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ELIOTH GRUNER

(1882 – 1939) VALLEY NEAR BAIRNSDALE, 1930 oil on canvas on board 30.0 x 40.5 cm signed and dated lower right: GRUNER / 1930 signed, dated and inscribed with title verso: Valley near Bairnsdale/ E Gruner 1930

ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

47

PROVENANCE

Elioth Gruner, Sydney (Artist’s Ledger no. 371) Dr Robert Godsall, Sydney, by 1940 Thence by descent Private collection, Sydney Private collection, New South Wales Private collection, Sydney

EXHIBITED

Elioth Gruner Memorial Loan Exhibition, National Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 17 April – 31 May 1940, cat. 159, (as ‘Landscape near Penrith’)

We are grateful to Steven Miller, Head of the Edmund and Joanna Capon Research Library and Archive, Art Gallery of New South Wales, for his assistance with this catalogue entry.

We are grateful to Deborah Clark for her assistance with this catalogue entry.

Elioth Gruner remains one of Australia’s most accomplished landscape painters. A child prodigy, he first started his art training at the age of twelve in 1894 with drawing classes run by Julian Ashton, before enrolling officially at the latter’s newly established Academy Julian two years later. A prodigious traveller, Gruner painted many remote parts of Australia, travelling by foot, train and horse-and-cart until the purchase of a car in 1928 opened up further vistas of opportunity. An extended visit to Europe from 1923 saw him introduce a mild form of modernism into his work; and Valley near Bairnsdale, 1930, is a fine example of this mature technique.

Gruner won the Wynne Prize for landscape a remarkable seven times, a record still unsurpassed; and his second win, Spring frost, 1919, remains one of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ best loved pictures. What makes these early works notable is Gruner’s choice of painting into the light, leaving a diamond-like brilliance surrounding his central subjects. He travelled to Europe in 1923 and whilst there, encountered the artist Sir William Orpen who was not impressed by Gruner’s work. He nonetheless gave the Australian some salient advice that he took to heart, encouraging the use of smaller canvases and a thinner, more pastel-like application of paint. Gruner also studied paintings by Gauguin and Cézanne in London, which additionally caused him to make ‘a decisive turn towards structure and rhythm as core principles.’1 Following his return to Australia in 1925, Gruner’s landscapes became flatter and more ordered, though ‘he never shunned the iridescent nature of light, allowing its radiance to permeate and penetrate his landscapes.’2 All these elements are present in the harmonious construction of Valley near Bairnsdale, 1930 with its patchwork layout of orderly paddocks leading the eye to the low hills forming the southern extremity of the Great Dividing Range where a small fire burns at the junction of the two.

Bairnsdale is located in East Gippsland on a bend of the Mitchell River on lands owned traditionally by the Gunaikurnai people. Gruner visited the region in his Model A Ford in the early months of 1930 before meeting up with George Bell and Darryl Lindsay to paint in the area around Bacchus Marsh in May. Only three other known works can be positively identified as being executed on this journey: Lakes Entrance, exhibited at the Society of Artists’ Annual Exhibition in Sydney in 1930; Bairnsdale, Victoria, 1930, last seen publicly at auction in 1974; and Gippsland Lakes which was illustrated in colour in the 1933 edition of Art in Australia devoted to the artist.3 A review of the Society of Artists’ exhibition described Gruner’s entries as being ‘eloquent exhibits of the first rank of landscape painting. ... We venture to suggest that his recent work stands canvas to canvas with Streeton’s work at its very best.’4 Unfortunately, with the march of modernism, the artist’s reputation dimmed somewhat until Deborah Clark curated the magisterial Elioth Gruner: Texture of light at the Canberra Museum and Gallery in 2014, a show which served to remind visitors of the scope, skill and radiant presence of this distinctive artist’s work.

1. Clark, D., Elioth Gruner: Texture of light, Canberra Museum and Gallery, Canberra, 2014, p. 8 2. Wilson, N., ‘Elioth Gruner: Australia’s laureate of landscape’, (lecture), Art Gallery of New South

Wales, Sydney, 11 May 2011, p. 6 3. Art in Australia, Ure Smith, Sydney, 3rd series, no. 50, 1 June 1933, p. 25 (illus.) 4. ‘An impression of the Society of Artists’ Annual Exhibition’, Art in Australia, 3rd series, no. 34,

October-November 1930, p. 16

ANDREW GAYNOR

(1920 – 1999) SANTA GERTRUDIS BULL, 1950 oil and tempera on composition board 83.5 x 122.0 cm signed lower right: Arthur Boyd extensively inscribed and partly struck through verso: (inverted)JOHN MARTIN / 100 RUNDLE ST / ADELAIDE / AG-49 SYDNEY / ROOF SANTA / GERTRUDIS BULL ROBIN BOYD / 290 WALSH ST, / SOUTH YARRA / £500 ROBIN BOYD / 158 RIVERSDALE / ROAD /CAMBERWELL DAVID JONES / ART / GALLERY / DAVID JONES / ELIZABETH ST / SYDNEY

ESTIMATE: $200,000 – 300,000

PROVENANCE

Martin Boyd, Melbourne, a gift from the artist, early 1950s Robin Boyd, Melbourne, acquired from the above, late 1950s Thence by descent Patricia Boyd, Melbourne, 1971 Estate of Patricia Davies (formerly Mrs Robin Boyd), Melbourne Thence by descent Private collection, Canberra

EXHIBITED

possibly: Arthur Boyd Retrospective Exhibition, David Jones Gallery, Sydney, 4 – 16 September 1950, cat. 10 Arthur Boyd, Peter Bray Gallery, Melbourne, 15 – 24 September 1953, cat. 32 (as ‘The Santa Gertrudis Bull’) Arthur Boyd Retrospective, Whitechapel Gallery, London, June – July 1962, cat. 43, p. 25

LITERATURE

Philipp, F., Arthur Boyd, Thames and Hudson, London, 1967, cat. 5.42, p. 247 (dated ‘1950 – 51’) Hoff, U., The Art of Arthur Boyd, Andre Deutsch, London, 1986, p. 48

RELATED WORK

Irrigation Lake, Wimmera, 1950, resin and tempera on composition board, 81.4 × 121.9 cm, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne ‘…This type of landscape – flat fields or paddocks, the ‘motif of intimacy’ reduced to a haystack, shed or stand of dry thistles or a piece of farming equipment, a few scattered trees in the middle-ground with the closing horizontal of a low distant hill – can be encountered in most of the non-alpine interior of south-eastern Australia, though it is most typical of the plain wheat country of central western Victoria – the Wimmera… Here art met nature – the ‘formula’, the vocabulary, fully fitted the ‘content’ of this dry, semi-arid sheep and wheat country, turning yellow and sun-parched in summer, with patches of burnt off stubble or weed, the grass often eaten down to bareness where the stand of hard dry thistles acquires the accentuation of bushes.’1

An untiring and extremely skilful painter of landscapes, Arthur Boyd is undoubtedly one of Australia’s most revered and admired artists whose highly personalised paintings of his homeland have become iconic within the national consciousness. Among the more revelatory and widely acclaimed of his achievements, the extended sequence of luminous, sun-parched landscapes inspired by his travels to the Wimmera region in north-west Victoria and encapsulated here by the magnificent Santa Gertrudis Bull, 1950, are particularly celebrated. As Janet McKenzie elaborates, ‘…[in these paintings] Boyd created an archetypal Australian landscape. Possessing both a poetic lyricism and a down to earth quality and capturing the glorious light, these works… [offer] a sense of acceptance that many country-dwelling Australians could identify with.’2

Arthur Boyd Irrigation Lake, Wimmera, 1950 resin and tempera on composition board 81.4 × 121.9 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Boyd first encountered the Wimmera region during the summer of 1948 – 49 when he accompanied the poet Jack Stevenson on a number of expeditions to Horsham in north-west Victoria. With its flat, semi-arid paddocks and endless horizons, the wheat-farming district presented Boyd with such a stark contrast to the verdant, undulating hills of Berwick and Harkaway (where he had recently undertaken an expansive mural series of Brughelesque idylls at his uncle’s property, The Grange) that he found himself required to develop a new visual vocabulary in order to capture this desolate landscape. Although the Wimmera could not be described as ‘uninhabitable’, it was for Boyd, his first glimpse of the vastness of Australia’s interior. As Barry Pearce notes, ‘…He discovered there a hint of something that had drawn other painters of his generation, a subject tentatively recorded by a few artists of the nineteenth century and touched on by even fewer of the twentieth: the empty spaces of the great interior. Of course, the Wimmera was wheat country and not by any means forbidding, nor forsaken. But in hot dry weather it could have, over sparse, unbroken horizons, a searing expanse of sky that elicited an acute sense of the infinite…’3

When initially unveiled at the David Jones Gallery in 1950, the Wimmera landscapes such as the present were greeted with universal acclaim – no doubt, as more than one author has observed, ‘because their sun-parched colours were so reminiscent of the Heidelberg school.’4 Significantly the paintings resonated not only amongst the public, but also with institutions such as the National Gallery of Victoria who purchased arguably the most famous work from the series, Irrigation Lake, Wimmera, 1950, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales who acquired Midday, The Wimmera, 1948 – 49 – thereby representing the first works by Boyd to enter a major public collection. Encouraged by the critical success of the show, Boyd thus embarked upon further trips to the region, creating between 1948 and 1951, a body of work now referred to as the ‘first’ Wimmera landscapes. Imbued with the spirit of the land, these works represented for many their first encounter with these ‘more intimate aspects of the Australian landscape’5 and thus, not only established Boyd’s reputation as ‘an interpreter of the rural Australian environment’6, but moreover, launched his career on the international stage, with Boyd subsequently awarded the honour of representing Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1958.

An amalgam of visual observation, artistic experience and emotional response, Santa Gertrudis Bull illustrates well the complexity of Boyd’s Wimmera paintings. Although portraying the harsh reality of this desolate, sun-scorched landscape, Boyd does not endow the scene with the drama of the desert as both Russell Drysdale and Sidney Nolan had done previously. To the contrary, by including visible scars of human presence left on the land – a horse-drawn cultivator; the compacted mounds of earth denoting irrigation channels for farming; and of course, the magnificent black bull and ubiquitous crows – Boyd here creates an image of intimacy and warmth, enhanced by the rosehued evening sky which infuses the entire composition with a sense of joyous optimism. Indeed, the work exudes a stillness and calm acceptance comparable to the mood discernible in his Mornington Peninsula landscapes: there is no angst, no challenge, no dramatic dialogue between man and nature as may be found elsewhere in Boyd’s

Family and friends at Open Country, c.1951 photographer unknown Left to right (back) David Boyd, Merric Boyd, Hatton Beck; (centre) Guy Boyd, Lucy Boyd (holding a child), Mary Boyd, John Perceval, unknown, Yvonne Boyd and son Jamie; (front) Doris Boyd, Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

oeuvre. Rather, as Franz Philipp astutely observes, in such Wimmera paintings ‘…the figures are small, submerged and humble, but they are inhabitants not pioneers. They are at home… the phrase ‘landscapes of love’ comes to mind.’7

So profound was the impact of the stark simplicity and shimmering light of the Wimmera upon Boyd’s psyche that he would revisit the subject on several occasions during the late 1960s and 1970s – whether painting at his property Riversdale on the Shoalhaven river in southern New South Wales, or abroad while residing in London. Although this second, subsequent series of Wimmera landscapes offered a sophisticated reappraisal of the theme with their absolute sparseness, economy of detail and restrained palette, it is the paintings of 1948 – 51 – exemplified superbly here by the present work – which, with their gritty realism and immediacy of vision, represented an important turning point in Australian landscape painting.

1. Philipp, F., Arthur Boyd, Thames and Hudson, London, 1967, p. 62 2. McKenzie, J., Arthur Boyd: art and life, Thames and Hudson, London, 1967, p. 62 3. Pearce, B., Arthur Boyd Retrospective, The Art Gallery of New South Wales and The Beagle

Press, Sydney, 1993, p. 20 4. Campbell, R., ‘Arthur Boyd (1920 – )’, Australia: Paintings by Arthur Streeton and Arthur Boyd,

XXIX Biennale, Venice, 1958, n.p. 5. Pearce, op. cit., p. 20 6. Philipp, op. cit., p. 67 7. Ibid., p. 64

VERONICA ANGELATOS

(1923 – 2000) OAKLEIGH LANDSCAPE, 1946 oil on canvas on cardboard 65.5 x 69.0 cm signed and dated lower right: ’46 / Perceval

ESTIMATE: $60,000 – 80,000

PROVENANCE

Andrew Ivanyi Galleries, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne

LITERATURE

Allen, T., John Perceval, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1992, pp. 106 (illus.), 150

In 1946, the Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh, 15 kilometres south-east of the city, was comprised of orchards and small farms interspersed by a complex of industrial brickworks. The first of these was established as early as 1857 when it was discovered that the area contained large deposits of high quality clay.1 John Perceval himself was also reliant on clay at that time for use at the successful AMB Pottery, which he was running with his brother-in-law Arthur Boyd one kilometre away on busy Neerim Road. He was also creating a small series of paintings, his so-called ‘religious old masters’, which depicted biblical events set within the urban environment of Melbourne, and in semi-rural situations inspired by Murrumbeena and Oakleigh; and Oakleigh Landscape, 1946 is directly related to these significant images.

Perceval was the youngest member of the ‘Angry Penguins’, a group of artists which included Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester and Arthur Boyd. Whilst the geographical nucleus of the group was Heide, the farm at Heidelberg owned by the mentor-patrons John and Sunday Reed, Perceval and Boyd were more firmly centred on the latter’s family property ‘Open Country’ in Wahroonga Crescent, Murrumbeena. This shambolic, overgrown compound had been established by Boyd’s parents, Merric and Doris, in 1913 and was a suburban wonderland for generations of bare-footed children. Perceval had a troubled childhood so when he met Boyd in the army in World War II and subsequently married his sister Mary, it was as if he had discovered his own idealised family. Merric Boyd was Australia’s first studio potter and the ceramics training he passed on to the younger men planted the seed that became AMB (Arthur Merric Boyd) Pottery which opened in a former butcher’s shop in 1944.

At the same time, Boyd and Perceval became absorbed in studying the influential technical manual Materials of the Artist and their Use in Painting by Max Doerner. Through this, they sought to emulate in their own paintings the rich colour and glazing of Dutch masters including Rembrandt and Breughel, and Perceval was particularly inspired by the latter’s rustic, bucolic scenes of peasant life. As part of the process, he painted a suite of paintings of locales near Murrumbeena and a number, including Oakleigh Landscape, feature the prominent brickwork chimneys. Others in the series are Brickworks at Oakleigh, 1946 (private collection), Cabbage Field, Oakleigh, 1947 (private collection) and Oakleigh vegetable garden, 1947 (Benalla Art Gallery, Victoria).

Oakleigh Landscape is painted with Perceval’s trademark vigour, but he took pains to dismiss the notion that he was somehow a haptic painter, slapping paint on in an expressive manifestation of ‘joie de vivre’. Instead, he argued, ‘my work is primarily a response to the subject, to light and trees, air, people etc. Whatever success it may achieve is due to the desire to equate the vitality, the pulse of life in nature and the world around us’. 2 In works like Oakleigh Landscape, this attitude is on full display as is his technical prowess indicative of his deep study of the painterly techniques of the northern European masters.

1. Until 1953, the area supplied twenty per cent of Melbourne’s bricks. 2. Perceval, J. quoted in Reed, J., New Painting 1952-1962, Longmans, Melbourne, 1963, p. 24

ANDREW GAYNOR

(1920 – 1999) MAN CLEARING LAND, HARKAWAY, 1949 oil on board 39.5 x 52.5 cm signed lower right: Arthur Boyd

ESTIMATE: $60,000 – 80,000

PROVENANCE

Private collection, acquired directly from the artist, early 1950s Macquarie Galleries, Sydney (label attached verso) Private collection, Perth, acquired from the above, 13 July 1985 Thence by descent Private collection, Sydney

We are grateful to Rodney James for his assistance with this catalogue entry.

The Harkaway-Berwick paintings were created by Arthur Boyd during a six-month period when he and his young family were living with his uncle, the writer Martin Boyd. Recently returned to Melbourne and buoyed by the financial success of his novel Lucinda Brayford (1946), the elder Boyd established himself in The Grange, the then-dilapidated family home of his grandparents, with the intention of returning it to its former glory. Part of this plan was to involve his relatives with the hope that one of them would share his enthusiasm and, with that in mind, he commissioned his eldest nephew Arthur to paint a cycle of murals for the dining room whilst residing rent-free at the house. Man clearing land, Harkaway, 1949, was painted during these months and is one of a group of works now considered to be ‘a highpoint in the artist’s oeuvre and in mid-century Australian painting.’1

During the war years, Boyd was recognised as one of the rising stars of the Melbourne art world with his agitated scenes of suburban gargoyles and cripples reflecting the turbulence of the times. In 1944, he established the AMB (Arthur Merric Boyd) Pottery with his brotherin-law John Perceval whilst also embarking on a sequence of paintings that set biblical stories within a distinctly Australian landscape. Like many of their generation, Boyd and Perceval gleaned much information from Max Doener’s Materials of the artists and their use in painting and experimented with many of the techniques outlined in the book that had been used by old master painters. In particular, Boyd took a number of cues from Rembrandt, Breughel and Tintoretto, adopting their glazes and rich colours for his own work. By the time of his uncle’s commission, Boyd was fully adept with these techniques.

The Grange was sited between Harkaway and Berwick, forty kilometres from Melbourne, a relatively remote location of rolling hills, ploughed paddocks and pockets of remnant bush. It was a gentler setting than the spiked, almost gothic bush that had surrounded his religious subjects, and Boyd sourced most of his images within a two-kilometre radius of his uncle’s house. In Man clearing land, Harkaway, the cleared area is studded with tree stumps as crows and a faithful dog dance about the worker and his horse. A striking touch is the thick application of paint for the sky that surmounts the dense thicket of trees, which in turn contrasts with the foreground where Boyd has laid smoother areas of colour before applying clusters of single strokes to create the sensation of spiky summer grasses. This treatment was likely informed by the artist’s knowledge of his grandmother Emma Minnie Boyd’s own paintings, such as The quail shooter, 1894 (National Gallery of Australia), which bears compositional similarities.2 Although he did not fulfil his uncle’s dream of becoming heir to The Grange, Martin Boyd still financed Arthur’s first solo exhibition at Kozminsky’s Gallery in Melbourne in late 1949, and it is likely that this painting was included. On viewing the show, artist-critic Arnold Shore proclaimed that Boyd ‘assures a hope that we have already broached a new era in Australian art.’3

1. James, R., Home of the Boyds: Harkaway and The Grange, exhibition catalogue, National

Library of Australia, Canberra, 2018, p. 36 2. Ibid., p.19 3. Shore, A., ‘Breughel, guide to local artist’, Argus, 8 December 1949, p.12

ANDREW GAYNOR

(1928 – 2018) SCHOOLGIRL WAVING, 1953 oil and tempera on composition board 76.0 x 63.0 cm signed and dated upper left: Blackman FEBRUARY 53

ESTIMATE: $140,000 – 180,000

PROVENANCE

Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne Ivan Durrant, Victoria, acquired from the above in 1988 Savill Galleries, Sydney Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 23 August 1993, lot 26 (as ‘Schoolgirl’) Private collection, Melbourne

EXHIBITED

Paintings and Drawings: Charles Blackman, Peter Bray Gallery, Melbourne, 12 May 1953, cat. 5 Charles Blackman: The Schoolgirl Years (1951 – 1953), Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 10 June – 2 July 1988, cat. 10 (illus. in exhibition catalogue) Charles Blackman: A Solitary Existence, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 1 June – 4 July 1993, cat. 13 Charles Blackman: The Unknowable Divine, Australia Felix: Benalla Easter Arts Festival, various venues in Benalla including the Benalla Art Gallery, Victoria, 15 – 23 April 1995 Charles Blackman: Schoolgirls, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 4 March – 18 June 2017, cat. 24 (illus. in exhibition catalogue)

LITERATURE

Morgan, K., (et. al.) Charles Blackman: Schoolgirls, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2017, cat. 24, p. 70 (illus.) O’Brien, K., ‘Charles Blackman’s Schoolgirls at Heide: Visions of innocence cast into darkness’, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 February 2017

Fear it has faded in the night The bells all peal the hour of nine. Schoolgirls hastening through the light Touch the unknowable divine1

Powerfully unifying aspects of the artist’s inner emotional world with a unique perspective on contemporary life, Charles Blackman’s Schoolgirl paintings represented the first truly sustained sequence of work within his oeuvre and as such, were pivotal in establishing his reputation as an artist of great individuality. Still regarded today among the most iconic series produced in Australia during the immediate post-war years, indeed his surrealist-inflected depictions contrasting the playful innocence of childhood with an underlying sense of menace have become legendary in the public imagination – from their inaugural unveiling at Peter Bray Gallery, Melbourne in 1953 (a classic succès de scandale) to the more recent exhibition at Heide Museum of Art dedicated solely to exploring further this defining achievement in Australian art, Charles Blackman: Schoolgirls. As art critic for The Herald, Alan McCulloch, enthusiastically observed in 1953: ‘...the artist has projected his personality, with all its hopes and frustrations, into the extremely difficult subject of the schoolgirls… [the paintings] speak aggressively, perhaps, but with undeniable power and artistry… In the hands of merely the competent painter such a subject would be ludicrous. In Blackman’s hands, John Shaw Neilson’s schoolgirl becomes a creature of endless aesthetic possibilities… at once exciting and extremely stimulating.’2

Commenced in 1952 following Blackman’s move to Melbourne the previous year, the Schoolgirl series was inspired initially by the reality of the artist’s new environment - the neighbourhood of Hawthorn where, travelling to and from his coach-stable studio, uniformed schoolchildren were a daily sight. More profoundly however, the series resonated with his underlying fear of isolation, a fear that was poignantly reawakened by the recent murder of Betty Shanks, a university friend of Barbara’s, in Brisbane in 1952, as well as the notorious murder of a schoolgirl near Melbourne’s Eastern markets some thirty years earlier – ‘the jagged, savage image that childhood is alone’3 having a profound and anguished effect on him. With their tenderness and lyricism, such images also reveal Blackman’s insight into the female psyche - a legacy of vivid childhood memories of his mother and sisters that was revived by his reading of the literature of childhood fantasy, particularly French novels of adolescent eroticism such as the Claudine schoolgirl series by Colette. Interestingly, it was not until well after Blackman had embarked upon the theme that he encountered the John Shaw Neilson schoolgirl poetry to which his work is often compared. Admiring especially the semi-blind poet’s emotional use of colour, Blackman found the mystical verse ‘very akin to what I felt myself in some sort of way... the frailty of their image, as such, and their being a kind of receptacle... of very delicate emotional auras.’4

Featured in both the original Peter Bray exhibition and the recent Heide show, Schoolgirl Waving, 1953 offers a stunning example of Blackman’s ability to evoke palpable feelings of isolation, vulnerability and the loneliness of childhood. While an irresistible, childlike playfulness and innocence permeates the work in the carefree awkwardness of the schoolgirl’s pose and her shaded eyes peering out tentatively from beneath the school hat, the prevailing mood remains one of uneasy disquiet or foreboding - she is alone and defenceless in an environment that threatens in its darkness, empty of protection, and full of the unknown. Moreover, where other schoolgirls in this hostile urban landscape flee towards some safe destination – the comfort of a streetlight or lamp post - here the protagonist seems blissfully unaware of the danger, perhaps encapsulating the artist’s own inner emotions of vulnerability and nostalgia for an innocence lost that had inspired his identification with the Schoolgirl theme in the first instance: ‘…The Schoolgirl pictures had a lot to do with fear, I think. A lot to do with my isolation as a person and my quite paranoid fears of loneliness and stuff like that; indeed, you could almost say that’s why I painted them.’5

1. Shaw Neilson, J., ‘Schoolgirls Hastening’, The Bookfellow, Sydney, 30 April 1922 2. McCulloch, A., ‘Quantity and Quality’, The Herald, Melbourne, 12 May 1953 3. Blackman cited in Amadio, N., Charles Blackman: The Lost Domains, A.H. & A.W. Reed

Publishing, Sydney, 1980, p. 14 4. Blackman in an interview with Thomas Shapcott, 6 September 1966, cited in St John Moore,

F., Charles Blackman: Schoolgirls and Angels, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1993, p. 6 5. Blackman cited in Shapcott, T., The Art of Charles Blackman, Andre Deutsch, London, 1989, p. 11

VERONICA ANGELATOS

Installation view of ‘Charles Blackman: Schoolgirls’, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 4 March – 18 June 2017 Schoolgirl Waving, 1953, third from right

(1928 – 2018) SLEEPING FIGURE, 1959 (VERSO: SUITE FIGURES) oil on composition board 90.0 x 120.5 cm signed and dated upper left: BLACKMAN 59 signed and dated upper right verso: BLACKMAN 1959

ESTIMATE: $150,000 – 200,000

PROVENANCE

Barbara Blackman AO, Canberra

EXHIBITED

possibly: Blackman, Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane, 26 June – 15 July 1960, cat. 15 or cat. 20

Encapsulating reiterated images of absence and intimacy, withdrawal and embrace, the ‘Suites’ for which Charles Blackman was awarded the prestigious Helena Rubinstein Travelling Scholarship in 1960 are widely considered among the artist’s most impressive achievements, both in scale and conceptual breadth. Influenced no doubt by the groundbreaking ‘Antipodean Manifesto’ penned by Professor Bernard Smith the previous year, here Blackman boldly merged figuration with abstraction in a detailed investigation of psychological portraiture, with the various ensembles juxtaposing individual moments of melancholy, grief or isolation – lonely faces in the street, awkwardly delicate blind women, fragile gestures and spontaneous movements between people. When first unveiled in the artist’s celebrated solo exhibition at The Mathiesen Gallery, London in 1961, such works attracted universal critical acclaim with Eric Newton describing them as ‘…big, tough and tender’ and Francis Bacon admiring ‘the ones with pain’1, while curator Bryan Robertson hailed them as ‘…some of the strongest, most urgent and forceful paintings by a young artist that I have ever seen in the past ten years.’2 As Robertson elaborates: ‘Part of their essential character springs from the interaction, marvellously developed and sustained, between the tenderness and grace of the personages contained in the painting and the fiercely implacably controlled means taken to give these personages life and eloquence within the terms of the painting itself…’3

Imbued with a poignant sense of solitude and featuring the same domination of the canvas by the human figure, Sleeping Figure, 1959 would seem a prelude or catalyst for this important series. Such is persuasively attested moreover, by the inclusion of the pair of shadowy figures verso who, though physically and formally united in a single composition, remain trapped within their respective black frames in a manner prefiguring both stylistically and thematically the ‘secret lovers’ motif of the suites. Incidentally, Sleeping Figure was painted in the sunny Hawthorn studio Blackman rented for a period of six months after exhibiting in the now-legendary Antipodeans Exhibition at the Victorian Artists’ Society in August 1959. With Barbara staying on in Brisbane, the work was possibly inspired by the artist’s serious affair at the time with art student, Christine Birkman, who fell pregnant, and later shared a studio with Emily Hope, daughter of the controversial modernist poet, A.D. Hope. As Felicity St John Moore elucidates, the prose of A.D. Hope was certainly familiar to Blackman and here, allusions to the poem The Massacre of the Innocents, 1955 may be discerned in the pink tear that brushes the face of the odalisque, and the ‘stab’ of red on her left arm which is juxtaposed with a knife-shaped limb.4 There are also unmistakable echoes of Brancusi’s iconic Sleeping Muse, 1910 in the abstracted, mask-like face of the recumbent figure, while the dramatic use of light and psychological intensity characterising both Sleeping Figure and the pair of figures no doubt reveals the artist’s keen interest in the theatre. Indeed, drawing parallels between poetry and the interplay of composite images characterising Blackman’s ‘Suites’, Charles Shapcott’s observations would seem equally apt to describe the relationship between Sleeping Figure and its verso:

‘…there is one larger picture… and the other images fold open around it, illuminating moments of self – the fragile back of a girl’s neck with its revelation of herself more truly perhaps, than her face might permit us; the moment of reaching out to touch another; the moment when alone is a dark quietness or an intense exclusion. The paintings operate with one another and upon one another; it is almost like the juxtapositioning of images in poetry…’5

1. See St John Moore, F., Schoolgirls and Angels, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1993, p. 21 2. Bryan Robertson cited in Shapcott, C., The Art of Charles Blackman, Andre Deutsch, London, 1989, p. 36 3. Ibid. 4. Conversation with Felicity St John Moore, June 2021. 5. Shapcott, C., Charles Blackman, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1967, p. 44.

VERONICA ANGELATOS

(1891 – 1974) COMPOSITION, c.1960 – 61 synthetic polymer paint and gouache on paper on composition board 65.5 x 101.0 cm signed lower left: Ian Fairweather bears inscription verso: COMPOSITION BY IAN FAIRWEATHER / 95 GNS – FOR RAYMOND BURR EXHIBITION / USA

ESTIMATE: $100,000 – 140,000

PROVENANCE

Macquarie Galleries, Sydney Raymond Burr, USA, acquired from the above, c.1962 Macquarie Galleries, Sydney John Lane, acquired from the above in 1963 Sir Tristan Antico, Sydney Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 19 April 1994, lot 82, (as ‘Composition 200’) Niagara Galleries, Melbourne Private collection Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane (label attached verso) Niagara Galleries, Melbourne Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 1998

EXHIBITED

Ian Fairweather and Emily Kngwarreye, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 31 January – 18 February 1995, cat. 4 (illus., in exhibition catalogue, as ‘Painting 6 (?)’)

LITERATURE

Roberts, C., Ian Fairweather and China, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2021, pp. 155 – 156 (illus., as ‘Painting VI’)

Being interviewed in 1965, Ian Fairweather described painting as ‘something of a tightrope act’, saying it was ’difficult to keep one’s balance.’ He went on to explain that for him, painting sat ‘between representation and the other thing – whatever it is.’1 The ‘other thing’ was abstraction and it was in the late 1950s that he made his first concentrated foray into purely non-representational art. In 1959, by which time he had settled on Bribie Island, Fairweather sent twenty works to his dealers in Sydney, writing ‘they are mostly done on newspaper – (as I ran out of other paper) … They are also (mostly) without titles – for they really refer (mostly) to nothing in particular – sort of soliloquies – I suppose will have to come under the heading of abstracts – Signed in pencil at bottom to indicate what side is up’.2

Another batch was received the following April, and in July that year a selection was exhibited at Macquarie Galleries. While the critical reception was muted – as it often is when an artist changes direction and critics scramble to catch up – there were positive sales. Among others, Mervyn Horton, the editor of Art and Australia, bought one of the large works and reproduced Painting X, 1960 (private collection, London) on the cover of the inaugural issue of the journal in 1963. The Art Gallery of South Australia purchased another from an Adelaide Festival exhibition the following month.3 Other abstracts from this time have since been acquired by major collecting institutions including Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Australia.

Like Composition, c.1960-61, many of these paintings incorporate a painted border which frames the central image on four sides as in this example – or suspends it between horizontal bands above and below – introducing space into otherwise complex compositions. In this work, a silvery-grey border surrounds a series of black painted lines and broad brown and tan brush strokes which intermingle with the paler, fleshy-coloured ground. Without a recognisable subject commanding our attention, it is the rhythmic action of Fairweather’s painting, the confidence of his gesture and line, as well as the delicate layering, which prevails. These works emphasise the act of painting, rather than the end result. Murray Bail sums it up well, writing ‘Fairweather … has consciously used abstraction to speak of experience beyond the experience of art itself… He is articulating mood.’4

Although Fairweather’s focus on abstract or ‘unrealistic’ art, as he preferred to term it,5 was relatively short-lived, these works are especially significant as precursors to the great large-scale masterpieces of his career, almost abstract paintings such as Monastery, 1960 (National Gallery of Australia) and Monsoon, 1961-62 (Art Gallery of Western Australia) which, over time, have come to symbolise his brilliant and singular contribution to Australian art.

1. The artist quoted in Bail, M., et. al., Fairweather, Art & Australia Books in association with

Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1994, p. 139 2. Fairweather to Treania Smith, 11 November 1939, cited in Roberts, C. & Thompson, J. (eds.),

Ian Fairweather: A Life in Letters, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2019, p. 243 3. See Bail, M., Ian Fairweather, Murdoch Books, Sydney, revised edition 2009, p. 161 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. p. 165

KIRSTY GRANT

(1929 – 2005) IRONSTONE RIDGE, 1978 oil and beeswax emulsion on muslin on composition board 122.0 x 93.0 cm signed and dated lower right: G Grey Smith / 78 bears inscriptions verso: No 6 / GUY GREY SMITH / ‘IRON STONE RIDGE’ inscribed with title on frame verso: IRONSTONE RIDGE

ESTIMATE: $40,000 – 60,000

PROVENANCE

Gallery 52, Perth Private collection, Perth, acquired from the above c.1984 Thence by descent Private collection, Canberra

EXHIBITED

Guy Grey-Smith, Gallery 52, Perth, 13 September – 3 October 1979, cat. 6

Shortly after his successful touring Retrospective held at the State galleries in Brisbane and Perth during 1976 – 77, Guy Grey-Smith bought an ‘ancient’ 150 Cessna and rediscovered his love of flying. As a pilot on secondment to the RAF in the early stages of the Second World War, he had previously mused that there was something spiritual about flying. ‘You are alone in the sky’, he said, ‘and you face your problems alone. The solitariness is the thing the pilot has in common to the artist.’1 He now began to progressively re-explore the Western Australian landscape, one he knew intimately at ground-level having camped regularly with his family throughout the state since the late 1950s. Grey-Smith adapted his process of recording as he flew, somewhat recklessly, with a ‘sketch book on my knee and my left hand on the controls ... The plane almost drives itself.’2 Ironstone ridge, 1978, is identified by the artist’s son Mark as being based on an aerial view of salt lakes, probably in the Meekathara region of Western Australia, on Yamatji lands.

During the 1960s, Grey-Smith developed a distinctive, personalised style that fused the ideas of Cézanne and Nicolas de Staël, using trowels and scrapers to apply slabs of bold pigment bulked up by the addition of a homemade beeswax emulsion. Seen up close, it is as if these passages collide with each other, rather than dissolving at the periphery; indeed, the raised edges of the emulsion clearly reveal where each tool started and then left the board, puckering in its wake. Further, the visibility of underlying paint at these junctions ‘reveals the effort involved in (the artist’s) placing colour and form.’3 Grey-Smith’s was a physical process, an expression for him of nature’s life force: ‘I build pictures; they’re structures really.’4

In 1978, Grey-Smith won the prestigious Georges Invitation Art Prize in Melbourne and held a solo show at Ann Lewis’ Gallery A in Sydney. The following year, he was awarded first prize in the McGregor Acquisitive Art Competition in Toowoomba and was invited to enter the John McCaughey Memorial Art Prize at the National Gallery of Victoria. Amidst this, he prepared for what was to be his last solo exhibition, at Perth’s newly opened Gallery 52. As before, the colour literally streamed out of the gallery windows with the installation dominated by two large – and contrasting – views of ‘breakaway’ country around Mt Magnet. In between was a cohesive body of paintings inspired by the regions around Meekathara and Lake Moore, augmented by densely lush expressions of Grey-Smiths beloved karri forests found near his home in the south-west of the state. Running through these was a sense of the artist’s abiding environmentalism, one enraged by the mining and timber industries’ savaging of the landscapes he loved and knew so well. This is less obvious in Ironstone ridge where the artist infuses the otherwise inhospitable salt lakes with patches of citrus green and orange, playing off the deep reds of the iron-rich flatlands. In a deliberately fauvist touch, Grey-Smith also inverts the colour of the lake so that it too is as red as the surrounding country.

We are grateful to Mark Grey-Smith for his assistance with this catalogue entry.

1. Hetherington, J., Australian Painters: forty profiles, FW Cheshire, Melbourne, 1963, pp.148 – 49 2. McGrath, S., ‘Trees company’, The Australian, 5 October 1978, np 3. Kubik, M.E., ‘The matter of Guy Grey-Smith’s paintings: methods and materials’, in Harpley,

M., Guy Grey-Smith: art as life, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of Western Australia,

Perth, 2014 4. Guy Grey-Smith, 1978 cited in Western Australian Film Stories on the Arts, ABC program number PWY7521. Date of transmission: 19 October 1979

ANDREW GAYNOR

(1929 – 2005) MEDITATION, 1974 bronze 99.0 cm height edition: 6/6 signed, dated and numbered at base: Meadmore 1974 6/6

ESTIMATE: $90,000 – 120,000

PROVENANCE

Peter Beckwith, Perth Thence by descent Estate of Valerie Beckwith, Perth Margaret Moore, Perth Private collection, Perth, acquired from the above in December 2005

LITERATURE

Gibson, E., The Sculpture of Clement Meadmore, Hudson Hills Press, New York, 1994, p. 72 (illus., another example)

There exists a little-known problem that is recognised by serious sculptors: how to make inert material appear alive. In other words, how to make hard substance look pliant. A close scrutiny of the life-like hands of Michelangelo’s famous Pieta in Rome reveals that even he toiled over the successful resolution of this enduring challenge in the art of sculpture.

Deep within the structures of Clement Meadmore’s sculptures lies evidence of the same aesthetic tussle: there is always in his sculptures the felt sense that unyielding metal has been ‘bent’ to the artistic aim of the artist. Metal is made to do what one thinks it cannot - not wilfully so, but in order to embody a new and extended aesthetic experience. These two factors lie at the core of the tight dynamism ensconced within Meadmore’s sculptures. They twist; they turn, they writhe and in their suggested animation, they add a humanising and contrapuntal balance to the all-to-often bland immobility and visual harshness of our built environments. Meadmore is Minimalism without sterility.

This type of incorporated dynamism is already evident in his famous Sling Chair, 1963 (manufactured in 1981) with its curve set within a rectangle format – it was unpadded, it was crisp and bold, it was simple. It was also his last creation before he, with some rancour, left Australia to live in New York, where his sculptural projects flourished apace. Even in that elegant chair design in Melbourne, Meadmore displayed an almost uncanny feel for the harmonised balance of form and line, of positive and negative spaces and of visual weight – a type of optical ‘meatiness’ that asserted its own place in the physical world.

In New York, the unadorned ‘purity’ of these formational attributes quickly endeared him to the major artists of the American movement of Minimalism: Donald Judd, Tony Smith, Richard Serra, Frank Stella and others. Their purified strictures suited Meadmore’s inherent formalism. His successes, thereafter, were truly remarkable.

Meadmore’s Meditation, 1974, a bronze cast work from a limited edition of six, is a domestic-sized sculpture that epitomises all the attributes that make his works so visually distinctive. Its intimation of ‘coiled’ power is made more evident by contrast with the simple linearity of its upper and lower sections. Taken as a whole, Meadmore’s bronze has sentinel-like composure. We have no way of knowing with certainty, but it is possible that Meadmore was taken by the elegant power of some standing hatha yoga poses where focal energy is concentrated midbody. Meadmore’s visual acuity would have appreciated and noted the structural underpinnings of such positions – just as André Masson and Pablo Picasso admired and emulated the free lines of mooring ropes lying on piers (no loose rope is ‘uptight’).

Whatever the case, the prime visual impact of Meadmore’s Meditation relies upon its emphasis upon a characteristically compressed tautness that is almost calligraphic in its fixed-in-space elegance. It’s a hallmark sculpture that not only sits firmly anchored in space, but also, like all good sculpture, adds to place.

KEN WACH

born 1928 SQUID IN ITS OWN INK, 2015 oil on linen 169.5 x 180.0 cm signed and dated lower left: John / Olsen ‘015 signed, dated and inscribed with title verso: ‘Squid in its own ink’ / John Olsen / 015.

ESTIMATE: $200,000 – 300,000

PROVENANCE

Olsen Irwin Gallery, Sydney (label attached verso, as ‘Chipirones en su Tinta (Squid in its own ink)’) Jon Adgemis, Sydney, acquired from the above in 2015 Private collection, Queensland

EXHIBITED

Olsen Irwin Gallery at Sydney Contemporary 2015, Carriageworks, Sydney, 10 – 13 September 2015 (as ‘Chipirones in su Tinta’) John Olsen: The You Beaut Country, The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square, Melbourne, 16 September 2016 – 12 February 2017; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 10 March – 12 June 2017

LITERATURE

Hurlston, D., and Edwards, D., (eds), John Olsen: The You Beaut Country, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2016, pp. 183 (illus.), 208

There is a certain sense of joie de vivre that infuses the art of John Olsen. Hailed as Australia’s greatest living artist, Olsen – who is now in his early nineties – has lived a life of intense creativity fuelled by love, travel, friendship and food, and the pleasure he finds in the world around him is palpable throughout his work. The landscape has been a primary subject, from the You Beaut Country series of the mid-1960s which captured the unique nature of Australia in compositions of lively line and vital colour, to depictions of Kati Thanda/Lake Eyre the following decade, more austere but still teeming with life and incident. Striving to express the experience of a total landscape in his pictures, Olsen explained, ‘Not like there is the foreground, there is the middle distance and there is the horizon. I wanted that overall feeling of travelling over the landscape. There you can see the dry creek beds, the nervous system … which when you are just on the ground you don’t witness at all. Then you begin to somehow see the wholeness … It’s more than the present, it’s the past and projects itself into the future.’1 Olsen’s imaging of the landscape acknowledges the diverse habitats which are incorporated within it and he represents plants, animals and insects as vital elements of a complex and interconnected whole. On occasion, animals have been the sole focus of his work, especially birds and the frog – a creature he admits to being entranced by – which he has drawn and sculpted, as well as depicted in paint and print. In this 2015 painting, he focuses on a squid, adopting a bird’s-eye view that he often uses to describe landscape subjects. Rather than enabling a vast aerial view, here Olsen’s perspective magnifies the subject, scaling it up so that its circular, centrally placed form dominates the composition and splotches and meandering tendrils of inky colour radiate out towards the edges of the canvas. The palette is restrained – dark blue for the squid, a luminous pale blue for the background, with touches of purple in between. Although Olsen paints in oil, the usual opacity of the medium is transformed and appears more like watercolour, the delicate brushwork enlivening the surface and skilfully imitating the mesmerising action of ink being dissolved and slowly spreading in water.

Olsen’s fascination with the natural world in all its myriad forms has sustained a creative practice that now spans more than seven decades. His distinctive meandering line and exuberant mark-making, combined with a mastery of colour, have charted the countryside, the coast, deserts and even the city, in images which reflect a strong sense of place and a distinctly Australian sensibility. His contribution to Australian art has been widely acknowledged, from the Wynne Prize for landscape painting, awarded in 1969 and 1985, the Sulman prize in 1989, the Archibald in 2005 – for Self-portrait, Janus faced – and major exhibitions devoted to his art, most recently, the retrospective exhibition shown in Melbourne and Sydney in 2016-17, in which notably the present work was included.

1. Hurlston, D. & Edwards, D. (eds.), John Olsen – The You Beaut Country (exhibition catalogue),

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2016, p. 10

KIRSTY GRANT

born 1928 YOUNG GIRAFFE watercolour and pastel on paper 96.0 x 70.0 cm signed and inscribed with title lower left: Young / Giraffe / John / Olsen

ESTIMATE: $45,000 – 65,000

PROVENANCE

Maunsell Wickes Gallery, Sydney (label attached verso) Eva Breuer Art Dealer, Sydney (label attached verso, as ‘Young Giraffes’) Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 1999 Christie’s, Melbourne, 3 March 2004, lot 4 Private collection, Sydney

‘The urge for life is a staggering thing and we just ought to take notice … There is such fecundity in this universe’.1

Fundamental to his depictions of the natural world is Olsen’s affinity for the myriad fauna that inhabit the landscape; as Deborah Hart observes, ‘perhaps more than any other Australian artist, John Olsen has invested in the animal world in his many drawings, prints, gouaches and watercolours, with a zestful energy and sometimes tender, often humorous insights.’2 Temporarily venturing beyond Australian subjects and influences, Olsen first experienced Africa and its native wildlife in 1978 when he travelled to Kenya and South Africa. With a particular fascination for giraffes and monkeys – ‘the African equivalents of emus and frogs’3 – Olsen perceived in the erratic nature and kinetic energy of these animals, a possibility for exploring a continual somersault of reducing and expanding form and line.

A superb example of Olsen’s explorations during this period, Young Giraffe captures the long-necked, honey-coloured animals in all their elegance – and awkwardness – traversing the barren African plains at the foot of Mount Kenya while a young member of the herd, accompanied by two cheeky monkeys, daringly stares out at the viewer. Olsen famously admired the way in which indigenous depictions of animals conveyed ‘the feeling that the artist is inside and outside the animal – total’ 4, and thus here, he similarly strives to capture a sense of ‘wholeness’, of the harmonious relationship between the animals and their native habitat. Betraying the artist’s enduring preoccupation with Chinese calligraphy, indeed the animals and landscape are here energetically conveyed by the use of line – thick, thin, smudgy, sharp, rapid and soft – while being simultaneously balanced by the perfect amount of negative space, thus heightening the lightness and playful appeal of the work.

Importantly, as Deborah Hart notes, the aim of such animal studies ‘was not perfection but discovery’ and accordingly, ‘they should not be considered as ends in themselves but as part of the whole web of life that makes up Olsen’s world, and as vital links in his ongoing exploration of the process of drawing.’ 5 As Olsen himself muses,

‘The act of drawing is closely linked to the fact of an organism; that everything has its own life force and energy. I am really endeavouring to find the satisfactory conclusions to those energies and hence one thing plays against another and I don’t know what is going to happen because the thing has its own life. I know that part of my interest in monkeys and frogs is their crazy ability to articulate limbs in a strange way. It is the exploratory feeling that finally finds an integration that is terribly important…’6

1. Olsen, quoted in Hart, D., John Olsen, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1991, p. 123 2. Hart, ibid., p. 146 3. Ibid. 4. Olsen, J., Salute to Five Bells, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1973, n.p. 5. Ibid. 6. Olsen, quoted in Hart, ibid., pp. 146 – 147

VERONICA ANGELATOS

(1948 – 1996) REFLECTIONS (BARMAH FOREST), 1994 – 95 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 182.0 x 182.0 cm signed lower right: Lin Onus

ESTIMATE: $300,000 – 400,000

PROVENANCE

IAG Collection, Sydney Private collection, Sydney, acquired 2002

The paintings of Lin Onus present a complex mixture of ideas around place, ownership and history and occupy a distinctive position in the broader setting of Australian art. Extraordinarily beautiful and technically flawless, works such as Reflections (Barmah Forest), 1994 – 95 are full of meaning with a capacity to transfix the viewer. As Michael O’Ferrell observes, ‘the sheer tactility of Lin Onus’ imagery establishes a carefully balanced dialogue of sensory and mental elements’.1 Renowned for incorporating satire and humour in his early political installations and paintings to challenge cultural hegemonies, it is in these later paintings that Onus demonstrated his Indigenous connection to country. Poetic landscapes of the natural world combined with subtle traditional iconography thus confirm Onus’ relationship to both his adopted homeland in Arnhem Land and to his own ancestral sites at the Barmah-Forest on the Murray River.

Growing up in a culturally-fertile and politically-engaged household in Melbourne, Lin Onus could not help but be influenced by the activism of his family. His mother Mary Kelly was of Scottish origin and an active member of the Australian communist party, while his father Bill Onus, a Yorta Yorta man, was an important figure in the Aboriginal civil rights movement. Just as the overtones of bullying and racism experienced by Onus in 1960s suburban Melbourne coloured much of his art, so too being immersed in ideas of learning, artistry and community – augmented by the cultural revelations that came from his friendship with respected painter Jack Wunuwun (1930 – 1991) – enabled Onus to embrace both his indigenous and non-indigenous heritage and to expound his distinctive hybrid style which integrated Indigenous spirituality and narrative with Western representation.

A translucent and multi-layered painting, Reflections (Barmah Forest) recalls Onus’ spiritual home of the Barmah Forest, a unique wetland comprising the largest red river gum forest in the world, whose ecology is influenced by seasonal changes to waterflows from the adjacent Murray River. This painting belongs to a body of work produced between 1994 and 1996 which evolved following Onus’ regular ‘spiritual pilgrimages’2 to Arnhem Land where he spent time with Jack Wunuwun, his adoptive father and mentor. Wunuwun was known for pioneering the rendering of three dimensions and perspective in bark painting by drawing on influences from European art. Onus’ watery landscapes embrace what Wunuwun described as ‘seeing below the surface’3 and function on a number of levels. A landscape apparently hangs from the sky, the brilliant midday sun reflected in the still water illuminates the detritus below and a school of rarrk-covered fish swimming both under the water and seemingly through the skies. As Margo Neale elaborates, these paintings are ‘deceptively picturesque, for things are not always what they seem. Laden with cross-cultural references, visual deceits, totemic relationships and a sense of displacement, they, amongst other things, challenge one’s viewing position: are you looking up through water towards the sky, down into a waterhole from above, across the surface only or all three positions simultaneously?’4

Activist and friend Gary Foley described Lin Onus as ‘an artist first and a politician second … he expressed himself through his art, and in doing so created some of the most powerful political statements of his era.’5 His art addressed issues and points of view that were deeply personal yet spoke to broader national and international concerns. Onus wanted to remind people that beneath the surface of everything was history and tradition, and he hoped ‘that history may see him as some sort of bridge between cultures’.6

1. O’ Ferrall, M., ‘Lin Onus’ in Australian Perspecta 1991, Art Gallery of New South Wales,

Sydney, 1991 p. 80 2. Onus cited in Neale, M., Urban Dingo: The Art of Lin Onus 1948–1996, Queensland Art

Gallery, Brisbane, 2000, p. 15 3. Neale, M. et al, Lin Onus: A Cultural Mechanic, Savill Galleries, Melbourne (exhibition catalogue), 2003, p. 1 4. Ibid. 5. Foley G., ‘Lin Onus: A personal/political memory’ in Neale, M., Urban Dingo: The Art of Lin

Onus 1948–1996, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2000, p. 33 6. Neale, op. cit., 2000, p. 21

CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE

BEN QUILTY

born 1973 PORTRAIT OF JIMMY MARCOOLA, 2005 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 40.0 x 30.0 cm signed, dated and inscribed verso: ‘Portrait of Jimmy / Marcoola’ / Acrylic on / polyester / 2005 / Ben Quilty

ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

59 PROVENANCE

Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane Private collection, Queensland

BEN QUILTY

born 1973 PORTRAIT OF HELEN MARCOOLA, 2005 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 40.0 x 30.0 cm signed, dated and inscribed verso: ‘Portrait of / HELEN Marcoola” / acrylic on canvas / 2005 / Ben Quilty

ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

60

PROVENANCE

Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane Private collection, Queensland

born 1973 THE LOT NO. 1, 2010 oil on canvas 60.0 x 70.0 cm signed, dated and inscribed with title verso: The Lot I/ 2010/ Ben Quilty

ESTIMATE: $35,000 – 45,000

PROVENANCE

GrantPirrie Gallery, Sydney Private collection, Sydney Menzies, Sydney, 10 December 2015, lot 10 Private collection, Sydney

EXHIBITED

GrantPirrie at the Hong Kong International Art Fair, Hong Kong, 27 – 30 May 2010

RELATED WORK

The Lot, 2006, oil on canvas, 150.0 x 160.0 cm, in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Painted in 2010, in a series following on from a metamorphic painting of his squalling infant son as a hamburger, Joe Burger, 2006, The Lot No 1 is an expressive display of a solitary, precariously stacked hamburger. Quilty’s still lives of the ubiquitous fast food are gutsy, reflecting plainly the attractions and dangers of the world in which we live today.

Ben Quilty is the closest thing Australia has to a celebrity artist and as Brooke Turner suggested, some of his public acclaim can be attributed to his blokey charisma and masculine subject matter: ‘artists do better if they’re blokes first, artist second… with references to cars and soldiers, birds, burgers and babies’.1 Quilty’s longstanding dedication to the reflection of the activities and machismo of the Australian whitefella would not be complete without images of the occasional burger, packed with bacon, egg, beetroot and a hashbrown – humorously known throughout the land as ‘the lot’! The genre still life historically was associated with grandiose displays of food, the rarity and fragile nature of which illustrated the wealth of the painting’s commissioner and in a succinct vanitas, reminds us of the fleeting nature of life. Viewed in the context of Quilty’s early motifs associated with suburban reckless youths: the muscle cars, portraits of catatonically drunk mates and skulls, this seemingly anodyne appetizing burger acquires a slightly more sinister and cautionary subtext.

In its ‘loaded’ form, the local hamburger is a little different to the simple cheeseburger, epitomizing symbol of American consumer culture and high capitalism. As an artistic motif, popularized by artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg, the burger has historically been a vehicle for cultural criticism. Warhol in particular emphasized the democratizing effect of the burger in American culture, as a unifying commodity available and enjoyed by all Americans regardless of class or social standing, mass-produced and enjoyed by the masses.

Painted quickly with cake decorating implements, in emphatic swathes of heavy impasto, Quilty’s painting becomes more than the faithful representation of subject matter. Instead, it tends toward becoming the subject itself, recreating the viscous contents of a burger sliding from the crusty bun top, and collapsing across the canvas. No wonder the Art Gallery of South Australia chose to hang their version above the Art Gallery Food+Wine foyer during Quilty’s recent retrospective exhibition, in a cheeky exploitation of hungry audiences!

1. Turner, B., Good Weekend, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 February 2019

LUCIE REEVES-SMITH

MICHAEL COOK

born 1968 OBJECT, 2014 suite of five inkjet prints Epson Ultra Chrome K3 inks on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Bright White 310 gsm paper 100.0 x 70.0 cm prints 1,2,4 and 5, 100.0 x 140.0 cm print 3 edition: AP 2/2 aside from an edition of 8 each signed and bears artist’s thumbprint, inscribed with title and numbered on artist’s stamped label verso

ESTIMATE: $30,000 – 40,000 (5)

62

PROVENANCE

Collection of the artist, Brisbane Private collection, Brisbane

EXHIBITED

Michael Cook, Personal Structures: Crossing Borders, Palazzo Mora Venice, Italy, 9 May – 22 November 2015 (another example) Michael Cook, Object, THIS IS NO FANTASY + Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne, 19 May – 20 June 2015 (another example) Storm in a Teacup, Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery, Mornington, 25 July – 27 September 2015 (Object – Table) Tracking Memories, Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art Utrecht (AAMU), Utrecht, The Netherlands, 21 January – 15 June 2017 (another example) Michael Cook, Object, Tweed Regional Gallery, Murwillumbah, 15 December 2017 – 11 March 2018 Michael Cook, Ten Cubed, Melbourne, 14 May – 3 August 2019 (another example)

LITERATURE

Personal Structures: Crossing Borders, Global Art Affairs Foundation, Venice, Italy, 2015 pp. 54 – 55 (illus.) Rainforth, D., ‘Photographer Michael Cook’s Object exhibition delivers delicate role-reversal’, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 May 2015

RELATED WORK

Another example of this suite is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Another example of an image from this suite is held in the collection of Yarra City Council Art Collection, Melbourne. Michael Cook lives and works in Brisbane Bidjara people of South-West Queensland

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, United States of America National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Moreton Bay Regional Art Gallery, Queensland Yarra City Arts, Yarra City Council, Melbourne Tweed Regional Art Gallery, New South Wales Port Phillip Council, Melbourne University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland

REPRESENTED BY

THIS IS NO FANTASY + Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane

born 1955 UNTITLED 1983/84, 1983 – 84 triptych printed 2021 archival pigment inkjet prints 75.5 x 62.5 cm (each, image) 100.0 x 80.0 cm (each, sheet) A/P aside from an edition of 10 each signed, dated, and inscribed with title and edition number below mount each signed, dated, and inscribed with title and edition number verso

ESTIMATE: $30,000 – 50,000 (3)

PROVENANCE

Probably: Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney Pat Corrigan Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above in 2004

EXHIBITED

Bill Henson – Pinacotheca 1986, Pinacotheca, Melbourne, 26 July – 23 August 1986 (another example) Bill Henson: Untitled 1983–84, Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, 6 December 1986 – 5 April 1987 and touring (another example) Bill Henson Photographs, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 8 – 31 October 1987 (another example) Aperto, XLIII Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 26 June – 25 September 1988 (another example) Edge to Edge: Australian Contemporary Art to Japan 1988/ 89, National Museum of Art Osaka, May – July 1988 and touring(another example) Bill Henson Fotografien, Museum Moderner Kunst, Palais Liechtenstein, Vienna, February – March 1988 (another example) Australian Photography: The 1980s, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 20 February - 22 May 1988 (another example) The Great Australian Art Exhibition 1788 – 1988, Art Gallery of South Australia, 17 May – 17 July 1988 and touring (another example) Bill Henson Photographs, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, September –November 1990 (another example) Bill Henson Photography, Denver Art Museum, December 1989 - May 1990(another example) What is this thing called photography?, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 5 June – 29 July 1999 (another example) Bill Henson: Three Decades of Photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 8 January – 3 April 2005; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 23 April – 10 July 2005 (another example)

LITERATURE

Thomas, D., Creating Australia. 200 Years of Art 1788 – 1988, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 1988, p.201 (illus., another example) Henson, B., Malouf, D., and Heyward, M., Bill Henson Photographs, Picador (Pan Books), Sydney 1988, pp. 78 – 80 (illus., another example) Henson, B., and Annear, J., Mnemosyne, Scalo, Zurich, in association with the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2005, pp. 247 (illus., another example), 495 French, B. and Palmer, D., Twelve Australian Photo Artists, Piper Press, Sydney, 2009, pp. 74 – 75 (illus., another example)

RELATED WORK

Other examples of this photograph are held in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.

born 1955 UNTITLED #15, 2000 – 01 Type C photograph 104.5 x 154.0 cm (image) 125.5 x 173.0 cm (sheet) edition of 5

ESTIMATE: $20,000 – 30,000

PROVENANCE

Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne

EXHBITED

Bill Henson, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, 8 November – 21 December 2001 (another example)

LITERATURE

Jaeggi, M., and Keller, M. (eds.), Lux et Nox, Scalo, Zurich, 2002, p. 110 (illus., another example)

born 1955 NOTES TO BASQUIAT: CUT THE CIRCLE II, 2001 synthetic polymer paint on linen 152.0 x 182.5 cm signed and dated verso: G. Bennett 8-03-2001 inscribed verso with title: NOTES TO BASQUIAT: CUT THE CIRCLE II

ESTIMATE: $80,000 – 100,000

PROVENANCE

Sherman Galleries, Sydney Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 2001 Deutscher and Hackett, Melbourne, 27 August 2008, lot 38 Private collection, Melbourne

EXHIBITED

Notes to Basquiat: Modern Art, Sherman Galleries, Sydney, 17 May – 9 June 2001, cat. 3 (as ‘Cut the Circle 2’)

Since his first major solo exhibition in 1989, Gordon Bennett has achieved international acclaim for his compelling, highly idiosyncratic vision which, drawing inspiration from Australia’s colonial past and postcolonial present, interrogates the power of language to structure the ideologies that so determine our cultural and personal identities. Indeed, perhaps more directly and explicitly than any other Australian artist, he has engaged in the debate on republicanism, sovereignty (land rights) and citizenship in an effort to highlight the plight of indigenous people - not just locally, but internationally - who have become estranged as a result of colonialism. Arguing that the codes of Western art, literature, law and science introduced with European settlement have become a prison from which indigenous people cannot escape - but rather, only appropriate - thus Bennett employs the deconstructivist aesthetic of postmodernism to re-present the histories and politics underlying the Australian social landscape.

In 1998, seeking to communicate his concerns to an American audience, Bennett embarked upon his celebrated ‘Notes to Basquiat’ series inspired by the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Haitian Puerto Rican artist based in New York who shared a similar preoccupation with semiotics and visual language as instruments of marginalisation. Conceived as an ‘open letter’ to Basquiat who died in 1988, the series appropriates the raw street style for which Basquiat became renowned, thus emphasising ‘our shared experience as human beings in separate worlds that each seek[s] to exclude, objectify and dehumanise the black body and person.’1 Yet if Bennett borrows ‘signature’ motifs from Basquiat’s oeuvre such as his use of lists and rap-like banter, he nevertheless imbues them with his own uniquely Australian symbolism. As Jill Bennett elucidates, Bennett ‘...does not simply imitate or act as Basquiat... [Rather] he is interested in how Basquiat’s work might be encountered from a different place, and what happens when different accounts of history and experience are registered simultaneously within a given frame...’2

Notes to Basquiat: Cut the Circle II 2001 belongs to the group of paintings within this series which juxtapose Basquiat’s rap style with the characteristic interlaced lines of Jackson Pollock, a mythic figure in modernism and thus, according to Bennett, an important player in the conspiracies of colonial cultures. Depicted in every composition as the black and pink iconic dancing figure, Pollock, however, is not simply a convenient image-maker that suits Bennett’s argument. More significantly, Pollock is a way of bringing Basquiat home to Australia ‘... for Pollock has a place within Australia’s psyche because of the Blue Poles fiasco. Prime Minister Whitlam’s purchase of the painting made it emblematic of his Government’s radicalism and determination to move on rather than remain in the past... Bennett’s return to Pollock is like a calling card reminding the Howard government that the ghost is still out there.’3

1. Bennett quoted in Gordon Bennett, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2007, p. 21 2. ibid. 3. McLean, I., ‘Conspiracy Theory: Pollock, Basquiat, Bennett’ in Gordon Bennett, Notes to

Basquiat: Modern Art, Sherman Galleries, Melbourne, n.p.

VERONICA ANGELATOS

born 1970 SEXY AND DANGEROUS II, 1997 printed 2006 duraclear print on Perspex 144.5 x 108.0 cm edition: 9/10

ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 35,000

PROVENANCE

Greenaway Gallery, Adelaide Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 2006

EXHIBITED

Brook Andrew: Eye to Eye, Monash University Art Museum, Melbourne, 4 April – 23 June 2007; Penrith Regional Gallery and the Lewers Bequest, Sydney, 18 August – 14 October 2007; The John Curtin Gallery, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, 4 April – 30 May 2008 (another example, illus. in exhibition catalogue, pp. 6, 11)

RELATED WORKS

Another example of this print is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Brook Andrew is a contemporary artist whose conceptual approach to his art production focuses on how we view images. In both his use of mediums, print, neon and photo-media and in his investigation of power relationships, particularly global ideas of cultural and race constructions, he quietly confronts the viewer. His often seemingly benign work will house an underlying assault on conventional values. Ashley Crawford has observed that Brook Andrew’s photography ‘is imbued with a gentle poetry and a savage anger at the same time, a strange balance that he describes as extremely powerful... a finely honed aesthetic sense, humour and tough political social commentary are Andrew’s signature.’1

Sexy and Dangerous II 1997 is the twin of Andrew’s most well-known work Sexy and Dangerous 1996, first exhibited in 1998 at the Ian Potter Museum University of Melbourne, where it was awarded the RAKA prize. In 1999 the National Gallery of Victoria acquired a copy of Sexy and Dangerous for its permanent collection.

Both works subvert anthropological representations of Aboriginal men, re-contextualising them out of the museum diorama and into a space which is both sexy and dangerous, political and poetic. The work highlights one of the central tenets of Andrew’s practice, described by him as being ‘the joy and the mystery of art. That we can somehow work out a strategy of conveying the world or parts of it. In many cases, art has been a moveable social justice system; a system that condenses and clarifies questions about morality, nationhood, personal expression, beliefs, etc’ So maybe it is a loop - a loop where artists address and imagine other possibilities.’2

1. Loxley, A., ‘The Battles continue: Brook Andrew’, in Ryan, J., (ed.) Colour Power: Aboriginal

Art Post 1984 in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria,

Melbourne, 2004, p. 142 2. From a conversation between Brook Andrew and Maria Hlavajova, ‘The Imagined Place Down

Under’, in Brook Andrew: Theme Park, Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art,

The Netherlands, 2008, p. 22

CRISPIN GUTTERIDGE

born 1973, British HAPPY CHOPPERS, 2003 colour screenprint 70.0 x 50.0 cm (sheet) edition: 397/750 signed in image lower right: BANKSY numbered below image lower right published by Pictures on Walls, London

This lot is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by Pest Control Office.

ESTIMATE: $70,000 – 90,000

PROVENANCE

Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Private collection, Brisbane, acquired from the above in 2003

EXHIBITED

Santa’s Ghetto, Carnaby Street, London, 2 – 24 December 2003 (another example)

LITERATURE

Cripps, C., ‘Graffiti with bells on’, The Independent, London, 1 December 2003 Banksy, Cut it Out, Weapons Of Mass Disruption, 2004, np (illus., another example)

Banksy, who although like a latter-day Robin Hood remains officially anonymous, is a street artist who has become household name around the world, with a reach far beyond the Bristol underground scene from which he emerged in the early 1990s. His stencilled compositions use visual metaphors to illustrate the corruption of innocence by war, environmental degradation and totalitarian regimes, and in many cases were first sprayed by the artist to directly onto street walls in prominent junctions of cities before being refined into commercial silk-screen prints. This is the case for Happy Choppers, a contradictory image of a squadron of military helicopters adorned with quaint ribbons which has become an iconic motif within Banksy’s repertoire, first used on hoardings in suburban London in 2002 and notably transformed into a guerrilla meme during the global 2003 protests against the Iraq War.

One of three motifs by Banksy (along with designs known as Bomb Hugger and Grin Reaper) used on cardboard placards in the London protests of the 15 of February 2003, the Happy Choppers design was printed in black and yellow with the words ‘wrong war’ and carried by the artist’s friends in what was reported at the time to be the largest civil protest event in history, with an estimated 6-10 million people participating in over 600 cities around the world. The faithful outline of an American Apache AH-64 helicopter, known colloquially as a ‘chopper’, is undercut, rendered ridiculous and all the more menacing by the placement of a ribbon atop the deadly machinery, just under its rotor blades, like the ribbon in the hair of a young girl, or a gift-wrapped present. In addition to sarcastically deriding the chauvinism of war, Banksy uses the bow as a metaphor for the masking of intentions, and cute and facile attempt to render the casus belli palatable, noble and just in the eyes of the public. This was a particularly pertinent statement in the political climate of late 2002 – early 2003, mirroring the public opinion of perceived disingenuousness in the motives for an invasion of Iraq - marketed as aligned with a fight for democracy and neutralizing the threat of weapons of mass destruction rather than concerning access to petroleum. Banksy would later reinforce this message with a series of appropriated landscape paintings overlaid with the same stencil, titled Crude Oil.

Later in 2003 Bansky published an edition of Happy Choppers as a silk-screen print, in an edition of 750 (the first 150 of which were handsigned), to be exhibited and sold in an ephemeral festive group show called Santa’s Grotto, an initiative that would become an annual event for the artists of the co-operative Pictures with Walls. Described in the press at the time as a ‘festive extravaganza of cheap art and related novelty goods from low-brow artists and trained vandals’, Santa’s Grotto sold limited edition prints cheaply from squatted premises in the trendy retail district of London’s SoHo.1 This finished and resolved composition of Happy Choppers features a trio of heavily armed apache helicopters, contour-printed in two tones of grey, placed in a convoy receding into the distance, cleanly visible against a bright blue sky, complete with cartoon-like billowing white clouds. As opposed to the skewed urgency of the disposable earlier versions of Happy Choppers, these helicopters are printed perfectly level on the picture plane, in higher definition. The imminent danger they pose is not concealed nor rushed. Their inexorable progress toward the viewer is slow, preordained, and unashamed.

In taking a quick, resource-efficient method of creating artwork (aerosol and stencil cut-out) and applying it to mass-distributed media, Banksy reacts and comments on current events almost immediately, creating valuable visual records of the anti-war and anti-establishment zeitgeist of the turn of the millennium. Challenging public opinion with humour, Banksy’s incisive social satire lobbies for moral accountability and a healthy skepticism of authority and media spin.

1. Cripps, C., ‘Graffiti with bells on’, The Independent, London, 1 December 2003

LUCIE REEVES-SMITH

REKO RENNIE

born 1974 UNTITLED (RED), 2012 synthetic polymer paint on linen 100.5 x 84.5 cm signed and dated verso: REKO / ..2012..

ESTIMATE: $8,000-12,000

68

PROVENANCE

Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne

REKO RENNIE

born 1974 UNTITLED (ORANGE) synthetic polymer paint on linen 83.5 x 122.0 cm

ESTIMATE: $10,000-15,000

69 PROVENANCE

Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne Private collection, Melbourne

RELATED WORK

Remember Me, 2012, temporary installation at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, 10 February – 1 April 2012

(1951 – 1999) STUDY FOR CHAIR TABLEAU, BLUE X, 1980 – 81 synthetic polymer paint on canvas 120.0 x 90.0 cm signed, dated and inscribed with title and dedication verso: For Stephen 1993 / Study for Chair / Tableau Blue X / 1980–1981 / Howard Arkley 93

ESTIMATE: $25,000 – 30,000

PROVENANCE

Stephen Zagala, Adelaide, a gift from the artist, 1993

LITERATURE

Howard Arkley Online Catalogue Raisonné: [https:// www.arkleyworks.com/blog/2020/04/28/study–for–chair–tableau–blue–x–1993/] (accessed 2/06/21)

RELATED WORK

Four Chairs: W, V, X, T, 1980, synthetic polymer paint on paper, 100.0 x 71.0 cm, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Blue X Chair from Muzak Mural – Chair Tableau, 1980–81, synthetic polymer paint on canvas and wood, 240.0 × 330.0 × 90.2 cm (overall) installation in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

© The Estate of Howard Arkley. Licensed by Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art

(1914 – 2003, British) SITTING FIGURES IN ROBES II, 1980 bronze figures on a bronze base 26.5 x 31.5 x 28.5 cm (including base) edition: 6/9 each figure stamped with artist’s monogram and numbered on underside: C 788 6/9 & C 788 6/9 bronze base stamped with artist’s monogram and numbered: C 788 6/9

ESTIMATE: $80,000 – 100,000 (3)

PROVENANCE

Dennis Hotz Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above Thence by descent Private collection, Sydney

EXHIBITED

Lynn Chadwick and Karolus Lodenkämper, Fondation Veranneman, Kruishoutem, Belgium, October – December 1980 (another example)

LITERATURE

Farr, D., and Chadwick, E., Lynn Chadwick, Sculptor: With a Complete Illustrated Catalogue 1947 – 2005, Lund Humphries, United Kingdom, 2000, cat. 788, pp. 326 – 327 (illus., another example)

We are grateful to Sarah Chadwick for her assistance with this catalogue entry.

‘Art must be the manifestation of some vital force coming from the dark, caught by the imagination and translated by the artist’s ability and skill… Whatever the final shape, the force behind is… indivisible. When we philosophise upon this force, we lose sight of it. The intellect alone is too clumsy to grasp it.’1

Like his much-admired predecessors and contemporaries such as Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti and Barbara Hepworth, Lynn Chadwick is widely regarded as one the twentieth century’s greatest sculptors. Fusing extraordinary imagination with immense technical ability, his art is revered for its remarkable ability to both respond to, and transcend, its time; as Terence Mullaly reflected in his obituary of the artist, ‘…he produced objects eloquent of both the grandeur and the dilemma of man. They are highly idiosyncratic, yet their message is universal.’2 Born in London in 1914, Chadwick studied architectural drafting and design after his World War II service as a pilot, before emerging during the fifties as a sculptor with a singularly distinctive and dramatic style. Following two solo exhibitions at Gimpel Fils, London, he was propelled to fame in 1952 as one of seven young British sculptors invited to exhibit at the British Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 1952, and in 1956, was awarded the Biennale’s highest honour - the prestigious International Prize for Sculpture. Over the subsequent decades, Chadwick has exhibited to widespread acclaim in Paris, London, New York and Tokyo, and today is represented with works in most major international collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia. Although Chadwick’s first creations were – quite appropriately, given his flying experience – abstract mobiles and elegant suspended constructions of metal and glass, it is his timeless architectonic forms combining elements of the human, animal and mechanical such as Sitting Figures in Robes II, 1980, for which he is most highly acclaimed. Evolving from the brooding standing figures of the sixties, and the voluminous, striding figures of the seventies onwards, the present bronze is an impressive example of the artist’s seated figure motif which, though punctuating his entire oeuvre to a certain degree, culminates during this decade – most famously in his monumental Back to Venice, 1988, commissioned by the British Council for the XLIII Venice Biennale in memory of the artist’s extraordinary achievement thirty-two years earlier. Reminiscent of Ancient Egyptian sculptural portraits of royal married couples with their distinctly regal air and direct frontality, Sitting Figures in Robes II, 1980 explores the tensions and relationships that arise between two forms when juxtaposed alongside one another. Like the Egyptian examples, there is similarly a clear division of gender here – the woman is more lightly built, her shoulders sloping at a gentler angle and her body appearing rounder than her male partner who occupies a weightier stance, his mass and angularity more forcefully expressed, with the addition of a deep fissure to his torso revealing a sharper sense of form. If there were any ambiguity, Chadwick moreover incorporates iconic symbols from his idiosyncratic artistic vocabulary – the geometric square or rectangle denoting the male character, while the triangular or pyramidal shape identifies the female.

Although betraying no real narrative or emotional timbre – the figures here neither touch one another, nor engage in eye contact - there is nevertheless a tangible sense of shared intimacy or connectedness, as their magisterial bodies seem to respond and reflect one another across the precisely judged gap which separates them. Thus capturing the rarefied essence of something human, universal, contemplative and at times, elegiac, Sitting Figures in Robes II invariably beguiles and attracts, drawing in the viewer yet at the same time, revealing little. Like the best of Chadwick’s mysterious works, the sculpture remains powerfully elusive in its anonymous strength and silent presence – and perhaps that is the point. As the artist himself – notoriously reluctant to assign specific meaning to his work – elaborates, ‘...The important thing in my figures is always the attitude – what the figures are expressing through their actual stance. They talk, as it were, and this is something a lot of people don’t understand...’3

1. Chadwick, L., The Listener, London, 21 October 1954 2. Mulally, T., ‘Lyn Chadwick’, The Guardian, Monday 28 April, 2003, p. 5 3. Chadwick cited at http://www.gallerycenter.org/elaine_baker_chadwick.shtml

PAUL AUGUSTIN AÏZPIRI

(1919 – 2016, French) LANDSCAPE WITH PALMS oil on canvas 81.5 x 100.0 cm signed lower right: AÏZPIRI

ESTIMATE: $18,000 – 25,000

72

PROVENANCE

Dennis Hotz Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above Thence by descent Private collection, Sydney

© Succession Picasso/Copyright Agency, 2021

PABLO PICASSO

(1881 – 1973, Spanish) JACQUELINE AU BANDEAU III, 1962 linocut 34.5 x 26.5 cm (image) 48.0 x 35.0 cm (sheet) edition: 7/50 signed below image lower right: Picasso numbered lower left

ESTIMATE: $15,000 – 20,000

73 PROVENANCE

Dennis Hotz Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above Thence by descent Private collection, Sydney

LITERATURE

Bloch, G., Pablo Picasso, Vol. I, Catalogue of the Printed Graphic Work 1904 – 1967, catalogue raisonné, Kornfeld and Klipstein, Bern, Germany, 1972, cat. 1079, p. 225 (illus. another example, as ‘Femme aux cheveux flous’) Baer, B. and Geiser, B., Picasso. Peintre-Graveur, catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre gravé et lithographié, Editions Kornfeld, Bern, Germany, 1986-1996, vol. V, cat. 1297 Wye, D., (Stroll, D., [ed.]), A Picasso Portfolio, MOMA New York, New York, 2010, cat. 126, pp. 159 (illus., another example), 191

Australian + International Contemporary Art from the Collection of Shannon Bennett, Melbourne

LOTS 74 – 86

‘Collecting art started out as an organic progression from being a chef and restaurant owner. Feeding people is part responsibility, especially nourishing people’s souls – it’s restorative, similar to the way diners feed my ego. I always felt like I was the dumbest person in the room, especially around artists and their gallery owners. Incredibly social, the gallery owners would pick up where the artists would leave it, and through this type of contact I found owning a piece of art was one of the most aspirational things someone can do. A work tells so many stories, particularly if the work has been produced locally. Stieg Persson for example, created the work Alsace after dining at Vue de Monde during the Carlton days. I served him a main course of frenched lamb cutlets that were then filled with a mushroom mousseleine, topped with truffle, then wrapped in crépinette (pig’s stomach), steamed and served with a sauce bercy. Doesn’t sound like a great dinner, but trust me, the work that went into this dish was immense. Stieg took the remaining bones after finishing the dish and arranged them on the plate, coming up with the idea for Alsace. I have a story for every single work being offered for sale here and I’m happy to share them all! I am a very strong believer that works of art should not be locked away in an air-controlled storage room somewhere – and so, when downsizing from four homes to one, I decided that these works also need new homes. I hope you enjoy…’

– SHANNON BENNETT

The foundation for Shannon Bennett’s international reputation was laid in 2000 with the opening of Vue de Monde in Carlton. Awards and accolades soon followed, with the final iteration of the restaurant opening in 2011 on the 55th floor of the Rialto Tower on Collins Street, Melbourne. A culinary journey that began with an apprenticeship at the Hyatt in Melbourne, complemented by stints in the household-name restaurants of Albert Roux, John Burton Race and Marco Pierre White, not only established the bedrock of his cuisine, but informed an international view of the world that encompasses food, wine, art and design. Accordingly, Vue de Monde championed the cause of local Australian produce within a context of European fine dining traditions and consummate skill, in a restaurant that showcased an edgy marriage of both contemporary Australian and international art and design. Significantly, this same bold attitude of ambitiously (and at times, contentiously) combining Australian and International talent spilled over to his personal art collection with British and American artists such Yinka Shonibare and David LaChapelle, juxtaposed alongside local contemporary figures such Tony Albert and Peter Booth.