N AT I O N A L G A L L E RY O F A U S T R A L I A , C A N B E R R A
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SPRING 2011 | 67
Proud sponsor of the National Gallery of Australia’s retrospective Fred Williams: infinite horizons
RENAISSANCE 12 AUGUST – 6 NOVEMBER 2011
THIS SUMMER IN CANBERRA
FRED WILLIAMS INFINITE HORIZONS Canberra | nga.gov.au Fred Williams Iron ore landscape 1981, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, presented through the NGV Foundation by Rio Tinto, Honorary Life Benefactor, 2001. © estate of Fred Williams
OUT OF THE WEST MODERN TIMES
Fred Williams Savill Galleries, Specialising in the Buying and Selling of major Australian paintings
Savill Galleries has an extensive stockroom of paintings by well known Australian painters including Olley, Boyd, Blackman, Shead, Nolan & Fred Williams for sale. We are also looking to buy works by these artists. Please send images together with their sizes to: art@savill.com.au Top: Fred Williams Werribee Gorge (II) 1977 oil on canvas, 106.7 x 96.5 cm signed lower left Fred Williams Werribee Gorge (II) 1977
Bottom: Fred Williams Lysterfield V 1965 oil on canvas, 91.5 x 106.5 cm signed lower left
Contact information: Tel 02 9327 8311
FRED WILLIAMS
Open: Tuesday to Friday 10 - 6 and Saturday 11 - 5
infinite horizons PAGE 8
Savill Galleries 156 Hargrave Street Paddington NSW 2021 www.savill.com.au
Fred Williams Landscape with acacias IV 1974, private collection
Fred Williams Lysterfield V 1965
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Published quarterly by the National Gallery of Australia, PO Box 1150, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia artonview.editor@nga.gov.au | nga.gov.au
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© National Gallery of Australia 2011
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Summer in Canberra, the Renaissance: Botticelli, Raphael,Titian and other Italian masters
Christin Dixon
Copyright of works of art is held by the artists or their estates. Apart from uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of Artonview may be reproduced, transmitted or copied without the prior permission of the National Gallery of Australia.
Director’s word
FEATURES
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Fred Williams in retrospect
Deborah Hart
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Modern times in the West: Western Australian art from the 1940s to now
EDITOR Eric Meredith DESIGNER Kristin Thomas PHOTOGRAPHY by the National Gallery of Australia Photography Department unless otherwise stated RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Nick Nicholson PRINTER Blue Star Print, Melbourne
Anne Gray
PREVIOUS ISSUES nga.gov.au/Artonview
ACQUISITIONS
ENQUIRIES copyright@nga.gov.au Produced by the National Gallery of Australia Publishing Department
ISSN 1323‑4552 PRINT POST APPROVED pp255003/00078 RRP A$9.95 | FREE TO MEMBERS MEMBERSHIP membership@nga.gov.au nga.gov.au/Members TEL (02) 6240 6528 FAX (02) 6270 6480 WARNING Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this publication may contain images and names of people who have passed away.
(cover) Raphael Saint Sebastian 1501–02 oil on wood panel 45.1 x 36.5 cm Accademia Carrara, Bergamo bequest of Guglielmo Lochis, 1866
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Members Acquisition Fund 2011–12
Deborah Hart
20 Antony Gormley Angel of the North (life-size maquette) 22 Florence Fuller Dawn landscape 23 Howard Taylor Columns 24 Nineteenth-century Western Australian furniture 25 Nici Cumpston Campsite V, Nookamka Lake 26 Roy Lichtenstein Proto-Pop prints 28 Hawaii Hawaiian feather cape 29 Fiji Kinikini 30 India Sarasvati, Goddess of Arts and Learning REGULARS
31 Travelling exhibitions 32 News from the Foundation 33 Creative partnerships 34 Thank you … 36 Members news
Director’s word It is my considerable pleasure to announce that the great Italian Renaissance comes to Canberra in December, bringing to Australia for the first time remarkable works by Raphael, Botticelli, Mantegna, Perugino, Bellini and Titian and lesser-known artists such as Vivarini, Crivelli, Carpaccio, Lotto, Tura, Moroni and many more. Some of you would have been to Italy and others will be familiar with Renaissance paintings through reproductions, but we are proud to offer you the once-in-a-life-time opportunity to experience the actual works in Australia for the first time. The exhibition comes from Italy, the heartland of the European Renaissance, from the exquisite collection of the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo. Exclusive to Canberra, Renaissance: 15th- and 16th-century Italian paintings from the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo will be a blockbuster the likes of Masterpieces from Paris: van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and beyond, our 2009–10 exhibition of Post-Impressionist works from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. With timed-tickets,
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available through Ticketek, we will avoid lengthy queues and ensure more visitors can enjoy this rare opportunity to see paintings of such aesthetic and art historical significance. Renaissance will be the first exhibition in Australia to concentrate exclusively on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian Renaissance painting. Indeed, never has there been an exhibition that includes fifteenth-century Italian works in Australia. Paintings by Raphael, Botticelli, Bellini, Mantegna and Perugino have never before been seen in Australia; they are absent from Australian collections. On 12 August, we launched the retrospective Fred Williams: infinite horizons. Williams is unequalled in his innovation as a twentieth-century painter and observer of the Australian landscape. Who else could have achieved the seemingly impossible task of renewing the gum tree and scrub as a subject of Australian painting in the twentieth century, or of finding affinities between contemporary abstraction and early colonial topographical drawings and watercolours.
Since landscape was the central concern of Australian art for much more than a century before Williams created his groundbreaking body of work, his position in our visual culture is immensely important. His classic open landscapes of the 1960s helped Australians view the repetitious, afocal quality of much of our sparsely treed country as an essential part of Australia’s infinite and subtle beauty. Nobody had painted Australia like this. For the first time the three former directors of the National Gallery of Australia gathered at the official opening to pay tribute to this remarkable Australian artist. An exquisite and insightful book accompanies the exhibition. Written by curator Deborah Hart, the book is a full retrospective look at the art of Fred Williams. Out of the West: art of Western Australia, which was launched in July, continues into 2012. It is the first survey exhibition outside Western Australia to present a large sample of works from the state, from the past to the present and in a diverse range of
Sandro Botticelli The story of Virginia the Roman c 1500 tempera on wood panel 83.3 x 165.5 cm Accademia Carrara, Bergamo bequest of Giovanni Morelli, 1891
Australia’s two most senior female artists Margaret Olley AC and Gloria Fletcher Thapich AO seen together before the opening ceremony for the Stage 1 wing at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 30 September 2010. Photograph: S Elliott
media. The exhibition is split across levels at the Gallery: ‘The early years (from presettlement to 1940)’ is in the Project Gallery upstairs and ‘Modern times (1940s to now)’ in the Orde Poynton Gallery downstairs. The previous issue of Artonview included an article on the inception and development of Western Australian art; in this issue, we explore the dynamic and creative modernist period from the 1940s onward. We were greatly saddened by the death of painter and philanthropist Margaret Olley AC, whose generosity, warm personality and colourful approach to life endeared her to the Australian public and colleagues alike. Olley was a regular visitor to the Gallery and is well represented in the collection. Her generosity over many years enabled us to acquire major works that would otherwise have been out of reach. She gifted Edgar Degas’s drawing Dancer in fourth position c 1885, for example, on the occasion of our 2008 exhibition Degas: master of French art. Olley’s magnificent oil painting Hawkesbury wildflowers and pears 1973 is the subject of the 2011–12 Members Acquisition Fund (see page 18). The loss earlier this year of another very important artist, Gloria Fletcher Thapich AO, was also deeply felt. Her last major work, the large sculpture Eran 2010, sits outside our new entrance. Before her death, she had sustained the longest career of any female Aboriginal artist. She is also well represented in the national collection. A number of the recent acquisitions profiled in this issue of Artonview are currently on display in Out of the West. Howard Taylor’s tough sculpture Columns 1967 is one of the new highlights of the ‘Modern times’ part of the exhibition. It joins numerous other works by Taylor in
the national collection and reflects the use of jarrah in the colonial furniture on display in ‘The early years’. The fine of examples of nineteenth-century Western Australian furniture, acquired from the Wordsworth Collection, show how the settlers adapted their trade skills to the local hardwoods. We also cover Anthony Gormley’s life-size bronze maquette of his famous Angel of the North in Gateshead, United Kingdom. This work was an extraordinarily generous gift from James and Jacqui Erskine and an important acquisition for the Gallery. The Gallery received ten prints produced between 1949 and 1956 from Roy Lichtenstein’s early development as an artist, before he created his trademark benday-dot, comic-strip style of painting. They were a gift of Kenneth Tyler and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler and are the earliest examples of Lichtenstein’s work in the national collection. Nici Cumpston’s Campsite V, Nookamka Lake 2008–10 is the first work by this Aboriginal photographer to be acquired by the Gallery and will feature alongside the work of 19 other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists in the next National Indigenous Art Triennial, opening in May 2012. Pauline and John Gandel, who made an
extremely generous gift to the Gallery’s Stage 1 building in 2010 (recognised by the naming of the Gandel Hall), have assisted in the acquisition of an Indian Hoysala dynasty stone sculpture of Sarasvati, the Hindu goddess of arts and learning. While the Gallery has one of the great Indian collections in the world outside India itself, we did not have anything from the 12thcentury Hoysala kingdom. The acquisition of this attractive and very rare sculpture addressed this gap in the collection. A brilliant and extremely rare Hawaiian feather cape and a fierce Fijian club (kinikini) improve our collections from the Pacific. The cape was exhibited in the Niagara Falls Museum from around 1880 until 1999, and we believe it was the last such cape left in private hands before we aquired it for the national collection. The finely carved and shaped priest’s club (kinikini) from Fiji, dated to the mid nineteenth century, is among the most extraordinary and technically difficult objects to produce.
Ron Radford AM
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Giovanni Bellini Madonna and Child c 1488 oil on wood panel 84.3 x 65.5 cm Accademia Carrara, Bergamo bequest of Giovanni Morelli, 1891
SUMMER IN CANBERRA, THE RENAISSANCE Botticelli, Raphael, Titian and other Italian masters Renaissance: 15th- and 16th-century Italian paintings from the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo 9 December 2011 – 9 April 2012 | renaissance.nga.gov.au
For the first time the National Gallery of Australia will give visitors the opportunity to experience Early and High Renaissance paintings by many of the greatest Italian artists. Raphael, Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Bellini and Titian are some of the painters represented in our summer exhibition, which reveals an amazing gamut of talent and creative splendour. More than 70 works on canvas and wood panel will be on display only in Canberra. These treasures are on loan from the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, Italy. Borrowing from its marvellous collection is only possible because the Accademia is renovating its display spaces, and the museum is temporarily closed. The collection is comparatively little known, which is why we were able to borrow so many great works. If they were from the Uffizi or Vatican, it would be almost impossible to borrow so many works by such famous artists, particularly fragile fifteenth-century works on panel. The city of Bergamo lies in the province of Lombardy in northern Italy, just south
of the Alps. It is located northeast of Milan and southeast of Lake Como. Its long and fascinating history ranges from Celtic origins and Roman settlement to inclusion in the Venetian Republic from the fifteen century. The Venetian conquerors fortified the Città Alta on the hill; it remains a magical medieval town, enclosed within huge walls, with the modern city laid out below. The works in Renaissance were created between 1400 and 1600 by exceptional artists in northern and central Italy. Of extraordinary quality, the paintings were made in such centres of Renaissance culture as Venice, Florence, Milan, Bergamo, Padua, Ferrara and Siena, where Church and private patrons commissioned religious scenes as well as magnificent portraits. Subjects range from poignant depictions of the Madonna and Child, Bible stories, the lives of the saints and moving renditions of the Crucifixion to insightful images of nobles and patricians. These two centuries of Italian art are the foundation of the grand tradition of
European painting. The genius of Raphael and Titian is known to all, but less famous artists such as Cosmè Tura, Carlo Crivelli, Lorenzo Lotto, Bartolomeo Vivarini, Vittore Carpaccio, Pietro Perugino and Giovan Battista Moroni announce their prodigious talents in Canberra. Paintings by Raphael, Botticelli, Bellini, Andrea Mantegna and Perugino have never been shown in Australia before; other works, painted by some of the most important and talented artists to practise in this formative period of European art, have rarely or never been shown here. Botticelli’s Redeemer c 1505 is among the most moving works in the exhibition, the artist demonstrating the pathos of his subject through a stylised depiction of the suffering of Christ. Botticelli shows Christ in an iconic way, which was popular during the Renaissance period, to be used in mystical contemplation. Christ’s head and hands are shown at the apogee of sacrifice, the crown of thorns piercing His slightly bent head. He looks out at the viewer with tears trickling down His face. His hands
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and chest clearly bear the wounds of the Passion. Botticelli has painted golden rays emanating from every wound, to startling effect. Nonetheless, Christ blesses us with His right hand. Renaissance Europe saw bursts of invention and new technology, from the development of telescopes to the introduction of oil paint. The medium spread into Italy from Flanders in the second half of the fifteenth century, and its brilliant hues and depth came to its apogee in Venice in the sixteenth century. One of the earliest masters was Bellini, whose Madonna and Child 1488 shows a mother looking tenderly at her baby Son. Her
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deep‑blue drapery dominates the image. The Christ Child stands on a marble ledge upon which rests a pear. Bellini proudly signs his work on a cartellino (small piece of paper) painted onto the canvas. The Florentine artist Botticelli created The story of Virginia the Roman 1498 as a large panel. He narrates the tragedy of a girl whose death saves the Roman Republic. Reading from the left, Virginia’s fate unfolds: the assault on her virtue, trial by her kidnapper, murder at the hands of her father and her posthumous vindication. Botticelli presents the theatrical scene in three acts; it is rhythmic and rich in colour and set within grand Classical architecture.
Saint Sebastian 1501–02 is depicted by Raphael holding an arrow, which would become the instrument used by his torturers. Instead of the traditional iconography of a partially draped man shown full length, the artist presents an elegant and richly dressed young man wearing gold‑embroidered black brocade, a red cloak with gold edging and a gold chain. Raphael enjoys pictorial devices such as the saint’s oval face mirrored in the loop of his chain, the curved halo echoed in his eyebrows. Again, the early Christian subject is placed in an idyllic central Italian landscape of the Renaissance. Among other exquisite images of the
Madonna and Child is Titian’s panel of about 1507, resplendent in colour, sensuous in its rendering of flesh and drapery and set in the countryside surrounding Venice. Such depictions of local scenery, bringing the sacred stories home to their audiences, signal the birth of landscape painting. The naturalism of the scene is underlined by the warm rapport of mother and baby, totally absorbed in each other. The most charming portrait in the exhibition is Moroni’s Portrait of a child of the House of Redetti c 1570. She is dressed in her best clothes and jewellery, holding her pearl necklace and wearing a coral bracelet to protect her health. The artist captures
the little girl’s patience, as it is about to turn to weariness with the hard task of sitting for her portrait. His rendering of the gold‑and‑black silk dress is a tour de force of oil painting. The National Gallery of Australia is delighted to show great art from the Italian Renaissance. The exhibition will enrich the cultural life of Australia and reinforce our already warm bonds of friendship with the people of Italy, who have generously agreed to share their wonderful paintings with us.
Sandro Botticelli Redeemer c 1505 tempera and gold on wood panel 47.6 x 32.3 cm Accademia Carrara, Bergamo bequest of Giovanni Morelli, 1891
Giovan Battista Moroni Portrait of a child of the House of Redetti c 1570 oil on canvas 43.3 x 33.2 cm Accademia Carrara, Bergamo bequest of Guglielmo Lochis, 1866
Titian Madonna and Child in a landscape c 1507 oil on wood panel 38.8 x 48.3 cm Accademia Carrara, Bergamo bequest of Guglielmo Lochis, 1866
Christine Dixon Senior Curator, International Painting and Sculpture
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FRED WILLIAMS IN RETROSPECT Fred Williams: infinite horizons 12 August 2011 – 6 November 2011 | nga.gov.au/Williams
Fred Williams revolutionised the way we see and think about the Australian landscape. In the 1960s, inspired by the landscape of Victoria close to where he lived, he distilled the essence of environment in his paintings and works on paper. However, while the subjects were regional, Williams wanted to convey a wider sense of place. The local was the template for the more general, unifying elements of the continent. His intuitive sense of unity was confirmed over the years with his growing interest in geology and his broadening experience of diverse aspects of the country, from Erith Island and Flinders Island in Bass Strait in the south to Cape York in far north Queensland to the Pilbara region in Western Australia. For all the differences he perceived in these places, he also grasped underlying commonalities. As a student in the 1940s, Williams had been interested in a tonalist approach to colour that came from his art training at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. When he returned home to Australia in 1957, after five years living in London, he was immensely taken with the subtle yet richly varied tones of the Australian bush. At the time, John Brack asked him where he was going to focus his energies in his art, and Williams responded that he was going to paint the gum tree. Like many others, Brack thought this might be a retrograde move, but Williams was determined.
He was soon painting the bush close to Mittagong in the Southern Highlands where he stayed with friends. In works such as The Nattai River 1958 (his first painting to enter a public collection), he conveyed his feeling for the subtleties of the bush. He was also mindful of the ways in which the basic forms of trees, rocks and the rivers could become structural elements in his compositions. His approach was inspired by an ever-deepening knowledge of art of the past. Among his favourite artists were Australian Impressionists such as Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton and French Post-Impressionists such as Paul CĂŠzanne and Georges Braque. In the 1960s, Williams often painted outdoors with gouache, subsequently working on his oil paintings back in the studio. The breakthrough came with the You Yangs series inspired by an area of granite ridges and plains of low vegetation scattered across open areas. Compared with the English landscape that was tamed and ordered, Williams recognised that a paradoxically defining aspect of the Australian landscape was the random scatter of elements with no focal point. He was able to conceptualise this landscape from an aerial perspective, the rocks and small trees translated into sensuous touches of paint. In some paintings, such as You Yangs landscape 1963, these notations were painted over golden grounds, which he described
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as ‘painter’s honey’; in others, he adopted delicate, pale sandy hues, affirming his mostly tonal approach to colour in the first two decades of his artistic development. Although he was an innately modest man who did not enjoy talking about his work, Williams was ambitious for his art. He saw his work as part of a tradition of Australian landscape painting and was also open to contemporary developments. In the late 1960s, he was interested in Minimalism and Colour Field paintings, which he saw in the exhibition Two decades of American painting that came to Australia in 1967. Part of his brilliance as an artist was the way that he selectively adapted aspects of his sources into works that clearly and distinctively revealed his own vision. For instance, he
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recognised that tiny, minimal notations with the brush on the space of the paper or canvas could correspond with a sense of the spaciousness of the Australian landscape. In the 1970s, Williams felt an urgent desire to paint with colour, partly informed by the vibrant Colour Field paintings he had seen and by his need to reinvent his art after going as far as he could with his minimalist Australian landscape series painted indoors. He began painting outdoors in oil on canvas, often in the company of friends. He liked to get to know particular landscapes well, returning again and again and amassing large series of works over several years. The outdoor oils were generally complemented by what he called ‘a summation oil’ painted in the studio.
While the outdoor paintings were generally more spontaneous and representational, the studio works, such as Yan Yean 1972–73, were more distilled and abstracted, rather like his earlier approach. Only now they were suffused with brilliant colour. Williams’s special talent was abstracting from the real or, as he put it, seeing the world ‘in terms of paint’. The paintings that convey the most seamless transition between his minimal works of the late 1960s and the fullness of sumptuous colour of the 1970s and between close observation of the real and abstraction were his paintings of water. These include his evocative seascapes of the Victorian coastline and his vibrant oil paintings of Erith Island in Bass Strait, such as
(pages 8–9) Fred Williams The Nattai River 1958 oil on composition board 88.5 x 92.1 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne purchased 1958 © estate of Fred Williams
(opposite) Fred Williams You Yangs landscape 1963 oil on composition board 119.5 x 152 cm Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney purchased 1980 © estate of Fred Williams
(right) Fred Williams Dry creek bed, Werribee Gorge I 1977 oil on canvas 182.3 x 152.2 cm Tate, London presented by the artist’s estate, 2006 © estate of Fred Williams
Beachscape, Erith Island I 1974. Painted in horizontal strips, these works both recall early colonial topographical drawings and watercolours and find affinities with contemporary abstraction. Works like this were shown in the retrospective of gouaches Fred Williams: landscapes of a continent at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1977. He was the first Australian artist to be invited to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art—the heartland of Modernism with a collection that included many of the great Post-Impressionist artists Williams had admired over the years, including Cézanne and Henri Matisse. Matisse’s large cut-out installation The swimming pool 1952 was on display at the same time as Williams’s
exhibition, and a museum brochure linked their passion for colour. Williams was naturally overjoyed at the opportunity of the exhibition. The experience of being in New York (it was his first visit to the city) also confirmed where he wanted to work: ‘I will never paint anywhere but in Australia because I know Australia … I must be inside looking out, not outside looking in’. A few months after his return from New York, Williams’s diary reveals that he was in tropical far north Queensland—in Weipa on Cape York Peninsula. Remarkably, this was the first time he had had the opportunity to fly in a light aircraft low over the landscape. It was something he had always dreamed of, and he was not disappointed. His gouaches Weipa shoreline and Bushfire, Weipa II,
both painted in 1977, are among his most inventive compositions. A number of his oils of the late 1970s also reveal that he was continually reinventing his approaches to landscape in this medium. This is apparent in his paintings of dry and the wet landscapes such as Snow storm, Kosciusko 1976–77, with its white and cool hues, and Dry creek bed, Werribee Gorge I 1977, which shimmers with luminous warmth. In the latter, the line of the dry creek appears etched into the landscape while the bright touches of colour convey the vitality of plant life. The vibrancy of Williams’s palette developed further in works inspired by the Pilbara region of West Australia. After visiting the region twice in 1979 and completing around 100 works on paper,
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he painted the related oils in 1981. Among his less well-known, rather subtle late oils relating to his experience in the Kimberleys is Claypans I 1981. Painted the year before Williams’s death at the age of 55, it suggests continuities with the past as well as new directions. The work evokes the origins of life in an aqueous environment, recalling his comment many years earlier that a muddy pool in the You Yangs gave him the feeling of the beginning of Creation. Although Williams was not keen on discussing his works, reading between the lines, he made many salient comments about art over the years. He was always keen on the idea of artists’ retrospectives, enjoying
the journeys they provide across a spectrum of work over time. This National Gallery of Australia’s retrospective Fred Williams: infinite horizons offers visitors just such a chance to travel with Williams on a journey from 1947 to 1981, to experience the work of an artist of great dedication who reinvented the way we consider the Australian landscape and who continued to refresh his vision through to his vital late works.
(opposite) Fred Williams Claypans I 1981 oil on canvas 183 x 122 cm private collection © estate of Fred Williams
(above) Fred Williams Beachscape, Erith Island I 1974 gouache and sand on paper 55.6 x 77.6 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased from Gallery admission charges, 1983 © estate of Fred Williams
Deborah Hart exhibition curator and Senior Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture post-1920I
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MODERN TIMES IN THE WEST Western Australian art from the 1940s to now Out of the West: art of Western Australia 8 July 2011 – 1 April 2012 | nga.gov.au/OutWest
The 1940s to 1950s was a dynamic and creative period for Western Australian art, with artists exploring the new languages of Surrealism, Expressionism, Social Realism and reductive abstraction. Younger painters began to express themselves with a new force. Harald Vike created social realist works, expressing his solidarity with the working classes, and Herbert McClintock and Ernest Philpot created surrealist images. While living in Perth in the late 1930s, McClintock became the city’s most experimental and controversial artist. Working under the name of Max Ebert his surrealist images received both high praise and utter condemnation. He suggested in The West Australian of 6 September 1938 that the Surrealist seeks ‘behind the veil of nature’s outward appearance hidden things’. In Approximate portrait in a drawing room 1938–39, McClintock depicted his own head entangled in tree branches, hovering over a dissolving room, which contains the mirror image of his wife’s torso. It can be read as a metaphor for any attempt to create a boundary between the imaginative or unconscious mind and the outside world. McClintock later moved to Sydney, where he achieved a reputation for his social realist paintings. Elise Blumann painted works with an expressive energy influenced by German Expressionism. She depicted Perth’s Swan River and the native melaleuca trees of the
region many times. In one of these, Storm on the Swan 1946, she used bold sweeping brushstrokes to convey the ‘spirit’ and power of nature, with the strong gusts of wind forcing the trees to bend under its force. About the same time, Guy Grey-Smith painted abstracted landscapes inspired by the strong colours of French Fauvism. And Robert Juniper created a highly personal visual language in response to the distinctive qualities of the Western Australian landscape. Over subsequent decades, both artists developed a personal idiom and a national presence and were included in Bernard Smith’s 1971 edition of Australian Painting 1788–1970. Large-scale abstract painting became a dominant force in Australia from the 1950s and remains strong in contemporary Western Australian art. Howard Taylor was concerned with recording perceived phenomena in nature. In 1976, largely influenced by Constable, he painted several works in small format focussing on clouds and skies, including Rainbow and supernumerary 1976. In his highly individual works, Taylor sought to create ‘equivalents’ for his experience of landscape illuminated by light. As Tony Russell remarked in his obituary to Howard Taylor on the Galerie Düsseldorf website: Howard Taylor was … totally focused on the depiction of his beloved Australian bush. His vision, however, went far beyond the
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focus of any painter before him, in that none of them, irrespective of their unquestioned brilliance, ever interrogated and captured the complexity of structure, the ephemeral quality of its light and colour, or the rich and subtle patina of its living forms, as he did.
Studio craft practice was revived in Western Australia from the mid 1960s, with artists developing innovative approaches to design and object-making in a range of media, many of them interpreting aspects of the state’s natural environment and resources. Joan Campbell, for instance, received a national and international reputation for her raku work, pioneering new firing and glazing techniques. Form 1973 shows her devotion to the mystery of raku, earth and fire, as well as her interest in texture, landscape and natural forms. The 1960s and 1970s also saw a revival of printmaking throughout Australia, including Western Australia. A talented generation of printmakers included Brian
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McKay, Miriam Stannage, Tom Gibbons, Ray Beattie, Theo Koning and Mary Moore. Their innovative prints have a boldness and an energy and often also a sense of humour. Dutch-born Western Australian landscape photographer Richard Woldendorp has attained a national reputation for works such as Ant clearings with dam, Western Australia 1987. He uses aerial photography because he feels this enables him to best capture the vastness of the Outback. Moreover, wanting to impart a sense of wonderment at the beauty of nature, he eliminates the horizon line to enhance the abstraction of the scene. Carol Rudyard is regarded as one of Western Australia’s most important newmedia artists. She was awarded one of the Australia Council Australian Artists Creative Fellowships (Keating Grants) in 1991. In her video installations, she expresses her fascination with art history, theories of seeing and music. The title of
her work Wantai maiden (maintain a dew) 1989 is an anagram of ‘made in Taiwan’. The vases dressed in bowties and the artificial fruit were made in Taiwan. The linking text used in the video is the French poet Andre Salmon’s remark on first seeing Picasso’s painting Les demoiselles d’Avignon 1907. Rudyard also makes reference to Margaret Preston’s painting Aboriginal flowers 1928. Although recognised nationally, the abstract imagery of artists such as the British-born Brian Blanchflower is based on a response to the Western Australian landscape. Blanchflower’s painterly images convey, in particular, his consciousness of the energy of the universe and the spiritual resonance of objects. By having a profound sense of his own surroundings and a passionate curiosity for the processes of nature, he is able to produce something truly universal. As in the earlier years, artists visit the West and create important works there.
(pages 14–15) Howard Taylor Rainbow and supernumerary 1976 (detail) oil on composition board 21.7 x 30.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra gift of Sue and Ian Bernadt, 2007
(opposite) Carol Rudyard photograph from Wantai maiden (maintain a dew) 1989 video installation National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 2005 Image courtesy: Carol Rudyard
(right) Herbert McClintock Approximate portrait in a drawing room 1938–39 oil and collage on canvas on board 75.3 x 53.3 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased with the assistance of James Agapitos OAM and Ray Wilson OAM, 2007
Elise Blumann Storm on the Swan 1946 oil on paper mounted on cardboard on composition board 57 x 67 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 1978
These include Sam Fullbrook, who painted a portrait of an Aboriginal elder, and Fred Williams, who made powerful images in response to the evocative Pilbara landscape, which he visited in 1979. Williams commented in his diary entry of 7 June 1979 that ‘anyone who could not paint this particular country is probably in the wrong profession’. Thus, while Western Australian art during the formative stages of the development of the colony remained a hidden secret, to a large extent from the 1940s onwards art produced in the West has been seen and appreciated out of the West—perhaps not so much as it deserves, but certainly more so than during ‘the early years’. Out of the West: the early years (from pre-settlement to 1940) is displayed in the Project Gallery and was discussed in the previous issue of Artonview. Anne Gray Head of Australian Art
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Margaret Olley Hawkesbury wildflowers and pears 1973 oil on canvas 101.5 x 76 cm
MEMBERS ACQUISITION FUND 2011 Margaret Olley's Hawkesbury wildflowers and pears | nga.gov.au/Members The National Gallery of Australia invites members to contribute to the third annual Members Acquisition Fund. For more information on contributing to the fund, telephone (02) 6240 6454 or fill in and return the donation form in the Members Acquisition Fund 2011–12 brochure.
When Margaret Olley died on 26 July 2011, many people in the art world keenly felt the loss. She had a special presence in the art world. She cared passionately about art and could be feisty about work she found fashionable or trendy. She had an artist’s flair in her dress sense that reflected her personality, never dull or boring. It is not surprising that artists from William Dobell and Russell Drysdale to Ben Quilty were keen to paint her portrait. Olley often visited the National Gallery of Australia, pushing her walking frame— kind, generous, demanding and above all keen to see beautiful art. I recall her sheer delight when I took her around our Post-Impressionist exhibition Masterpieces from Paris: van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and beyond. The paintings by Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, in particular, were like great treasures to her, to be savoured for as long as possible; they were also like old friends. The Post-Impressionists’ feeling for
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the intimate spaces of domestic interiors and their wonderful ability to handle paint were sustenance to her mind and spirit. Over many years Olley had created her own world in paint, mainly based on stilllife subjects and interiors. She was deeply concerned with composition and structure as well as with the particular qualities that an array of objects could impart. This is evident in Hawkesbury wildflowers and pears c 1973, a bold yet sensitive painting that is held together by clearly defined objects, a refined feeling for colour, contrasts of texture and an enveloping luminosity. This painting had a special significance for Olley. She painted it soon after the death of her close friend David Strachan, and it was inspired by objects in Strachan’s Sydney home. In a sense, it represents a shared connection with an artist who, like herself, believed that there would always be space in the world for grace and poetry in art. These qualities did not have to come in the form
of grand gestures but rather in the intensity of looking at and appreciating ordinary, everyday forms. Along with the lyrical beauty in Hawkesbury wildflowers and pears, there is also a sense of time passing as the fresh light of day is set against the scrubby dried wildflowers. To visit Margaret Olley’s house was something special. She didn’t believe in housekeeping and various arrangements of still lifes were in varying stages of blossoming and decay. She enjoyed the variety of life, the spice of life, the beauty of life. With the acquisition of Hawkesbury wildflowers and pears, we will all have the opportunity to experience one of her best still lifes, a testimony to Olley’s strengths as a painter and her extraordinary skill in making still life feel continuously significant and vital. Deborah Hart Senior Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture post-1920
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Antony Gormley
Angel of the North (life-size maquette) 1996, edn 4 of 5, cast iron, 196.5 x 535 x 53 cm, gift of James and Jacqui Erskine, 2009
Angel of the North (life-size maquette) is, as the title suggests, a scale version one tenth the size of Antony Gormley’s most famous sculpture, Angel of the North 1994–98. The larger work, situated adjacent to a motorway near Gateshead in Great Britain, on the site of a disused colliery, is made of steel. Another, smaller 1:20size model was cast in bronze in 1996. All three angels comprise a featureless human figure with large wings or blades attached. The matrix of girder-like ribs recalls the framework of an early monoplane or the weld lines on a battleship. The Canberra sculpture features a surface like that of COR-TEN steel, and the rich rust colour of oxidised iron changes in the sunlight. The figure was cast from the artist’s own body. Gormley covered himself in plastic wrap and then, with the aid of assistants, a layer of plaster soaked bandages. He used props to support his arms while the plaster set. The resulting casts were used for moulds, with the wings developed separately using a framework of wire to plan the rib structure. The ribbing and diaphragms were devised between the artist and the engineer to manufacture the 20-metre-tall work. In its setting in northern England, a region where coal mining dates to back to 1344, the large angel refers to this history, a symbol of
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miners’ toil over many centuries. As Gormley explains in Making an angel, it was designed to mark a place and ‘bridge the earth and sky through a body’. Unlike traditional airborne messengers, whose wings are made from feathers, Gormley’s angel is created with metal dug from the earth. The title originally intended for the work, ‘Iron angel of the North’, emphasised this aspect of the sculpture, and Gormley wrote in Making an angel: ‘This is a dark angel, not because it is evil, but because it comes out of the closed body of the earth. It is made of iron, a concentrated earth material that carries the colour of blood. It is a carrier of the new nature: a body extended by technology …’ Rooted to the ground via its plinth in the Sculpture Garden, on the edge of Lake Burley Griffin, the angel stands isolated, alert and sentential-like. Associations of crucifixion and rebirth add another layer to the dense iconography. Subtle gestures, such as the gentle angle of the wings, imply an embrace and provide an overall sense of space. The lack of individual features gives the angel an air of mystery; as the artist suggests, we make things ‘because they can not be said’. Lucina Ward Curator, International Painting and Sculpture
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Florence Fuller
Dawn landscape c 1905, oil on canvas, 44.5 x 60 cm, purchased 2011
A taste for poetic crepuscular pictures was a feature of Federation landscapes and, in Dawn landscape c 1905, Florence Fuller depicted a scene in the early hours of the day, with the sun just rising on the horizon. Sheep feed quietly in the foreground, before a meandering stream and two slender gum trees. The image has much of the poetic qualities of the landscapes of Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts during their Heidelberg period. Florence Fuller is arguably one of Western Australia’s most significant artists from the Federation period and her work is central to the story of Western Australian art. Born in South Africa, Fuller moved to Victoria as a child in 1872. She studied art at the National Gallery of Victoria School in Melbourne and subsequently with her uncle Robert Dowling, who was Melbourne’s most sought‑after portraitist of the mid 1880s. In 1889, she was awarded the Victorian Artists’ Society prize for the best portrait painted by an artist under the age of 25. She furthered her studies in Paris and exhibited in
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the Paris Salon and the Royal Academy before joining her sister the singer Amy Fuller in Perth, where she remained for four years from 1904 to 1908. She was one of the most experienced artists in Western Australia at the time and taught, among others, Kathleen O’Connor. When Fuller held an exhibition of 41 works in Perth in 1905, the newspaper proprietor Winthrop Hackett described her painting Early morning, purchased for the Art Gallery of Western Australia, as being ‘probably the greatest success in the domain of pure impressionism … because of its pure tone, its admirable perspective and its strongly vivid reproduction of that mysterious and evanescent but always brilliant colouring that is momentarily lent by the sunrise’. This comment could equally apply to Dawn landscape. Anne Gray Head of Australian Art
Howard Taylor
Columns 1970, jarrah, synthetic polymer paint on plywood, 178 x 83 x 83 cm, purchased 2010
In 1967, Howard Taylor moved from Perth to the small rural community of Northcliffe in Western Australia. Profoundly influenced by his new surroundings, Taylor produced a body of large wooden sculptures that reflect his observations of the tall karri and jarrah forests and the patterns of growth and decay around his new home. Columns 1970 is a major work from Taylor’s early years in Northcliffe. It was exhibited in his 1970 solo exhibition at Skinner Galleries in Perth, his first show devoted entirely to sculpture. Columns highlights Taylor’s sophisticated approach to abstraction. The organic texture and rich red of the jarrah is accentuated and framed by the slender, crisply painted white panels. These white forms fan into space, abstracting the jarrah log and inviting the viewer to move around the column. The scale and shape of Columns provokes Taylor’s ongoing interest in finding ways to involve the viewer in his contemplative experiences of nature. Howard Taylor is one of the most highly regarded Australian artists of the late twentieth century. His works possess an intellectual and spiritual force, a quality that enables works such as Columns to transcend their era of production. Taylor lived and worked in Northcliffe until his death in 2001. Columns is currently on display in the National Gallery’s Orde Poynton Gallery as part of the exhibition Out of the West: art of Western Australia. Miriam Kelly Assistant Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture
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Nineteenth-century Western Australian furniture The Wordsworth Collection, purchased 2010
As British, European and Asian settlers arrived in Western Australia through the nineteenth century, they learned to match and modify craft and trade skills they may have possessed to the particular physical properties of the region’s raw materials, in particular its native hardwoods such as jarrah, karri and sheoak. The provision of furniture for the nascent state’s civic, commercial and domestic buildings in its cities and towns revealed how styles were interpreted in the interests of regional expression through practical design and skilled and inventive crafts and trades practice. Such furniture reflected the world the makers had left behind while giving form to the aspirations of the society that they were creating and joining. The possession of craft skills was a valuable asset for an immigrant and many capitalised on this by adapting their methods and knowledge of styles and functional design to exploit the local resources available to them. Recently acquired furniture by nineteenth-century Western Australian makers gives an insight into some of the prevailing styles and production methods used in the state’s colonial period. A circular, tilting-top jarrah table with a panelled veneered wood tripod pedestal base and carved lion paw feet is the work of Joseph Hamblin. He built the table while employed by Perth furniture maker George Lazenby, who was supplying furniture for the refurbishment of Perth’s Government House in 1848–49. It shows the enduring simple style
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of the English Regency period that was still popular at the time of the foundation of the Swan River Colony. Its simple and unadorned surfaces suited the hard jarrah available to cabinetmakers, leading to a strong and enduring local appreciation of the wood’s figured grain patterns and deep colour resembling mahogany. A twin-pedestal jarrah sideboard and an ingenious double-sided jarrah and cedar music stand, fitted with adjustable candleholders, show other variations of this style. They were commissioned by the settler Henry Prinsep, a civil servant, draughtsman and artist from a British family in India. The furniture was probably made by Hookum Chan, an early settler and carpenter from India who had worked for Prinsep at his Dardanup property. Another settler, Robert Heppingstone made a jarrah cabinet for his own use after his arrival in the Swan River Colony in 1830. It was later used by his descendants in their home at Cundinup, near Busselton. Its robust construction of pitsawn local jarrah, in the manner of English vernacular country furniture, suggests an intended use as a kitchen cabinet. These and several other examples of nineteenth-century Western Australian furniture allow the Gallery to provide a national scope to the furniture design, craftsmanship and manufacture of Australia’s colonial period. Robert Bell AM Senior Curator, Decorative Arts and Design
Robert Heppingstone (attributed to) Cabinet 1830s pitsawn jarrah 119 x 132.5 x 65 cm
Joseph Hamblin Circular pedestal table with tilting top c 1849 jarrah, veneers, brass 75 cm, 135 cm (diam)
Hookum Chan (attributed to) Music stand c 1870 jarrah, brass and cedar mounts, retractable brass candleholders 125 x 59 x 55 cm
Hookum Chan (attributed to) Regency-style sideboard 1870–79 jarrah 90.6 x 198.2 x 54 cm
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Nici Cumpston Barkindji/Paakintji people
Campsite V, Nookamka Lake 2008–10, inkjet print on canvas, pencil and watercolour, 77 x 206 cm, purchased 2011
The once rich and thriving environment of the Murray and Darling River system with its clear waterways, lush flora and abundant fauna was home to the Barkindji, Muthi Muthi and Nyampa peoples. The shallow Nookamka Lake (Lake Bonney), which connects to the Murray River in South Australia, is the subject of Nici Cumpston’s recent photographic series. However, the series is not of a lush utopia but of the degradation and erosion that has consumed the lake since the forced irrigation flooding of the waterways in the early 1900s. When damming ceased in 2007, the water began to subside, slowly revealing the original landscape and the history of human occupation. Cumpston beautifully documents this stark landscape and the demise that salinisation and destructive water management practices have wrought on the people and their lands. Today, the landscape is desolate, scattered with twisted and broken trees stripped of their foliage like majestic sentinels in deathly poses. The trees still bare the scars—although obscured by dark tidelines— where canoes, containers and shields were cut from their trunks.
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Cumpston highlights these clues to the area’s original inhabitants through the delicate and precise hand-watercolouring of the printed black-and-white photographs on canvas. She does not aim to replicate the original colours of the landscape, as a colour photograph would, but to interpret it, re-introducing the Aboriginal presence within the landscape—a subtle reconnection to Country and reminder of past cultural practices and knowledge. As the artist says, ‘I am finding ways to talk about connections to country and to allow people to understand the ongoing connections that Aboriginal people maintain with their traditional lands’. This is the first work by Nici Cumpston acquired by the Gallery and will feature alongside the work of 19 other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists in the next National Indigenous Art Triennial to open in May 2012. Tina Baum Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art
Ten dollar bill 1956 25.2 x 47.7 cm A Cherokee brave 1952 42 x 31.6 cm
Roy Lichtenstein
Proto-pop prints 1949–56, eight woodcuts, one lithograph and one etching, various sizes, gift of Kenneth Tyler and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler, 2010
Roy Lichtenstein’s name is synonymous with Pop art. His works stand today as icons of America during the 1960s and 1970s, with his characteristic comic-strip, benday dot imagery having entered the collective subconscious as an instantly recognisable graphic aesthetic. In stylistic contrast, this group of eight woodcuts, one lithograph and one etching produced between 1949 and 1956 represents the artist’s earliest experiments in print; they are intriguing precursors to the artist’s subsequent development. Initially, one is surprised to find the rough and expressively carved woodcuts, finely hand-drawn lithograph and abstracted etching to be the work of the king of Pop. Perhaps the only hint of Lichtenstein’s imminent obsession with American popular culture can be detected in the lithograph Ten dollar bill 1956. In this proto-Pop print, we see Lichtenstein first taking an everyday object, symbolic of the growing American consumer culture, as his subject matter. A master of appropriation, Lichtenstein not only borrowed images and stylistic devices from art history but also revisited and
reinterpreted his own works. In the prints Indian with pony 1953, Two Indians with bird 1953 and the Picasso-inspired A Cherokee brave 1952, Lichtenstein combines his interest in American Indian subject matter with the woodcut technique. He returned to this combination of subject and medium in 1980, gleaning inspiration for the production of his next series of woodcuts, the American Indian theme series, six semi-Surrealist works also in the National Gallery’s collection. These ten works were generously donated by Kenneth Tyler and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler and are the earliest examples of Lichtenstein’s work in the national art collection. A selection of these works will form a distinct grouping in the forthcoming Lichtenstein exhibition scheduled for 2012. Jaklyn Babington Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books
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Hawaii
Hawaiian feather cape (‘ahu‘ula) probably early 19th century, olona- fibre, red feathers from the ‘i‘iwi (Vestiaria coccinea), yellow feathers from the ‘o-‘o- (Moho nobilis) and black feathers from the mamo (Drepanis pacifica), 69 x 41 cm, purchased 2011
The National Gallery has been fortunate in securing one of the last Hawaiian feather capes (‘ahu‘ula) left in private hands. The cape most likely dates from the early nineteenth century. It is built upon a netted backing made from the extremely robust olonā fibre and is covered with red, yellow and black feathers from the ‘i‘iwi, ‘ō‘ō and mamo birds respectively. Red feathers were associated with divinity and sacredness and can be found even under the yellow feathers, which cover much of the surface of this cape. These feathers were not just for decoration but also protected a chief with their spiritual power. When they were attached to the netted backing, the feathers were ‘tied’ with prayers that were considered as spiritually powerful as the olonā fibre was strong. These netted prayers were kept until they were needed by a divine being (akua). The crescent (hoaka) in the central design of this cape was a very important shape to Hawaiians. The meaning of which varies,
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including: to cast a shadow, to drive away, to ward off or to frighten; spirit, apparition or ghost; or brightness, shining, glittering or splendid. The shape matches the meaning, giving strength and harmony to the design, particularly when worn on the shoulders and back. Each cape was unique and made for a specific individual, a leader who, at least in the pre-Christian times, was a man. Since 1820, when many Hawaiians converted to Christianity, the capes have lost much of their sacred function; however, they still command respect and inspire awe. When they are brought out and worn for important occasions, their presence elevates an event to a major cultural affair. Michael Gunn Senior Curator, Pacific Art
Fiji
Kinikini (club/shield) c 1840–1870, wood, 125 x 50 x 5 cm, purchased 2011
In pre-Christian Fiji, carvers created an array of weapons for different forms of combat. One of the most extraordinary and technically difficult to produce was the kinikini. Imposing in size, they were carried by only the warrior elite of priests and chiefs. Carved by specialists, matai-ni-malumu, kinikini were expensive to create; only those wealthy enough to pay for feasts to celebrate and to present other property to the artist could afford to have such impressive weapons commissioned. This recently acquired kinikini is created from an extremely dense wood; the width also indicates that it came from a large tree. Often the specialist artist submerged selected timber in salt water for months prior to reducing it to the desired form with a tool kit of stone adzes. The surface would then be smoothed with shell scrapers and rasps of sharkskin. Clubs sometimes had ritual and ceremonial functions, and those that were successful in battle attained levels of mana and were given personal names. The kinikini form acted as a parrying shield against projectiles as well as being an offensive weapon. When held with both hands it could deliver a lethal blow—the thin edge of the blade was designed to snap through bone. During warfare in the nineteenth century, priests and chiefs lead from the front of their armies thus being at risk of injury from spears and, as the nineteenth century drew on, from rifle fire. The wandering crosshatched design is now devoid of the white lime paint it once had—this would have added a brilliance to the club and make the priest identifiable from a distance. During warfare, priests were to be avoided at all costs: Fijian priests were often possessed by a deity and to injure or kill a priest, even one who is an enemy, would lead to spiritual damnation. Crispin Howarth Curator, Pacific Art
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Photograph: Maggie Nimkin
Karnataka, India Hoysala dynasty (11th – mid 14th century)
Sarasvati, Goddess of Arts and Learning early–mid 12th century, chloritic schist stone, 91 x 58 x 27.3 cm, purchased with the assistance of Pauline and John Gandel, 2011
Sarasvati is the beloved Hindu goddess of arts and learning. One of the most important figures in Indian art, the goddess is a serene and ancient form of the great Mother Goddess or Devi—the power of the universe and source of creation. Sarasvati is closely associated with the powerful Hindu gods Brahma the creator and Vishnu the preserver. She is also revered in the Jain and Buddhist traditions of India. In this sculpture, Sarasvati is adorned in lavish jewellery and seated cross-legged against a magnificent throne. Each of her four hands holds a symbolic attribute—an elephant goad to nudge humankind towards virtuous living, a garland of beads for prayer, a noose to indicate the destructive hold of worldly desires, and a palm-leaf manuscript to signify knowledge and wisdom. Sarasvati’s majestic beauty and multiple arms indicate her divine nature. The sculpture and architecture of the Hoysala dynasty of south India are renowned for their elaborate ornamentation.
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The characteristic deeply carved intricacy of Hoysala art was achieved through the use of chloritic schist, a fine-grained stone that is moderately pliant when freshly quarried but becomes dark and durable over time. The Hoysalas were great supporters of the visual arts and literature, and their temples—more than 100 of which endure—are extravagantly detailed. This sculpture was acquired with the support of Pauline and John Gandel AO. Known for their exceptionally generous commitment to the arts, they are founding donors to the National Gallery of Australia and, last year, presented the Gallery with a landmark gift of $7 million. Earlier this year, Pauline Gandel gave the Gallery an exquisite Kiddush cup or seihai (chalice) by renowned contemporary Japanese lacquer master Unryuan (Kitamura Tatsuo). Melanie Eastburn Curator, Asian Art
Travelling exhibitions nga.gov.au/Travex Travelling exhibitions supporters
Australian portraits 1880–1960 National Collecting Institutions Touring & Outreach Program
17 Sep – 20 Nov 2011 Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, Tas 3 Dec 2011 – 29 Jan 2012 Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre, Gymea, NSW 11 Feb – 12 May 2012 Gladstone Regional Art Gallery, Gladstone, Qld
In the spotlight Anton Bruehl photographs 1920s–1950s 25 Jun – 11 Sep 2011 Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill, Vic 21 Feb – 22 Apr 2012 QUT Art Museum, Brisbane, Qld
Sidney Nolan Head of soldier 1942 (detail) enamel on cardboard 75.8 x 63.3 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra purchased 1976
Anton Bruehl Muleteer 1932 (detail) gelatin silver photograph 34.5 x 41.6 cm
Space invaders australian . street . stencils . posters . zines . stickers 2 Sep – 5 Nov 2011 RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, Vic 18 Nov 2011 – 18 Mar 2012 Western Plains Cultural Centre, Dubbo, NSW
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra gift of American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia, Inc, New York, NY, USA, made possible with the generous support of Anton Bruehl Jr, 2006
Meggs not titled (the boys #1) 2004 (detail) stencil 153.2 x 56.2 cm (irreg) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Gordon Darling Australia Pacific Print Fund, 2007 © Meggs
Aubrey Tigan Bardi/Djawi peoples Riji (pearl shell) 2009 carved pearl shell and red ochre
Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift The Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift enables people from all around Australia to discover and handle art and has been touring schools, libraries, community centres, regional galleries and nursing homes since 1990. Visit nga.gov.au/Wolfensohn To make a booking for 2013, please contact travex@nga.gov.au or (02) 6240 6650
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
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Creative partnerships
Rio Tinto and Fred Williams In 1979, Fred Williams flew over the vast Pilbara region of Western Australia at the invitation of Sir Roderick Carnegie, then chairman of CRA (now Rio Tinto). So began the important connection between Fred Williams and Rio Tinto, which was a catalyst for Williams’s significant Pilbara series late in his life. The Pilbara region was and remains the centre of Rio Tinto’s iron ore operations. The striking landscape greatly inspired Williams and, not long after his first visit, he returned to engage more deeply with the place. Sir Roderick observed that Williams ‘explored the landscape as thoroughly and as sensitively and as patiently as a great geologist’. Many of his original works from the Pilbara series were painted on paper outdoors, others were produced back in the studio. In 1981, Williams went on to produce a series of incredible oil paintings, such as Iron ore landscape.
Rio Tinto is once again helping bring Fred Williams’s unique vision and artistic legacy to the fore by supporting, as Principal Partner, the major retrospective Fred Williams: infinite horizons at the National Gallery of Australia. The National Gallery of Australia is most grateful for Rio Tinto’s support of this important exhibition. The Gallery is committed to forging strong creative partnerships and is grateful for the support and vision of our sponsors and partners. If you are interested in creating ties with the Australian community through the arts, contact Nicole Short, +61 2 6240 6781 or nicole.short@nga.gov.au, or Eleanor Kirkham, +61 2 6240 6740 or eleanor.kirkham@nga.gov.au.
The remarkable gouaches on paper together with the oils that came out of Williams’s experience of the Pilbara region have helped define our understanding of the Australian landscape.
Fred Williams painting in the Pilbara, 1979. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, gift of Lyn Williams, 2009 Photograph: Lyn Williams
Fred Williams in his studio, in front of his painting Gorge landscape 1981. Photograph: Rennie Ellis © Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive
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News from the Foundation
Over the past eight months, the Gallery has celebrated the work of three governing Council members whose tenure on Council has come to an end. Charles Curran AC, Roslynne Bracher AM and Roslyn Packer AO are incredible supporters of the Gallery. They have worked tirelessly to develop the Gallery’s programs and helped to build the national art collection in a significant way through their generous benefaction and by encouraging the support of others. Of particular significance are their individual contributions to the 25th Anniversary Gift program established in 2007. Mr Curran and Mrs Bracher both donated towards the acquisition of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri’s spectacular painting Warlugulong 1977. Mrs Packer provided significant donations for the acquisition of the glorious Seated Buddha from the Kushan dynasty and the beloved Chola dynasty sculpture The sacred bull Nandi, vehicle of Shiva. Her considerable experience will continue to benefit the Gallery with her recent appointment to the Foundation Board. All three Council members have been active supporters of the National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund, which was created in 2006 to support the Gallery’s stimulating, diverse and engaging exhibitions program.
Inspired by the Council Exhibitions Fund, Foundation Board Directors launched their own initiative in May 2011. The Foundation Board Publishing Fund will assist with the production of scholarly publications and online publishing projects focused on artists and works of art held in the national art collection. In June, Peter J Hack and Jennifer Ann Smith were welcomed into the National Gallery of Australia’s Bequest Circle. Mr Hack attended the Bequest Circle lunch on Tuesday 23 August, along with other members and those considering making a bequest to the National Gallery of Australia. These generous donors, in their various roles as Council members, Foundation Directors and independent benefactors, have made lasting contributions to the Gallery and the national art collection. We hope that you too will feel inspired to take part in building Australia’s national heritage through the arts. There are many ways to contribute to the life of the Gallery. For further information and to become more involved with the Gallery through the Foundation, please contact Maryanne Voyazis, +61 2 6240 6691 or foundation@nga.gov.au.
Roslyn Packer with the Chola dynasty granite sculpture The sacred bull Nandi, vehicle of Shiva 11th–12th century, which was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia with her assistance in 2009.
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Thank you … Exhibitions, programs and acquisitions at the National Gallery of Australia are realised through the generous support of our partners and donors. The National Gallery of Australia would like to thank the following organisations and people:
Grants
Corporate partners
Gifts
The American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia Inc, New York, made possible with the very generous support of: Kenneth Tyler and Marabeth Cohen-Tyler the Wolfensohn Family Foundation towards the Elaine and Jim Wolfensohn Gift Travelling Exhibitions Program The Gordon Darling Foundation The Lidia Perin Foundation The National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund The Thyne Reid Foundation
ABC Radio ACT Government through Australian Capital Tourism ActewAGL Aesop The Age Avant Card The Brassey Hotel of Canberra The Canberra Times Canberra Airport Group Clayton Utz Coopers Brewery Cre8ive Diamant Hotel Eckersley’s Art & Craft Forrest Hotel and Apartments Hindmarsh Hyatt Hotel Canberra JCDecaux Lazard Macquarie Group Foundation Manteena Mantra on Northbourne Moët Hennessy Australia Molonglo Group National Australia Bank NewActon/Nishi Nine Network Australia Novotel Canberra Qantas Rio Tinto R.M.Williams, The Bush Outfitter Spader The Sydney Morning Herald Triple J Wesfarmers Limited WIN Television The Yulgilbar Foundation
Rick Amor Yvette Bacina Andrew Baker Barton Place Pty Ltd Tina Baum Nicolette Black Les Blakebrough Herawati Boediono Roger Butler AM The Hon Ian Callinan AC, QC Michael Coghland and Chrisanthi Papadopoulos Tony Coleing Patrick Corrigan Charles Curran AC The Hon Mrs Ashley Dawson-Damer Estella, Nadia and Montague Dawson-Damer Michael Desmond Jennifer Dickerson James Erskine and Jacqui Erskine Folan family Fiona Foley Pauline Gandel and John Gandel AO Anna Gray Dr Anna Gray Robert Haines and Mandy Haines William Hamilton Warwick Hemsley Conor Hemsley Meredith Hemsley Alex Hemsley Mary Page Michael Ingamells Wendy Jeffery Sara Kelly John Loane and Mike Parr John McPhee Danie Mellor Matisse Mitelman Annabel Myer and Rupert Myer AM Gael Newton Constantine Nikolakopoulos Richard Perram Jan Phillips Joshua Pieterse Evi Reid and Chris Reid Jorg Schmeisser Bhag Singh, in honour of his late mother Bhajno-Devi Jan Smith Prue Socha
Australian Government Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts through: The National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach Program, an Australian Government program aiming to improve access to the national collections for all Australians Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of Australian cultural material across Australia, and through Art Indemnity Australia Australia Council Department of Health and Ageing through the Dementia Community Grants Program Queensland Indigenous Arts Marketing and Export Agency
State and territory governments Queensland Government through Arts Queensland New South Wales Government through Arts NSW Northern Territory Government through Arts NT Western Australian Government through the Department of Culture and the Arts
Donations Includes donations received from 21 April to 21 July 2011 Lenore Adamson Chevalier du Tastevin— Sous Commanderie d’ACT Neilma Gantner Mary Peabody Suzannah Plowman Jason Prowd
Stage One John Gandel AO and Pauline Gandel
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Ruth Taplin Maryanne Voyazis Albert Wong
25th Anniversary Gifts Program Charles P Curran AC and Eva Curran Ferris Family Foundation Rosemary Foot AO John Kaldor AM and Naomi Milgrom AO Robert Maple-Brown AO Greg Paramor Roslynne Bracher AM Paspaley Pearling Company Pty Ltd
Founding Donors 2010 Fund Robert Albert AO, RFD, RD, and Libby Albert Antoinette, Emily and Anna Albert Rick Allert AO and Barbara Allert Anita and Luca Belgiorno-Nettis Foundation Susan Armitage Rita Avdiev, in memory of Kathy Avdiev David Baffsky AO Graham Bradley AM and Charlene Bradley Andrew Buchanan PSM and Kate Buchanan Ian Darling and Min Darling Lauraine Diggins Dr Gregory Gilbert and Kathleen Gilbert Ginny Green and Leslie Green Sue Griffin Rolf Harris AM, CBE Colin Hindmarsh and Barbara Hindmarsh Gail Kinsella Anthony Knight OAM and Beverley Knight Norman Korte and Vanessa Carlin Stephen Nano and Rachael Nano Dr Andrew Lu OAM and Dr Geoffrey Lancaster AM Peter Lundy RFD and Dr Maureen Bremner Macquarie Group Foundation Paul Morton and Catherine Morton The Myer Foundation Marianna O’Sullivan and Tony O’Sullivan Julien Playoust and Michelle Playoust Denis Savill and Anne Clarke
Penelope Seidler AM Service One Members Banking David Smithers AM and Isabel Smithers and family Ezekiel Solomon AM Lady Marigold Southey AC TransACT Communications
National Gallery of Australia Council Exhibitions Fund Timothy Fairfax AM Warwick Hemsley Roslyn Packer AO
Foundation Board Publishing Fund Susan Armitage Philip Bacon AM Sandy Benjamin OAM Tony Berg AM Robyn Burke Terry Campbell AO and Christine Campbell Catherine M Harris AO, PSM
Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2009 Carolyn Kay and Simon Swaney
Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2010 Thelma Barwick The Hon Justice Barry O’Keefe AM, QC
Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2011 Joan Adler Beverley A Allen Isabelle Arnaud Lynne M Badger Suzanne Baker-Dekker Sarah Brasch Margaret Brennan and Geoffrey Brennan John Brook Howard Brown and Jenny Brown Ian Bruce Ruth Burgess Debbie Cameron Robert Cansdale and Lena Cansdale Maurice Cashmere Eve Cleland John Clements Dale I Coghlan
Gwen Cooper Ann Cork Merrilyn Crawford Georgia Croker Mary Curtis and Richard Mann PAR Dale OAM Henry Dalrymple Rowena Danziger and Ken Coles Bice Della-Putta Maxwell Dickens Rose Donaldson Akio Todo and Ayami Eastburn Todo Peter Eddington and Joy Williams Professor Norm Feather Jo-Anne Flatley-Allen Beb Fox and Joy Fox David Franks John Gale Neilma Gantner Roy Garwood JP Gordon Pauline M Griffin Peter J Hack WS Hamilton Pat Harvey and Frank Harvey Bill Hayward and Alison Hayward Elizabeth Hewson Marian Hill Robert Hitchcock OAM Elizabeth Hoare Rev Theodora Hobbs Michael Hobbs and Doris Hobbs Neil Hobbs and Karina Harris Elspeth Humphries Pat Hutchinson and Gordon Hutchinson Claudia Hyles Dr Anthea Hyslop Susan Jardine Victoria Jennings Brian Jones WG Keighley Dr Peter Kenny and Pamela Kenny Valerie Kirk Lou Klepac OAM and Brenda Klepac Wayne Kratzmann Robyn Lance Bernard Leser and Barbara Leser Elizabeth H Loftus Carol Lovegrove JN Macintyre Jennifer Manton Patricia McCormick Patricia McCullough
Patricia F McGregor Glad Montgomery Dr John Morris Philip Mulcare and Patricia Mulcare Dame Elisabeth Murdoch AC, DBE Claude Neumann Patricia Nossal Natasha Oates Mike Ogden PSM Brian O’Keeffe AO and Bridget O’Keeffe AM Milton Osborne Angus Paltridge and Gwen Paltridge Margaret Pask G Pearson Margaret Plant Anne Prins Ms Quintal Bill Reed Ardyne Reid Jill Richards Susan S Rogers Alan Rose and Helen Rose Horace Saducas J Sibly Dr Michael Slee and Dr Judy Slee Ann Somers David Stanley and Anne Stanley HL Stead Stefanoff family Patricia Stephenson Elinor Swan Professor Ken Taylor and Maggie Taylor Dr Peter Fullagar and Helen Topor Claire Truscott Dr Caroline Turner AM and Dr Glen Barclay Morna Vellacott Lucille Warth Peter Webster Petronella Wensing Joyce West Stephen Wild Kathryn Williams Bruce Wilson and Karen Wilson Liz Wilson Julia Wilson
Lenoard Wilson The Hon Ian BC Wilson Deborah Winkler Belinda Wise Donna Woodhill Janet Worth D Wright Les Wright and Norma Wright
Members Acquisition Fund 2010 Patricia Bilney and Roger Bilney Georgina Binks Henry Dalrymple Ted Delofski and Irene Delofski Michael Flynn Veronica B Poole Robert Foster Aileen Hall Ann Healey Bill Huff-Johnstone and Rosemary Huff-Johnstone Dr Peter Kenny and Pamela Kenny Jeanette Knox Faye Lawrence D Letts Hilary Mackay Mike Ogden PSM Jennifer J Rowland Alison Scott HL Stead Helen Todd David Williamson and Angela Williamson
Bill Davy Memorial Fund Dimity Davy
South Australian Contemporary Art Fund Susan Armitage Macquarie Group Foundation
Treasure a Textile Helen Eastburn
For more information about developing creative partnerships with the National Gallery of Australia, contact: Nicole Short on +61 2 6240 6781 or nicole.short@nga.gov.au For more information about making a donation, contact: Maryanne Voyazis on +61 2 6240 6691 or maryanne.voyazis@nga.gov.au
ARTONVIEW 35
Members news Members of the National Gallery of Australia play a vital role in sustaining the arts in Australia. As a member, you can play your part in the life of the Gallery and enjoy the many benefits this brings to you and the community. To become a member, go to nga.gov.au/Members or free call 1800 020 068.
Members Acquisition Fund
Music at the Gallery
Members who donated to the acquisition of Hans Heysen’s Spring 1925 were invited to a talk by Director Ron Radford, followed by a special viewing and drinks. Thank you to those generous members who contributed towards the acquisition of Heysen’s delightful image of cats enjoying a perfect spring day.
Over four Sundays in July, members escaped the Canberra cold and enjoyed a series of concerts featuring some of Australia’s best known classical music artists. Hosted by ABC Classic FM presenter Emma Ayres against the backdrop of the Australian Garden, pianist Simon Tedeschi, soprano Amelia Farrugia, tenor Rosario La Spina and the Lurline Chamber Orchestra captivated audiences.
If you missed the opportunity and would like to donate, the Members Acquisition Fund 2011 has now been launched with Margaret Olley’s Hawkesbury wildflowers and pears 1973 (see page 18). This exquisite still-life oil painting will be the third work to be purchased through the fund. You will soon receive a brochure about the painting and how you can contribute to acquiring it for the nation.
Renaissance With this issue of Artonview, you will find your invitation to some of the exclusive members events associated with Renaissance: 15th- and 16th-century Italian paintings from the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo.
Donations to the fund are tax deductible, and contributions will be acknowledged in Artonview and the National Gallery of Australia Foundation Annual Report.
Remember to take advantage of your membership benefits. You’ll receive discounts on exhibition tickets and discounts in the Gallery shops, Members Lounge and cafes.
Members view Hans Heysen's Spring 1925 up close at the special event held on 26 July 2011 to celebrate contributors to the Members Acquisition Fund 2010–11.
Concert pianist Simon Tedeschi marvelled audiences in the Gandel Hall during the third performance in the concert series Music at the Gallery, 24 July 2011.
36 ARTONVIEW
15 TH & 16 TH CENTURY ITALIAN PAINTINGS FROM THE ACCADEMIA CARRARA, BERGAMO 9TH DECEMBER 2011 UNTIL THE 9TH APRIL 2012 CANBERRA ONLY Presenting partners
Giovan Battista Moroni Portrait of a child of the House of Redetti c 1570 (detail), Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, bequest of Guglielmo Lochis, 1866
OF THE Now showing | Project Gallery and Orde Poynton Gallery
nga.gov.au/OutWest Sponsored by
AB Webb Shags 1921–22, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 1987
Christian Schad Self-portrait 1927 (detail), oil on wood Private collection, courtesy Tate London © Christian Schad Stiftung Aschaffenburg. VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney
Amidst an era of chaos came an explosion of creativity – edgy, provocative, yet utterly compelling. Over 200 works by key artists such as Beckmann, Grosz and Dix, spanning three decades of influential German art.
6 AUG – 6 NOV 2011 ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES ART GALLERY RD THE DOMAIN SYDNEY INFORMATION 1800 679 278
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Floriade is Australia’s celebration of spring. Featuring more than a million blooms as a backdrop, Commonwealth Park in Canberra explodes into a colourful masterpiece with fantastic entertainment, displays and a whole program celebrating a set theme each year.
Welcome to Hindmarsh, a diverse, multidisciplinary group of companies with offices in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Darwin and Sydney. A leader in property and construction, Hindmarsh is building the communities of tomorrow.
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Designed for natural living *Offer expires 31 October 2011. Based on standard queen or double room. Maximum of 2 adults and 2 children per room. Upgrades and breakfast packages are available at an additional cost.
Hindmarsh has completed many landmark buildings across Australia, with total project value exceeding $1 billion. A leader in delivering special purpose institutional facilities, Hindmarsh is currently working on over $600m worth of special projects across Australia, including College of Science at Australian National University ($240m) and South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI – $200m).
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CCA0611/32
For over 10 years ActewAGL and the National Gallery of Australia have collaborated to bring major exhibitions and acquisitions to Canberra.
James Turrell Within without 2010 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Purchased with the support of visitors to the exhibition Masterpieces from Paris 2010 Photograph: John Gollings
ActewAGL Retail ABN 46 221 314 841
actewagl.com.au
Proudly supporting art, imagination and culture in the ACT.
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JEAN ARP Torse Fruit 1960 Sold June 2011 $554,727 including buyer’s premium
AUSTRALIAN & INTERNATIONAL FINE ART AUCTION 14 SEPTEMBER 2011 – MELBOURNE
ENTRIES INVITED – DECEMBER 2011
For free, confidential appraisals by our art specialists please contact: Sydney 02 8344 5404 Melbourne 03 9832 8700 artauctions@menziesartbrands.com Providing you with outstanding results for over a decade
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MELBOURNE VIEWING 8 – 13 SEPTEMBER
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Palau de la musica catalane in Barcelona
European City Breaks Academy Travel is pleased to introduce a range of city breaks for its 2012 program. Relax and enjoy a seven night stay in a centrally located hotel. City break tours have a strong emphasis on art, history and architecture, with visits to galleries and museums interspersed with walking tours and plenty of time to relax and get to know each place. There is a maximum of 20 in a group and of course an expert tour leader travels with each group. Extend your travel City Breaks are timed so you can combine them into a longer trip or add them to another Academy Travel tour, such as our Grand Tour of Italy, Sicily and the Aeolian Islands, Southern Italy, Grand Tour of Spain or our residential tour to Venice – all departing in March and April 2012.
Also departing April-May 2012
Rome
Florence and the Italian Renaissance
$2,900
Explore the art and architecture of Italy’s golden age in the place where it all started.
March 29 – April 5, 2012 per person, twin share (land content only)
Tour the great art galleries and enjoy the impressive Roman antiquities. Tour led by art historian and classicist Angus Haldane.
Bay of Naples April 5-12, 2012
$2,650
per person, twin share (land content only)
Visit Pompeii, the Amalfi Coast, Capri and Naples. Tour led by cultural historian Jeni Ryde, with guest lectures by archaeologist Dr Estelle Lazer.
Barcelona April 12-19, 2012
$2,900
per person, twin share (land content only)
Explore sites ranging from Roman ruins, to medieval monasteries, the art of Picasso and Miro and the architecture of Gaudi. Tour led by cultural historian Robert Veel.
tailored small group Journeys › Expert tour leaders › Maximum 20 in a group › Carefully planned itineraries
Lakes and Villas of Northern Italy Visiting Bellagio on Lake Como, Milan, hill towns of the Veneto Parma, Verona and Lake Maggiore.
Greek Islands See how western civilization first developed on Crete, Rhodes, Santorini and Mykonos
Berlin, Dresden and Leipzig Enjoy great music, modern architecture and some of Europe’s best galleries
Prague, Vienna and Munich Take a tour with the Habsburgs, visiting their castles and cities and sampling their vast cultural legacy.
For more information For detailed itineraries and bookings or to subscribe to our newsletter visit: www.academytravel.com.au
Level 1, 341 George St Sydney NSW 2000 Ph: + 61 2 9235 0023 or 1800 639 699 (outside Sydney) Fax: + 61 2 9235 0123 Email: info@academytravel.com.au Web: www.academytravel.com.au
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Set in two and a half acres of lawns and gardens on the fringe of the parliamentary triangle and within walking distance of Parliament House, the National Gallery of Australia, Lake Burley Griffin and Canberra’s most elite residences, embassies, cosmopolitan restaurants, nightclubs and Manuka & Kingston shopping villages.
Belmore Gardens and Macquarie Street, Barton ACT 2600 Telephone: 02 6273 3766 Facsimile: 02 6273 2791 Toll Free Telephone: Email: info@brassey.net.au Web: http: //www.brassey.net.au
Canberran Owned and Operated
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EmanuEl PhilliPs Fox (1865 – 1915) Nasturtiums, c1912 oil on canvas 89.5 x 69.5 cm
call for entries important australian and international fine art auction sydney • november 2011 for obligation-free appraisals, please contact Sydney Damian Hackett Merryn Schriever 02 9287 0600
Melbourne Chris Deutscher Lara Nicholls 03 9865 6333
www.deutscherandhackett.com • info@deutscherandhackett.com
CHINA OIL PAINTING NOW
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The Silk Road Gallery Open 7 days, 19 Kennedy Street, Kingston ACT 2604 Phone 02 6295 0192 www.silkroadgallery.com.au
www.canberratimes.com.au 11-08183/1
Panorama, Canberra’s premier weekend magazine, is your guide on where to go, things to make, what to see, read and watch. Panorama, every Saturday in The Canberra Times.
Fred Williams Savill Galleries, Specialising in the Buying and Selling of major Australian paintings
Savill Galleries has an extensive stockroom of paintings by well known Australian painters including Olley, Boyd, Blackman, Shead, Nolan & Fred Williams for sale. We are also looking to buy works by these artists. Please send images together with their sizes to: art@savill.com.au Top: Fred Williams Werribee Gorge (II) 1977 oil on canvas, 106.7 x 96.5 cm signed lower left Fred Williams Werribee Gorge (II) 1977
Bottom: Fred Williams Lysterfield V 1965 oil on canvas, 91.5 x 106.5 cm signed lower left
Contact information: Tel 02 9327 8311
FRED WILLIAMS
Open: Tuesday to Friday 10 - 6 and Saturday 11 - 5
infinite horizons PAGE 8
Savill Galleries 156 Hargrave Street Paddington NSW 2021 www.savill.com.au
Fred Williams Landscape with acacias IV 1974, private collection
Fred Williams Lysterfield V 1965
N AT I O N A L G A L L E RY O F A U S T R A L I A , C A N B E R R A
SPRING 2011 | 67
SPRING 2011 | 67
Proud sponsor of the National Gallery of Australia’s retrospective Fred Williams: infinite horizons
RENAISSANCE 12 AUGUST – 6 NOVEMBER 2011
THIS SUMMER IN CANBERRA
FRED WILLIAMS INFINITE HORIZONS Canberra | nga.gov.au Fred Williams Iron ore landscape 1981, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, presented through the NGV Foundation by Rio Tinto, Honorary Life Benefactor, 2001. © estate of Fred Williams
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