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

(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 further 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

(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

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, 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

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