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JOHN BRACK (1920 – 1999) UNTITLED SKETCH (NURSERY), 1962 watercolour and ink on paper 47.0 x 17.5 cm signed and dated lower right: John Brack 62 ESTIMATE: $8,000 – 12,000

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PROVENANCE Private collection Lawson~Menzies, Sydney, 15 April 2003, lot 124 Private collection, Canberra

JOY HESTER (1920 – 1960) WOMAN AND ROSE, 1957 charcoal on paper on cardboard 62.0 x 48.0 cm signed and dated lower right: Joy Hester / ‘57 ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

PROVENANCE Lauraine Diggins, Melbourne Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 26 November 1990, lot 5 Private collection Private collection, Canberra, acquired in 2002 EXHIBITED Moderns Exhibition, Lauraine Diggins, Melbourne, 20 June – 8 July 1983, cat. 36 (as ‘Portrait with Rose’, illus. in exhibition catalogue)

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FRED WILLIAMS (1927 – 1982) OLINDA HILL FROM FOSTER’S GARDEN, SUMMER, 1961 watercolour on paper 39.5 x 57.0 cm (sheet) signed lower centre: Fred Williams. ESTIMATE: $10,000 – 15,000

PROVENANCE Dr Harold Hattam, Melbourne Thence by descent Private collection Niagara Galleries, Melbourne The Reg Grundy AC OBE and Joy Chambers– Grundy Collection, acquired from the above in 1993 (stamp and label attached verso) EXHIBITED Possibly: Fred Williams, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 20 June 1961

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FRED WILLIAMS (1927 – 1982) MITTAGONG, 1957 gouache on paper 27.5 x 38.0 cm (sheet) signed lower left: Fred Williams bears inscription on typed label verso: ‘MITTAGONG 1957’ / Lyn Williams 1993

PROVENANCE The Reg Grundy AC OBE and Joy Chambers–Grundy Collection

ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

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BRETT WHITELEY (1939 – 1992) THE CAT IN THE SUNLIGHT, 1980 offset lithograph 81.5 x 83.5 cm (image) 116.0 x 91.0 cm (sheet) edition: 9th Artist’s Proof aside from an edition of 9 signed lower right: brett whiteley numbered and inscribed with title lower left: A/P ‘9’ the cat in the sunlight ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000 PROVENANCE Beth Patrick, London, a gift from the artist Private collection, London, a gift from the above in 2005

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EXHIBITED Probably: Brett Whiteley, Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane, 1981, cat. 8 (another example) The Entire Collection of the Graphics of Brett Whiteley: 1961 – 1981, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 1981, cat. 56 (another example, as ‘The Cat’) LITERATURE Mandy, R., Brett Whiteley: The Complete Graphics, 1961 – 1982, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 1983, cat. 59, p. 42 (illus. another example) Brett Whiteley: The Graphics 1961 – 1992, Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne, 1995, cat. 60, p. 67 (illus. another example) Sutherland, K., Brett Whiteley: Catalogue Raisonné, Schwartz Publishing, Melbourne, 2020, vol. 5, p. 121 (illus.), cat. 105P (illus., another example), vol. 7, p. 829

CRESSIDA CAMPBELL born 1960 BONDI, 1984 woodblock print on paper 34.0 x 89.0 cm edition: 2/4 signed, dated and inscribed with title below image: 2/4 BONDI / Cressida Campbell ’84 ESTIMATE: $18,000 – 24,000 PROVENANCE Private collection, Canberra, acquired directly from the artist c.1984

EXHIBITED Cressida Campbell: Woodblocks, Woodblock Prints and Paintings, Mori Gallery, Sydney, 12 – 30 March 1985, cat. 24 LITERATURE Dutton, G., Sun, Sea, Surf and Sand – The Myth of The Beach, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1985, pp. 74 (illus., another example), 153 Baker, C., ‘ Bondi - taking hedonism to heart’, The Sydney Review, Sydney, no. 3, August 1988 (illus. another example) Crayford, P., (ed.), The Woodblock Painting of Cressida Campbell, Public Pictures Pty Ltd, Sydney, 2008, cat. P8502, p. 341 (dated 1985)

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JOHN RICHARDSON GLOVER

(1790 – 1868) SKETCHBOOK OF VIEWS IN ITALY, c.1849 bound sketchbook with 39 sketches pencil, pen, ink and wash on paper 12.0 x 19.0 cm (sheet, each) 13.5 x 19.5 cm (book) 34 sketches are numbered and inscribed with title ESTIMATE: $8,000 – 12,000

PROVENANCE Private collection, Tasmania, acquired c.1850s Thence by descent Private collection, Tasmania EXHIBITED On short term loan to Queen Victoria Museum Launceston, Tasmania, for the purposes of research, 1977 On short term loan to the Australian National Gallery, Canberra, for the purposes of research, 1981 – 82 On short term loan to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Tasmania, for the purposes of research, 2000 RELATED WORK John Glover, (Sketchbook no. 87: Italy), 1818, pencil, pen, ink and wash, 18.1 x 11.8 cm, in the collection of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, illus. in Hansen, D., John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, 2003, p. 253

We are grateful to Jane Stewart, Principal Curator, Art for the Tasmanian Museum and Gallery, for her assistance with this catalogue essay. When the eminent landscape artist John Glover emigrated from England to Van Diemen’s Land, he was accompanied by his wife and eldest son, John Richardson Glover.1 He was sixty-four; John Richardson forty-one. Arriving in Hobart Town in April 1831, they were reunited with his three other sons, who had begun farming on palawa land two years earlier. In 1832 John was granted land by the Nile River in northern Tasmania where they built their house Patterdale. Here he re-established his painting practice, ably supported by John Richardson as studio assistant and farmer. As we know well, John became Tasmania’s most renowned colonial landscape artist. An art teacher in England, John Richardson’s own artistic output in Van Diemen’s Land was limited, and he is best known now for pen and wash drawings recording local buildings and letters describing of their life and activities, significant documents about colonial Tasmanian settlement. This small sketchbook draws upon the talents and activities of both artists. It is one of the extant examples showing John Richardson’s close artistic relationship with his father, and the vital role that

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sketching, copying and re-using earlier visual records played before the development of photography. The book contains thirty-nine (previously forty-four) small monochromatic landscapes – the features outlined in pen and ink and enhanced with even tonal washes, which evoke the atmosphere and luminosity of the Italian vistas depicted. A hand-written index, titled Views in Italy, provides locations for the topographical vistas: St Peter’s in Rome, Lake Nemi, the Taro River, Suza and so on. 2 Yet John Richardson is not known to have visited Italy. Instead, the numbers at the lower left of each drawing correspond with sketches in one of the 104 sketchbooks John had brought with him to Van Diemen’s Land. John is known to have been an inveterate sketcher and traveller, often fitting multiple sketches per page. His pupil Edward Price wrote: ‘His knowledge was almost entirely derived from the Study of Nature and not from Works of Art. His numerous Sketchbooks are full of Indian Ink drawings made at all hours… Nothing escaped his observation and he never lost an opportunity of noting down anything that was worth remembering.’3 During 1818 John had travelled to Italy, seeing in the flesh picturesque views and edifices that he would have previously only studied in engravings and other tourists’ art. His only surviving Italian sketchbook, Sketchbook 87, is held by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart and records some of the evocative landscapes, churches and Roman ruins that he had seen. It is well known that John called upon his sketchbooks throughout his life: in 1835 at Patterdale, for example, he painted My last view of Italy, looking from the Alps over Suza (Art Gallery of New South Wales). Upon John’s death in 1849, his sketchbooks were distributed between his three surviving sons. Sketchbook 87 was given to John Richardson, and he selected forty-four views to copy for his, or another’s, further use, possibly before sale.4 A Whatman watermark, dated 1849, shows that the sketchbook was made no earlier than the year of John’s death. 1. Contemporary statements suggest that debts accrued by John Richardson influenced their move. 2. Sketches numbered 5 – 8 and 12 are now missing from the book. 3. Edward Price, quoted in David Hansen (ed.), John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, 2003, p. 44 4. Hansen, ibid., p. 264 ALISA BUNBURY

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HANS HEYSEN (1877 – 1968) ROMANCE, 1921 watercolour on paper on card 46.0 x 57.0 cm (sheet) signed and dated lower right: HANS HEYSEN 1921 inscribed verso: No. 29 ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

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PROVENANCE Fine Art Society’s Gallery, Melbourne Florence Colles Cox, Victoria, acquired from the above in 1921 Thence by descent Private collection, Tasmania EXHIBITED Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Hans Heysen, Fine Art Society’s Gallery, Melbourne, 24 November – 8 December 1921 , cat. 66

HANS HEYSEN (1877 – 1968) THE SHADOWED HILL, 1936 watercolour on paper 32.0 x 39.5 cm signed and dated lower left: HANS HEYSEN. 1936.

PROVENANCE S. P. & H. K. Calder, Melbourne Thence by descent S. W. Calder, Melbourne Thence by descent The Estate of Winifred B. Calder, Melbourne

ESTIMATE: $15,000 – 18,000

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SYDNEY LONG (1871 – 1955) PINK FLAMINGOES watercolour on paper 39.5 x 66.0 cm (sight) signed lower right: SiD LONG ESTIMATE: $15,000 – 20,000

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PROVENANCE Vallard House Art Gallery, Queensland Private collection, Canberra, acquired from the above in January 2002

MAX MELDRUM (1875 – 1955) REFLECTIONS – RHODODENDRONS, 1934 oil on board 38.5 x 46.0 cm signed lower right: Meldrum

PROVENANCE The estate of the artist, Melbourne Thence by descent Private collection, Melbourne

ESTIMATE: $4,000 – 6,000

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A Collection of Works by Ludwig Hirschfeld – Mack Lots 80 – 94

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LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK

(1893 – 1965, German/Australian) UNTITLED (SEATED FEMALE FIGURE WITH LONG YELLOW HAIR), 1921 – 22 oil on canvas 77.0 x 53.5 cm ESTIMATE: $40,000 – 60,000

PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy EXHIBITED Bauhaus e visioni, Museum of Modern Art, Bolzano, Italy, 2000 – 01, cat. 39; Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; Jewish Museum Frankfurt, Germany LITERATURE Stasny, P., Ludwig Hirschfeld–Mack: Bauhaus e visioni, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Germany, 2000, cat. 39, pp. 53 (illus.), 56

The arrival of Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack in Australia in 1940 established a direct link between avant-garde European modernism and twentieth century Australian art. Interned in England, where he had sought refuge from the rise of Nazism in Germany, Hirschfeld-Mack was one of more than two and half thousand men transported to Australia on board the HMT Dunera. Many of the ship’s passengers were highly educated, skilled professionals who went on to make significant contributions to the cultural, economic and social life of their new country. In the creative fields of art and design alone, the ‘Dunera Boys’ included the photographer Henry Talbot, the sculptor Erwin Fabian, and Fred Lowen and Ernst Rodeck, founders of FLER furniture. Hirschfeld-Mack was one of the most well-trained artists on the Dunera. His studies began in 1913 when, with the support of a monthly allowance from his father, he enrolled at the Debschitz School in Munich, while undertaking compulsory military training.1 Progressive in its approach, the school welcomed female students (including Hirschfeld-Mack’s sister, Emmy, who established a career in costume design) and staff, and encouraged the application of the visual and applied arts to everyday life. 2 This approach aligned with the philosophy of the Bauhaus, where Hirschfeld-Mack continued his studies between 1919 – 25. Founded by architect Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919, the Bauhaus counted among its teachers some of the most innovative and influential artists of the time, including Paul Klee, Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky and Oskar Schlemmer. Reflecting the idealism and desire for a better world which was shared by so many following the devastating experience of the First World War, the school’s manifesto proposed a radical challenge: ‘Let us create a new guild of craftsmen, without the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist. Together let us conceive and create the new building of the future, which can embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity.’3 Painted in oil on canvas, Untitled (Seated female figure with long yellow hair), 1921 – 22 was made mid-way through Hirschfeld-Mack’s years at the Bauhaus. Sophisticated in its technical realisation and complex in composition, the painting reflects the work of a skilled artist who is absorbing and distilling a range of creative influences. Art historian,

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Peter Stasny, suggests that the artist’s wife, Elenor, may have provided the inspiration for this image which, although strikingly abstract, describes a female figure with long, blonde hair, seated and holding a book on her lap.4 Stasny also identifies the influence of Johannes Itten, one of the Bauhaus masters, in the rhythmic repetition of form that animates the surface design.5 Pattern is a distinctive element of the work, as is the focus on texture, from hard-edged, angular forms, to translucent veils of colour, which are beautifully expressed, highlighting Hirschfeld-Mack’s deft control of his brush and medium. Juxtaposed and layered, colour is also a critical element, not surprising for an artist who taught a seminar on colour theory at the Bauhaus in the winter of 1922 – 23 and was renowned for his experiments with colour and innovative Farbenlichtspiele (colour-light plays), which combined original musical scores with dynamic projections of coloured light.6 Recognising the danger and volatility of the political situation in Europe, Gropius had moved to the United States in 1937. Holding Hirschfeld-Mack in high esteem, he encouraged him to do the same, recommending him for a teaching position in Boston and when this fell through, promising to help him find employment. Indeed, they remained close throughout their lives, and Gropius and his wife, Ise, visited Geelong Grammar with Hirschfeld-Mack during their trip to Australia in 1954. In early 1940, Hirschfeld-Mack’s immigration to America seemed certain with the firm offer of a job at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, however plans were derailed once again, when he was interned following the fall of France in May 1940, as a result of the escalation of suspicion and distrust of Germans and Austrians living in England, even if, like Hirschfeld-Mack, they had Jewish heritage.7 The rest, as they say, is history. 1. For a detailed biographical account of Hirschfeld-Mack’s life, see Schwarzbauer, R. with Bell, C., Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack: More Than a Bauhaus Artist, HistorySmiths, Melbourne, 2021 2. ibid., p. 23 3. Cited in Schwarzbauer, ibid., pp. 36 – 37 4. Stasny, P., ‘At the Bauhaus’, Ludwig Hirschfeld–Mack: Bauhaus e visioni, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Germany, 2000, p. 57 5. ibid. 6. See Schwarzbauer, op. cit. ch. 5 and McNamara, A., The Bauhaus in Australia: Interdisciplinary Confluences in Modernist Practices’ in Stephen, A., Goad, P., & McNamara, A., (eds.), Modern Times: The Untold Story of Modernism in Australia, The Miegunyah Press, Carlton, 2008, pp. 12 – 13 7. Schwarzbauer, op. cit., pp. 131 – 32 and p. 144 KIRSTY GRANT

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Building of the Bauhaus School of Art in Weimar, c.1911 photographer: Louis Held

No. 1 Internment Camp, Tatura Tatura Irrigation and Wartime Camps Museum

Four Geelong Grammar boys working on straw construction (material studies) with Hirschfeld © Chris Bell

Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack’s art provides a remarkable visual record of a remarkable life. While abstract works reflect his training at the Weimar Bauhaus, where he studied between 1919-25 under influential European modernists, other imagery documents his subsequent experiences in Australia, illuminating an important aspect of our wartime history. Having been interned in England as an ‘enemy alien’, German-born Hirschfeld-Mack was deported to Australia on the infamous HMT Dunera.1 Disembarking in Sydney Harbour in early September 1940, he was transported to an internment camp at Hay, about 600 kilometres west of Sydney, writing to his daughter that there were ‘a lot of kangaroos… hopping in great speed alongside the train … also wonderful coloured parrots making terrific noise.’2 After nine months, he was briefly transferred to another camp in Orange, New South Wales, and then in mid-1941, to Tatura, in central Victoria, where he remained until his release in March 1942.

world is powerfully communicated in his best-known print, Desolation, Internment Camp, 1941, where the Southern Cross is a stark symbol of their dislocation and isolation.

This collection of works on paper demonstrates Hirschfeld-Mack’s parallel interests in abstraction and realism. There are dynamic studies of line, form and colour – perhaps preliminary ideas for monotypes and paintings – made in Huyton, the English internment camp, as well as in Hay. There are also pencil sketches, occasionally coloured, and woodcuts, which provide a fascinating record of daily life in the Australian internment camps. He depicts guards in their distinctive broad-brimmed hats, a sentry box inside tall wire fences, as well as internees standing, talking, gardening and reading. Of particular interest is the sketch of an artist cutting a woodblock, hammer and chisel in hand, and Study for Internment Camp, Tatura, 1941, the drawing on which the woodcut of the same name is based, and which illustrates the camp’s gardening activities. Impressions of this and other related prints are held in various State and national collections. 3 Although Hirschfeld-Mack reported that the internees were treated well, the reality of being detained in a foreign country on the other side of the

Following the intervention of a friend who recognised Hirschfeld-Mack’s skills and experience as an artist and teacher, his release was secured and he took up the role of art master at Geelong Grammar in early 1942. The headmaster, James Darling, found him ‘both indispensable and irreplaceable’ and his approach to teaching, which echoed the Bauhaus practice of combining practical trade-based crafts and fine art, also engaged the students.4 The eminent curator and art-historian, Daniel Thomas AM, recalls being electrified upon learning that his art teacher had worked with Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, explaining that, ‘to see the stylistic connection between Klee’s art, illustrated in books, and Hirschfeld-Mack’s own framed watercolour hanging by the door to his flat was a first flash of art history, of the flow of forms and ideas through time and place.’5 Documenting his surroundings in pictures, HirschfeldMack depicted the school chapel, the cloisters and Cuthbertson House in three woodcuts, while a fourth, made around 1943, describes a road leading to the nearby You Yangs, the broad, open landscape providing a poignant contrast to the physical and psychological enclosure of the scene he had described in Desolation, just two years earlier. 1. See Bartrop, P. and Eisen, G., The Dunera Affair: A documentary resource book, The Jewish Museum of Australia & Schwartz and Wilkinson, Melbourne, 1990. 2. Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack to his daughter, Marga Bell, 19 September 1940, cited in Schwarzbauer, R. with Bell, C., Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack: More Than a Bauhaus Artist, HistorySmiths, Melbourne, 2021, p. 152 3. The woodcut is catalogued under varying titles: for example, Internment Camp, Tatura at Art Gallery of New South Wales and Tatura at both the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Gallery of Australia. 4. See Schwarzbauer, op. cit., pp. 184 – 85 5. Daniel Thomas quoted in Schwarzbauer, ibid., pp. 196 – 97 KIRSTY GRANT

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81 LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK (1893 – 1965, German/Australian) NATIONALISME, INTERNMENT CAMP STUDIES, HUYTON, ENGLAND, 1940 VERSO: FIGURE STUDIES ink and pen on paper 20.5 x 25.5 cm (sheet) dated and inscribed lower left: Huyton / Juni 1940 inscribed upper left: Nationalisme ESTIMATE: $1,000 – 2,000

PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy

82 LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK (1893 – 1965, German/Australian) FIGURES OUTSIDE HUT 18, HAY, 1940 ink on paper 14.0 x 17.5 cm (sheet) dated and inscribed lower right: December 1940. Hut 18, Hay ESTIMATE: $1,500 – 2,000

PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy

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83 LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK (1893 – 1965, German/Australian) I. ABSTRACT FIGURE STUDIES, 1940 VERSO: HAY INTERNMENT CAMP STUDIES pencil on paper 19.5 x 23.0 cm (sheet) dated and inscribed lower right: July 1940 dated and inscribed verso: Hay 1940 II. ABSTRACT IDEAS, HAY, 1940 VERSO: SKETCH FOR ‘THE WORLD TO COME’ pencil on paper 22.0 x 28.5 cm (sheet) dated and inscribed lower right: Hay 1940 inscribed verso: What do we do with our globe after this destruction? ESTIMATE: $1,000 – 2,000 (2)

PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy

84 LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK (1893 – 1965, German/Australian) I. ABSTRACT STUDY, HAY, 1940 pencil on paper 24.0 x 20.5 cm (sheet) dated and inscribed lower right: Hay 1940 II. ABSTRACT STUDY, HAY, 1940 watercolour on paper 17.0 x 14.0 cm (sheet) dated and inscribed lower right: Hay 1940 ESTIMATE: $1,000 – 2,000 (2)

PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy

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85 LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK (1893 – 1965, German/Australian) STUDY FOR INTERNMENT CAMP, TATURA, 1941 VERSO: PREPARATORY SKETCH FOR THE WOODCUT ‘INTERNMENT CAMP, TATURA’ watercolour and pencil on paper 19.0 x 23.5 cm (irreg., sheet) dated and inscribed lower right: Tatura 1941 ESTIMATE: $4,000 – 6,000 PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy RELATED WORK Internment camp, Tatura, 1941 – 1942, woodcut, 15.0 x 24.1 cm, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK (1893 – 1965, German/Australian) I. OUTSIDE TATURA INTERNMENT CAMP WITH WATCH TOWER AND BUILDINGS, 1941 pencil on paper 20.5 x 26.0 cm (sheet) dated and inscribed lower right: Tatura 1941

II. STANDING FIGURES, TATURA, 1941 pencil on paper 20.5 x 26.0 cm (sheet) dated and inscribed lower right: Tatura 1941 ESTIMATE: $2,000 – 3,000 (2)

PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy

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87 LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK (1893 – 1965, German/Australian) I. FIGURES AND HUT, TATURA, 1941 pencil on paper 20.5 x 26.0 cm (sheet) dated and inscribed lower left: Tatura, 1941 II. GUARD, TATURA, 1941 pencil on paper 16.5 x 20.5 cm (sheet) dated and inscribed lower right: Tatura 1941 III. FIGURES AT LEISURE WITH ARTIST AND WOODBLOCK, TATURA, pencil on paper 20.5 x 26.0 cm (sheet) ESTIMATE: $2,000 – 3,000 (3)

PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy

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LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK

(1893 – 1965, German/Australian) DESOLATION, INTERNMENT CAMP – ORANGE, NSW, 1941 woodcut on paper 22.0 x 13.5 cm (image) 26.0 x 21.0 cm (sheet) dated and inscribed lower right below image: Orange 1941 ESTIMATE: $2,000 – 3,000

PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy EXHIBITED Two masters of the Weimar Bauhaus: Lyonel Feininger, Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 4 July – 19 August 1974, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 29 August – 6 October 1974, cat. 62 (another example) Australian prints from the Gallery’s collection (1998 – 1999), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 6 November – 7 February 1999, cat. 64 (another example) Bauhaus and Expressionism: German prints and drawings from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale, New South Wales, 4 March – 15 May 2005 (another example) Masters of emotion: exploring the emotions from the old masters to the present, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria, 20 April – 24 June 2007, cat. 81 (another example) Out of Australia: Prints and Drawings from Sidney Nolan to Rover Thomas, The British Museum, London, May – September 2011, cat. 21 (another example) Home front: wartime Sydney 1939 – 45, Museum of Sydney, Sydney, 31 March – 9 September 2012 (another example) Isolation, The British Museum, London, July – September 2012 (another example) Under the Stars, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 21 March – 7 February 2021 (another example)

LITERATURE Draffin, N., Two masters of the Weimar Bauhaus: Lyonel Feininger, Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1974, p. 56 (illus., another example) Eagle, M., Australian Modern Painting Between the Wars 1914 – 1939, Bay Books, Sydney, 1989, p. 21 (illus., another example) Kolenberg, H., and Ryan, A., Australian prints from the Gallery’s collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1998, pp. 76, 77 (illus., another example) Sayers, S., Australian art, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001, pl. 89, p. 160 (illus., another example) Wilson, G., The Big River show: Murrumbidgee Riverine, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, New South Wales, 2002, pp. 19 (illus. another example), 23 Hawker, P., ‘Into the heart of darkness’, The Age, Melbourne, 23 April 2002 Buckley, J., Nocturne: images of night and darkness from colonial to contemporary, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria, 2002, pp. 14 (illus., another example), 27 Butler, R., Printed images by Australian artists 1885 – 1955, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2007, p. 222 (illus., another example) Zdanowicz, I., Masters of emotion, Mornington Peninsula Art Gallery, Victoria, 2007, p. 53 (another example) Sayers, A., Engledow, S., and Caruana, W., Open air: portraits in the landscape, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, 2008, pp. 52, 53 (illus., another example) Mares, P., ‘Remembering the Dunera’, Inside Story, 13 July 2018, https://insidestory.org.au/rememberingthe-dunera/ (accessed 11/2/2022) RELATED WORK Other examples of this print are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, the British Museum, London and the University of Melbourne Art Collection, Melbourne

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LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK (1893 – 1965, German/Australian) DESOLATION, INTERNMENT CAMP – ORANGE, NSW, 1941 coloured woodcut on paper 22.0 x 13.0 cm (image) 26.0 x 20.5 cm (sheet) ESTIMATE: $2,000 – 3,000 PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy

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EXHIBITED Bauhaus e visioni, Museum of Modern Art, Bolzano, Italy, 2000 – 01; Jewish Museum of the City of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; Jewish Museum Frankfurt, Germany LITERATURE Stasny, P., Ludwig Hirschfeld–Mack : Bauhaus e visioni, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Germany, 2000, p. 157 (illus.) RELATED WORK Another example of this print is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK (1893 – 1965, German/Australian) (TWO WORLDS), 1943 VERSO: STUDY OF A COUPLE ink and gouache on paper inscribed upper left: WHAT… WHAT… WHAT IS 20.5 x 15.5 cm (sheet) dated verso: 1943

PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy

ESTIMATE: $2,000 – 3,000

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91 LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK (1893 – 1965, German/Australian) CORIO (THE CHAPEL), 1943 woodcut on paper 15.5 x 20.5 cm (image) 21.0 x 33.0 cm (sheet) signed and dated lower right: L. Hirschfeld–Mack 1943 bears inscription verso: There are eight lino prints of these in the collection / MB October 1987 ACT ESTIMATE: $2,000 – 3,000 PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy LITERATURE Schwarzbauer, R., and Bell, C., Ludwig Hirschfeld– Mack: More than a Bauhaus Artist, HistorySmiths, 2021, pl. 104, p. 182 (illus. another example, as ‘Chapel of All Saints, Geelong Grammar School, 1945’) RELATED WORKS Other examples of this print are held in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (as ‘Geelong Grammar School Chapel, from the rear’) and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

92 LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK (1893 – 1965, German/Australian) CUTHBERTSON HOUSE, GEELONG GRAMMAR SCHOOL, c.1943 woodcut on paper 15.5 x 20.5 cm (image) 21.0 x 33.0 cm (sheet) ESTIMATE: $2,000 – 3,000

PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy RELATED WORKS Other examples of this print are held in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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93 LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK (1893 – 1965, German/Australian) THE CLOISTERS, GEELONG GRAMMAR SCHOOL, CORIO, 1943 woodcut on paper 15.5 x 21.0 cm (image) 21.0 x 33.0 cm (sheet) signed lower right below image: L. Hirschfeld–Mack inscribed with title and date lower left below image: Corio, 1943 ESTIMATE: $2,000 – 3,000 PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy EXHIBITED Bauhaus and Expressionism: German prints and drawings from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale, New South Wales, 4 March – 15 May 2005 (another example) LITERATURE Schwarzbauer, R., and Bell, C., Ludwig Hirschfeld– Mack: More than a Bauhaus Artist, HistorySmiths, 2021, pl. 120, pp. 210, 211 (illus. another example, as ‘War memorial cloisters, Geelong Grammar School’) RELATED WORKS Other examples of this print are held in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

94 LUDWIG HIRSCHFELD–MACK (1893 – 1965, German/Australian) CORIO, ROAD TO THE YOU YANGS, c.1943 woodcut on paper 14.0 x 20.5 cm (image) 21.0 x 33.0 cm (sheet) ESTIMATE: $2,000 – 3,000 PROVENANCE The estate of the artist Private collection, Italy RELATED WORKS Other examples of this print are held in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

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Spor ting Paintings by Frederick Woodhouse Snr and Jnr from The L aver t y Collection Lots 95 – 98

Cover of Pastures and pastimes: an Exhibition of Australian racing, sporting and Animal Pictures of the 19th century by Colin Laverty Image courtesy of Douglas Stewart Fine Books

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Sporting Paintings by Frederick Woodhouse Snr and Jnr from The Laverty Collection Lots 95 – 98

Born in Essex, England in 1820, Frederick (Fred) v arrived in Melbourne in 1858 with his wife and four sons, including Frederick Junior, then aged ten. Another two sons were born subsequently; four of the six sons were to become artists. Woodhouse was an experienced artist, as well as a former yeoman cavalryman, and swiftly established himself as the colony’s pre-eminent sporting and animal artist. Over the next forty years, he was a prolific producer of oil paintings, watercolours, lithographs and illustrations for newspapers, magazines, catalogues and studbooks, he co-founded Bell’s Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle; published and illustrated a history of the Melbourne Cup; and designed sporting trophies. While thoroughbred portraits were his staple, he also painted hunting and coursing scenes, cattle, sheep, greyhounds and the occasional fishing, landscape or historical scenes. From 1860, Woodhouse exhibited in various local and intercolonial exhibitions and was a founding member of the Victorian Academy of Arts. His patrons included wealthy landowners such as the Chirnsides of Werribee Park and Austins of Barwon Park, who now-infamously introduced rabbits, hares, deer, foxes and numerous game birds into Victoria for their hunting pleasure. Then, as now, racing was a popular sport. The Melbourne Race Club was formed in 1838, with Flemington becoming the site of Melbourne’s principal races from 1840. The Melbourne Cup was first held in 1861 and soon became a favoured annual spectacle. In 1888 when Mentor won, an estimated 143,000 people attended – many thousands more than attend now. The genre of the sporting picture had flourished in Britain in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries simultaneously with the breeding of thoroughbred horses, and the desire to records one’s prize-winning racers, stock and sporting achievements came with the British to Australia. Woodhouse timed his emigration well – one of his best-known achievements is painting the winner of the Melbourne Cup each year for over thirty years.

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In the group of paintings offered here, we see three of Woodhouse’s oil paintings covering a range of equine topics: the racehorse Le Var (winner of many intercolonial prizes including the Perth Cup, 1898); the trotter Wanderer (winner of numerous Trots 1872 – 77); and an unidentified horse returned to its stall with the feathered and furred spoils of a hunt. Each follow the well-established profile pose emphasising their superb condition and breeding. The portrait of Mentor with his trainer and handler was painted by Frederick Junior, who had been apprentice and assistant to his father and whose technique is frequently similar in painterly precision and refinement of proportions. However, the increasing use of photography in the later nineteenth century reduced the demand for the fine horse portrait, and Woodhouse lamented the change: ‘A Melbourne Cup always meant £100 to me and the work occupied about a fortnight, but photography knocked me out. Now an owner can get a picture of his horse in a sixpenny weekly, or for nothing – wrapped around the meat.’1 The sporting genre in Australian art has received comparatively little attention, with the exception of kangaroo hunting scenes. These paintings are from the renowned collection of Dr Colin Laverty who became the expert on the art of the Woodhouse family, and author of Australian Colonial Sporting Painters: Frederick Woodhouse and Sons. 1. William Moore, cited in Laverty, C., Australian Colonial Sporting Painters: Frederick Woodhouse and Sons, The David Ell Press, Sydney, 1980, p. 12 ALISA BUNBURY

FREDERICK WOODHOUSE SNR (1820 – 1909) WANDERER, – PROPERTY OF P. G. DIXON ESQ., 1878 oil on canvas 61.0 x 91.5 cm ESTIMATE: $12,000 – 18,000

PROVENANCE Mr & Mrs R. Van Vuure, The Hague, Netherlands The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in February 1987 EXHIBITED Racing Days, Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria, 1 May – 15 June 1997, cat. 8 RELATED WORK Wanderer- Property of P. G. Dixon Esq., 1878, tinted lithograph with hand colouring, 54.5 x 85.0 cm, illus. in Australia and Australian-Related Art, 1830s – 1970s, Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne, 1987, cat. 6

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FREDERICK WOODHOUSE JNR. (1847 – 1927) MENTOR, WINNER OF 1888 MELBOURNE CUP, WITH TRAINER WALTER S. HICKENBOTHAM AND JOCKEY MICK O’BRIEN, AT FLEMINGTON, 1889 oil on canvas 71.0 x 94.0 cm signed and dated lower right: Fred Woodhouse Junr / 1889 ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000

PROVENANCE Brian Maguire, Melbourne, by 1969 Larry Foley, Fremantle Kozminsky Galleries, Melbourne The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in October 1998 EXHIBITED Pastures & Pastimes: An Exhibition Of Australian Racing, Sporting & Animal Pictures Of The 19th century, Victorian Artists Society Gallery, Melbourne, 14 October – 5 November 1983; Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria, 19 November – 20 December 1983; S.H. Ervin National Trust Gallery, Sydney, 6 January – 19 February 1984, cat. 78 Mentor and the 1888 Melbourne Cup, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 28 October – 20 November 2002 Gambling in Australia: thrills, spills and social ills, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 6 April – 10 October 2004 (illus. in exhibition catalogue) LITERATURE Bernstein, D. L., First Tuesday in November: The Story of the Melbourne Cup, William Heinemann Ltd., Melbourne, 1969, p. 225 (illus., as ‘Mr D. S. Wallace’s MENTOR, winner of the Melbourne Cup in 1888, with trainer Walter Hickenbotham and jockey Mick O’Brien’) Laverty, C., Australian Colonial Sporting Painters, Frederick Woodhouse and Sons, The David Ell Press, Sydney, 1980, pp. 82 – 83 (illus.) Laverty, C., Pastures & Pastimes: An Exhibition Of Australian Racing, Sporting & Animal Pictures Of The 19th century, Victorian Ministry of the Arts, Melbourne, 1983, cat. 78, p. 65 Makin, J., ‘Art has its day at the races – in the frame’, Herald Sun, Melbourne, 3 November 1998

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FREDERICK WOODHOUSE SNR (1820 – 1909) AFTER THE HUNT, 1882 oil on academy board 47.0 x 61.0 cm signed and dated lower right: Fred Woodhouse Snr / 1882 inscribed verso: … / ‘69 Australia ESTIMATE: $8,000 – 12,000

PROVENANCE Gould Galleries, Melbourne The Laverty Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in November 1981 EXHIBITED Spring Exhibition 1977: Recent Acquisitions, Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne, 19 October – 3 November 1977, cat. 18 Pastures & Pastimes: An Exhibition Of Australian Racing, Sporting & Animal Pictures Of The 19th century, Victorian Artists Society Gallery, Melbourne, 14 October – 5 November 1983; Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria, 19 November – 20 December 1983; S.H. Ervin National Trust Gallery, Sydney, 6 January – 19 February 1984, cat. 63 LITERATURE Laverty, C., Pastures & Pastimes: An Exhibition Of Australian Racing, Sporting & Animal Pictures Of The 19th century, Victorian Ministry of the Arts, Melbourne, 1983, cat. 63, p. 60

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FREDERICK WOODHOUSE SNR (1820 – 1909) CHAMPION RACEHORSE LE VAR, WITH OWNER ALFRED ECCLES, 1897 oil on canvas 56.0 x 76.5 cm signed and dated lower right: Fred Woodhouse Senr / 1897 bears inscription on frame verso: By F Woodhouse 1897 MB. A. Eccles (OWNER) / “LE VAR” ESTIMATE: $12,000 – 18,000 PROVENANCE The Laverty Collection, Sydney

EXHIBITED Pastures & Pastimes: An Exhibition Of Australian Racing, Sporting & Animal Pictures Of The 19th century, Victorian Artists Society Gallery, Melbourne, 14 October – 5 November 1983; Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria, 19 November – 20 December 1983; S.H. Ervin National Trust Gallery, Sydney, 6 January – 19 February 1984, cat. 71 Laverty 2, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, New South Wales, 14 May – 14 August 2011 LITERATURE Laverty, C., Australian Colonial Sporting Painters, Frederick Woodhouse and Sons, The David Ell Press, Sydney, 1980, pp. 58 – 59 (illus., as ‘Le Var in a Stable, with Owner Alfred Eccles’) Laverty, C., Pastures & Pastimes: An Exhibition Of Australian Racing, Sporting & Animal Pictures Of The 19th century, Victorian Ministry of the Arts, Melbourne, 1983, cat. 71, p. 62 (as ‘Le Var, Winner of Major West Australian Races’)

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conditions of auction and sale

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h. The ‘reserve’ refers to the minimum price (including any GST) the consignor will accept for a lot. PRELIMINARY CONDITIONS AND DISCLAIMER 2. Agency: Deutscher and Hackett acts as agent for the vendor and the contract of sale for the lot will be between the buyer and the vendor. 3.

Property is sold ‘as is’: To the extent permitted by law: a. no guarantees, warranties or representations are made (express or implied) by Deutscher and Hackett or the vendor in relation to the nature and condition of any lot; and b. Deutscher and Hackett disclaims liability for any misrepresentations, errors or omissions, whether verbal or in writing, in the catalogue or any supplemental material.

All factual information provided by the vendor is merely passed on by Deutscher and Hackett from the vendor or other source. Deutscher and Hackett has made no attempt to verify this information. All additional statements of opinion represent the specialist opinions of Deutscher and Hackett employees and should not be relied upon as statements of fact. 4. Responsibility to inspect: Responsibility remains with the buyer to satisfy its, his or her self by inspection and evaluation prior to purchase as to the nature and condition of any property. CONDITIONS AT AUCTION 5. Registration: Bidders must register to bid and obtain a bidder’s paddle prior to the commencement of the auction. Registration requires that bidders provide proof of identity and Deutscher and Hackett may impose other obligations on the registration of bidders in its discretion. 6. Auctioneer’s discretion: Deutscher and Hackett reserves the right to absolute discretion over the conduct of the auction including the regulation of bidding and its increments. This discretion extends to the challenge or rejection of any bid, the right to withdraw any lot and the right to determine the successful bidder or reoffer a lot in the event of a dispute. The prospective buyers and sellers guide details an indicative process for the conduct of auctions. All parties are strongly urged to read the prospective buyers and sellers guide included in this catalogue.

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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 ser vices rendered by Deutscher and Hackett, 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.

185

CATALOGUE SUBSCRIPTION FORM q q q q

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

SALE CODE: GIRAFFE SALE NO.: 072 IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN + INTERNATIONAL FINE ART MELBOURNE AUCTION 1 DECEMBER, 7:00 PM LOTS 1 — 98 105 COMMERCIAL ROAD SOUTH YARRA VIC 3141

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

Business name

Address

City

State

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

Card number

Signature

Expiry date

Date

info@deutscherandhackett.com

187

ATTENDEE PRE-REGISTRATION FORM (Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss) Name (please print)

Business name

Address

City

Telephone/Mobile

State

Post Code

SALE CODE: GIRAFFE SALE NO.: 072 IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN + INTERNATIONAL FINE ART MELBOURNE AUCTION 1 DECEMBER, 7:00 PM LOTS 1 — 98 105 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

188

TELEPHONE BID FORM SALE CODE: GIRAFFE SALE NO.: 072 IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN + INTERNATIONAL FINE ART MELBOURNE AUCTION 1 DECEMBER, 7:00 PM LOTS 1 — 98 105 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

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.

189

ABSENTEE BID FORM (Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss) Name (please print)

Billing address (PO Box insufficient)

Address

City

Telephone

State

Post Code

Business/Mobile

SALE CODE: GIRAFFE SALE NO.: 072 IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN + INTERNATIONAL FINE ART MELBOURNE AUCTION 1 DECEMBER, 7:00 PM LOTS 1 — 98 105 COMMERCIAL ROAD SOUTH YARRA VIC 3141

Facsimile Email

Signature (required)

LOT NO.

ARTIST/TITLE

Date

MAXIMUM BID*

1. 2. 3.

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.

190

INTERNAL USE ONLY RECEIVED BY

DATE

TIME

Until 30.04.23 EXHIBITION ENTRY FREE ONLY IN CANBERRA Jon Rhodes, Jimmy Sing, Glebe, Sydney, New South Wales, 1974, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2171057193, courtesy Jon Rhodes

194

195

24 September 2022 – 8 January 2023

Free artgallery.wa.gov.au

SPEECH

PA TT ER NS NADIA HERNÁNDEZ JON CAMPBELL

and

Nadia Hernández “Pinta flores, pinta aguacates, pinta un bodegón lleno de cosas que te gustan, pinta algo que hayas cocinado con tu madre, pinta...” 2022. Oil on linen, 198 x 137 cm. Collection of River Capital. © Nadia Hernández.

196

5 Nov 2022 – 22 Jan 2023

Free entry

197

20 AUGUST 2022 – 19 FEBRUARY 2023 Four decades of art from China and beyond Chinese artistry from the Golden Dragon Museum

the Geoff Raby Collection

Guan Wei, Water View No. 15, (detail) 2011, synthetic polymer paint on canvas. La Trobe University, Geoff Raby Collection of Chinese Art. © Guan Wei. Courtesy the artist, ARC One Gallery and Martin Browne Contemporary. Photo: Jia Die 198

199

Death and taxes. Interestingly, we offer a solution for both.

By giving generously to enrich Australia’s artistic heritage and future with a contribution to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, you can avoid the inevitable. With a tax-deductible donation, or by promising a gift in your Will, you can live on. Tax legislation is refreshingly favourable to those wishing to make a gift or bequest to the Art Gallery. The wonderful Art Gallery collection depends on the loyalty and generosity of our many benefactors.

200

Art informs, enriches and nourishes the community as a whole. Your love of art can live on through the gesture of a bequest, anonymously or as an acknowledgement on a work you have assisted the Gallery to acquire. Your donation can reflect a specific passion for a particular period of art, or a favourite department in the Gallery. And best of all, you can enjoy the benefits of being involved with the Gallery once you have pledged your bequest. For further information or to discuss your bequest in confidence, by phoning Lisa-Marie Murphy, Philanthropy Manager on 02 9225 1746 or email lisa-marie.murphy@ag.nsw.gov.au

Briton Rivière Requiescat 1888, Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased 1897–98

FRED WILLIAMS: THE LONDON DRAWINGS OPENS 21 OCT 2022 FREE ENTRY THE IAN POTTER CENTRE: NGV AUSTRALIA, FED SQUARE

NGV.MELBOURNE Fred Williams Elephant 1953 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Presented by the Art Foundation of Victoria by Mrs Lyn Williams, Founder Benefactor, 1988 © Estate of Fred Williams The NGV warmly thanks Lyn Williams AM and Family for their instrumental contribution.

201

Lot 34

Lot 54

Lot 2

Lot 35

Lot 55

Lot 3

Lot 36

Lot 56

Lot 4

Lot 37

Lot 57

Lot 5

Lot 39

Lot 58

by Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art.

Lot 40

Lot 59

Lot 6

Lot 41

Lot 60

Lot 7

Lot 42

Lot 8

Lot 43

Lot 9

Lot 10

Lot 11

Lot 12

Lot 13

Lot 14

Lot 15

Lot 16

Lot 61

Rights Society (ARS), New York 2022

Lot 63

Lot 64

Arts, Inc. / Licensed by DACS, London

Lot 65

Lot 46

Lot 66

Lot 47

Lot 67

Roslyn Oxley 9 Gallery, Sydney

Lot 68

Lot 48

Lot 69

Lot 49

Lot 70

Lot 17

Lot 50

Lot 71

Lot 18

Lot 72

Lot 28

Lot 73

Lot 30

Lot 74

Lot 31

Lot 52

Lot 76

Lot 32

Lot 53

Lot 77

Lot 33

Lot 44

Lot 51

CULTURAL HERITAGE PERMITS

LOTS CONSIGNED BY GST REGISTERED ENTITIES

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:

Lot 9 Lin Onus Lot 10 Lin Onus Lot 11 Lin Onus Lot 12 Lin Onus Lot 13 Lin Onus Lot 14 Lin Onus Lot 15 Lin Onus

Department of Communications and the Arts GPO Box 2154 Canberra ACT 2601 Email: movable.heritage@arts.gov.au Phone: 1800 819 461

Photography: Danny Kneebone

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 2022 978-0-6452421-7-1

202

Lot 16 Lin Onus

index H

A ARCHIPENKO, A. ARKLEY, H.

43 5

HESTER, J.

HEYSEN, H.

76, 77

HEYSEN, N.

HIRSCHFELD-MACK, L.

80, 81, 82, 83,

ROBERTS, T.

RUSSELL, J. P.

84, 85, 86, 87,

BARTON, D. K.

88, 89, 90, 91,

BECKETT, C.

92, 93, 94

BOOTH, P.

BOYD, A.

2, 34

BRACK, J.

67, 69

BUNNY, R.

S SMART, J.

49, 59 3

32, 33 60

BLACKMAN, C.

REES, L.

RILEY MUNDUWALAWALA, G.

BANKSY

BEDFORD, P. N.

RAE, I.

STOKES, C.

KEMP, R.

KNGWARREYE, E. K.

1 65

T TOMESCU, A.

L LARTER, R.

LONG, S.

WARHOL, A.

WATKINS, D.

WEAVER, L.

CAMPBELL, C.

COBURN, J.

CROOKE, R.

MELDRUM, M.

WHISSON, K.

52, 62

MOLVIG, J.

WHITELEY, B.

4, 7, 8, 73

D 68

DOBELL, W.

NAMATJIRA, A.

DRYSDALE, R.

DICKERSON, R.

WILLIAMS, F.

71, 72

WITHERS, W.

WOODHOUSE JNR, F.

WOODHOUSE SNR, F.

95, 97, 98

O OLIVER, B.

F FAIRWEATHER, I.

18, 31

FRIEND, D.

FULLER, F.

OLLEY, M. ONUS, L.

47 35, 39

V VASSILIEFF, D.

9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

P G GABORI, M. J. S.

50, 51

GASCOIGNE, R.

6, 63

GLOVER, J. R. GRUNER, E.

PIGOTT, G. H.

PRESTON, M.

17, 36, 37

75 26, 27

203

204

specialist fine art auction house and private gallery

Important Australian and International Fine Art

Articles inside

absentee bid form

conditions of auction and sale

prospective buyers and sellers guide

sporting paintings by Frederick Woodhouse Snr

a collection of works by Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack

various vendors lots 59 – 79

contemporary art from The Laverty Collection

and Jnr from The Laverty Collection lots 95

lots 80

lots 17

important Australian Art from the collection of Reg Grundy AC OBE and Joy Chambers-Grundy

various vendors lots 20 – 47

lots 48

various vendors lots 1 – 8

collection of S&P Global, Australia lots 9

important works by Lin Onus from the