mossgreen Fine Australian & International Art

Melbourne

Tuesday 2 June 2015

Mossgreen continues its push to join Sotheby’s, Menzies and Deutscher and Hackett in conducting regular mixed vendor sales featuring a wide range of material spanning colonial to contemporary. The current sale includes some significant works, the stand-outs being from the collections of Ian Gowrie Smith, Suncorp and an anonymous Perth collector.

Unfortunately while their specialists have been able to pull in some good works, the time and attention they can give to each work is very limited. This is particularly noticeable in terms of researching individual works and establishing their exhibition history and provenance – very few details are provided, even for major works. Nor are they interested in essays or other supporting material that adds to our knowledge and to the experience of viewing the works.

In addition to the fresh material, there are several lots unsold from the Boxer Collection, which was auctioned late last year. These include as interesting work by Arthur Boyd.

Note that I have not been able to view this sale. When I was in Melbourne last weekend it was in Sydney, and vice versa. So I have asked a colleague to view it in Melbourne and report back. I’ve also received condition reports from Mossgreen and will point out in any issues in my notes.

JOHN CRUTHERS rococo pop pty ltd 1. CLARICE MARJORIBANKS BECKETT (1887-1935) Still Life with Peonies oil on board 39 x 29 cm Estimate: $12,000 - $18,000

I often recommend the small paintings of Clarice Beckett, usually urban and suburban scenes of bayside Melbourne with a focus on atmospheric effects, painted from about 1920 to her premature death in 1935. After falling out of favour, her work was revived in the early 1970s when her sister took a selection of paintings to a Melbourne art dealer. A trip to a distant country barn followed, which revealed close to 2,000 paintings, many showing the depredations of weather and possum attack. In the end about 700 paintings were saved, and it is these upon which Beckett’s substantial reputation rests.

Even though she is best known for atmospheric scenes, she painted a small but significant group of flower paintings – perhaps 30-40 all up. The current workisa charming flowerpiece which shows the influence of her teacher, the tonal painter Max Meldrum – an austere setting, soft focus, strong contrast between light and shade and a very well handled arrangement of peonies in a variety of colours, standing jewel- like against the dark background. Like most of her flowerpieces it is beautiful, but also redolent of human feelings and emotions, subtly expressed.

Note that the paint surface has three small losses in the upper right quadrant between two of the peonies. The paint has been lost due to impact from a sharp object, possibly the corner of a frame. These losses can be repaired, although it is a slightly delicate job due to the matte paint surface Beckett favoured.

Perhaps becuse of these losses, the work is estimated very low. My sense is that retail the work is worth $20-25,000. Given that the repairs should cost no more than $1,000- 1,200, it would be very good buying to mid estimates. Recommended.

37. RICHARD CHARLES LARTER (1929-2014) Jean # 2 1997 acrylic, collaged fabrics and metallic pieces on canvas 133 x 85 cm Estimate: $5,000 - $8,000

Richard Larter grew up in London during wartime and studied art in the post war period, followed by several years travelling and viewing art in Europe and North Africa. In 1962 he and his artist wife Pat arrived in Australia as migrants. They settled on the outskirts of Sydney and Larter began to paint. He entered prizes and his work was soon noticed by newspaper critics such as Daniel Thomas, leading to his first solo exhibition at Watters Gallery in 1965. Larter stuck with Watters, showing annually, and over the following 50 years produced a stream of paintings that established him as one of Australia’s most distinctive artists. He was the subject of two retrospectives and after his death in 2014 he was widely mourned. Perhaps because he drew on imagery from popular culture for nearly all his work, Larter became known as a pop artist – in fact his obituaries described him as the grandfather of Australian pop art. But what is often overlooked is that as well as figurative art he produced an equal number of abstract paintings, which were heavily patterned and showed his early interest in the work of Gustav Klimt and Islamic art. He also loved to mix the figurative and the abstract, as a way of thumbing his nose at conventional genres and the rule that they should never be mixed. But Larter’s defining subject as an artist was his interest in the life force, and his belief that art should affirm life. For him the major arena through which he could explore this theme was sexuality, and his work is full of nudes – many his wife Pat – and nude couples. The work is never prurient or sleazy. He intends to celebrate sex and the life force, and his women have agency and are equal participants in choosing poses and so on. Jean # 2 1997 is a typical late nude, painted in his studio in Yass from one of his favourite models. A narrow range of colours focuses the painting, while the use of small metallic shapes on the yellow wall on the left, and several strips of patterned fabric down the right edge, lift it into another creative realm, suggesting the relationship between the body and clothes. The painting was included in Larter’s first retrospective, Stripperama – Richard Larter, at Heide Museum of Modern Art in 2002. Retail this painting would be $15-18,000, and would be good buying up to $10,000 hammer. Recommended. 38. RICHARD CHARLES LARTER (BORN 1929-2014) Shitkickers Ball or Turd Wallopers Tango 1975 acrylic on canvas 181 x 82 cm Estimate: $8,000 - $12,000

While the previous painting by Larter is quite benign in its depiction of nudity and sexuality, this work, with its hostile title and images of graphic sexuality, show Larter using sexuality to frame a critique of Australian political life. Note the date – December 1975. For those of you who were around at the time, this was the month in which Governor General John Kerr sacked the elected prime minister Gough Whitlam and replaced him with leader of the opposition Malcolm Fraser as caretaker prime minister. This work features the leading players from the right in this most tumultuous month of Australian politics. John McEwen, Malcolm Fraser (twice) and Sir John Kerr are depicted in images from the newspapers of the time, spliced with images of fellatio from hard core porn magazines, a fearful looking young woman and a grinning skull to represent what awaits the nation. To quote the curator of Stripperama: “Larter highlights the contrast between sexual desire (good, even if not fully endorsed by society) and the desire for political power (accepted by society but detrimental in excess).” Which is the more obscene, he seems to be asking us, the desire for sex or the desire for power? The work is a study for Larter’s major painting Black Friday in Penrith 1975-76, which was included in Stripperama and was first owned by the former director of the National Gallery of Australia, Ron Radford. The current work would not easily find a place in most homes. But for students of politics or those without children at home, it is a fascinating artistic response to the most cataclysmic event in post war Australian political life. Recommended to the top of the estimates. 66. BRIAN BLANCHFLOWER (BORN 1939) Canopy XXIV - one step 1990 oil on hessian 232 x 182.5 cm Estimate: $10,000 - $15,000

Born in 1939 in the UK, Blanchflower grew up on the Sussex Downs. As an art student he walked across south west England, exploring prehistoric sites such as the Bronze Age chalk drawings of human figures and horses made across hill sides. He migrated to Perth in 1972 and has worked there for close to 50 years. In the Australian landscape Blanchflower looked for comparable historical sites or images. One of his first major works was a performance on the summer solstice which involved tipping buckets of honey over a megalithic stone column that had been revealed by excavations for the Mitchell Freeway in Leederville. Blanchflower’s major body of work was the Canopy paintings, begun in 1987. Critic David Bromfield described the genesis of the Canopy series as follows: The idea of the painting as a canopy was suggested by the experience of lying under a hessian canopy erected against the heat of the day during visits to Lake Moore. Light seeped through the material day and night, in the way that paint was to soak into the hessian, jute and canvas of the various Canopies. The more general metaphor of the sky as a canopy for the world only followed at a later date. Bromfield goes on to comment that “the Canopy is still the form in which Blanchflower chooses to embody his most elaborate work”. It is a kind of on-going portrait of the universe, and of man’s place in it as observer and recorder of the elemental forces with which all living things are charged. Note that the Canopies are painted in thick oil with pumice and other additives, onto stiffened hessian supports. They are not stretched or framed, being pinned to the wall. Brian Blanchflower is one of the most accomplished ‘straight’ painters in Australia. His work is a personal, reflective and strongly felt response to the environment in which he lives, and to the big questions of western art and culture. What gives it power is the way in which his early contact with pre-historic art has led him to stress historical continuity rather than disjunction in his philosophical approach. Thus he was open to Aboriginal art and able to use its lessons to enrich his own work. Blanchflower’s work is held in all Australian state galleries, the NGA and many regional and university galleries. He was the subject of a mid career survey exhibition in 1989-90 at the Art Gallery of WA, which toured the east coast. Survey exhibitions followed at Curtin University in 1991 and 2004, the latter featuring Canopy paintings produced since 1990. Because he lives to paint, Blanchflower has neglected the career side of his art. For the last eight years he has had no dealer, instead selling his work directly to museums and collectors such as James Erskine, owner of Sydney’s Liverpool Street Gallery. His works rarely come to auction - hence the very low estimate for this work. Retail through his last gallery, Annandale Galleries in Sydney, this work would have been $50-55,000. To me Blanchflower is one of the great value buys in Australian art. This is a solid work with great impact in the flesh. Strongly recommended and good buying to $30,000 hammer. 26. ARTHUR MERRIC BLOOMFIELD BOYD (1920-1999) Figures Under a Lamp 1964 pastel 62 x 47 cm Estimate: $15,000 - $25,000

This pastel is one of two being being re-offered after failing to sell in October’s Boxer auction. The estimate is now $8-12,000, compared to $15-25,000 at its first outing. Here’s what I wrote in October: Arthur Boyd was a protean figure in Australian art, producing series after series that placed figures or animals in the primeval Australian landscape to re-enact biblical and other epic stories of good and evil, guilt, suffering and redemption. Often these works are rough hewn in execution and quite confronting in subject matter, but the human being “in extremis” is what fascinated Boyd as an artist and made his name. Occasionally however he relaxed from his quest to depict the extremes of the human condition to make works that showed the more human side of human nature. Often he produced such works in pastel, a medium that is intimate and strongly conveys a sense the human touch. For the subject of his first body of pastels he illustrated the story of St Francis of Assisi. As a lifelong outsider whose conflicts with his father marred his early life, Boyd no doubt felt some kinship with his subject. Francis was the son of a prosperous silk merchant who renounced worldly possessions and took up the life of an itinerant preacher, spreading the word of God. Alan Boxer chose three works from the first exhibition of the St Francis series at Australian Galleries in Melbourne. He chose carefully, each of the three capturing a typical moment of Boydian iconography – the father beating the son, twinned/fused figures and a kneeling figure threatened by a black ram. Each of these images occurs frequently over the course of Boyd’s work. What is particularly impressive about the works is the consummate handling of pastel, especially in the first two works, in which vertical strokes of pastel are used to put together the image which, as a result, seems to emerge from a field of vibrating cosmic marks. The St Francis pastels are an opportunity to represent Boyd from one of his best periods – from 1965 he was also making the Nebuchadnezzar paintings, which featured strongly in the recent retrospective at the NGA Canberra. I prefer the first two works and recommend them strongly to just above mid-estimate, say $22,000. Given the new estimate, this work would be very good buying to $12,000. Recommended. 126. FRANCIS LYMBURNER (1916-1972) The Dancer 1964 oil on canvas 91 x 70 cm Estimate: $4,000 - $6,000

The career of Frances Lymburner is the story of a talented artist, early marked for greatness, whose work had the misfortune of flying against one of the major movements of post war art. As a result he struggled in his lifetime and has become a marginalised figure historically, rarely hung in museums and absent from recent histories of Australian art. This is a pity, because at his best he is a lovely painter. Born in Brisbane, Lymburner studied at Brisbane Techncial College, where his natural ability at drawing was encouraged. He moved to Sydney in 1938 and concentrated on drawing – the beach, the harbour, the theatre and Taronga Park Zoo. His drawings of the latter so impressed publisher Sydney Ure Smith that he commissioned a book of them. Lymburner’s first exhibition, in 1941, consisted only of drawings, and the quality of his line was recognised by critics and leading collectors alike. At the same time, he began painting in earnest. He chose the same subjects - scenes from theatre, ballet, music and the circus, and Sydney Harbour views. Lymburner was at the forefront of developments in contemporary art in Sydney at this time. He exhibited widely, was purchased for the NGV and the AGNSW, and was awarded the Mosman Art Prize in 1952. Later that year he determined to test himself in the wider world and left for England and Europe. Lymburner stayed in London from 1952-64. On the whole they were difficult years. As one later writer said, “he might just as well have gone to the moon”. He went from a position of substantial achievement in Sydney to one of complete anonymity in London. One problem was that he was simply not what the British expected of an Australian artist. Drysdale and Nolan had recently made an impact with their stark outback landscapes, but Lymburner hated the Australian landscape and his sensibility was very different to theirs. More significantly his work - romantic, delicate, fey - was too late for the English romantic revival and was quickly swamped by the onset of abstract expressionism from America. As a result he found it difficult to exhibit or sell work, and was very poor. He survived on the proceeds of sales in Australia - although his work was falling from fashion there too - and on support from fellow Australian expatriates such as Barry Humphries, Peter Finch, Michael Pate and Fred Williams. However, the time in London did lead to a loosening of his style and a more painterly approach, ion line with the spread of expressive abstraction. The current Dancer is typical of this tendency. It is quickly painted and notational, not striving for accuracy but feeling. The paint handling is very appealing and shows Lymburner at his best. His highest prices at auction were set in the late 1980s-early 1990s, up to $25,000, for late works such as this. The current work, quite large for Lymburner, is estimated in line with recent results and would be good buying up to the top estimate of $6,000.