various vendors lots 20 – 47

(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

EXHIBITED

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

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)

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.

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 ‘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).

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 Head- Charlie 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.

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.

(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

(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 1888 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

(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

EXHIBITED

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

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 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

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.

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

(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.’

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 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

(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

(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

(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

(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

(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

(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 Drysdale retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery 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.

(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

(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

(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

(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.

Importantly, the style 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