Menzies Australian & International Fine Art & Sculpture

MENZIES

AUSTRALIAN & INTERNATIONAL FINE ART & SCULPTURE Melbourne 23 March 2016

72. CONSTANCE STOKES, Marguerites and cornflowers 1930 73. MARGARET PRESTON, NSW orchids 1925

JOHN CRUTHERS rococo pop pty ltd 6. LINA BRYANS The house in the trees oil on canvas 61 x 50 cm $4,000 - $6,000

This lovely painting by Melbourne artist Lina is quite similar to one sold at Menzies in December 2015. Here’s a link to my notes –

Menzies December 2015 - Lina Bryans Lot 130

The current painting is the same format and I suspect the same period – the late 1950s. It’s being sold from the estate of the daughter of AA Phillips, who was the cousin of painter Emanuel Phillips Fox and a well known cultural commentator from the 1940s. Phillips knew artists and bought carefully and with a good eye. Lots 7, 8 and 9 are also his.

He also owned a companion painting by fellow modernist Arnold Shore, which showed the same orange building from a different angle. It’s be- lieved the house was Shore’s beach house, and that he and other artists stayed there over weekends, painting. Shore’s work was unfortunately bowed quite badly and consigned to Lawson’s last week. But Lina’s picture has survived well and shows her bold and expressive approach to the landscape. The foliage and grass are especially strong, while she has scratched lines with the end of her brush to accentuate the trunks of the trees. It’s more regular and less ecstatic than the previous work, also of trees, but it shows her in top form.

This work would suit a collector of Australian modernism, especially lesser known figures. The December work sold for hammer $3,800, $4,664, which was quite a bargain. In a nice small group by a known collector, and right at the front of the catalogue, I’d expect this one to do better. But the high estimate should buy it or very close, at which it would still be good value. Strongly recommended. Born in 1872, Ethel Carrick was an English artist who married Australian painter Emanuel Phillips Fox. A late impressionist, Fox was an urbane painter with an elegant style and excellent paint handling. He painted landscapes, figure work, still life and other genres, but his best known works are groups of people observed going about their lives – several elegantly attired women stepping down into a ferry and a studio of female art stu- dents are probably his best known works.

In the early 20th century, the couple ventured overseas to seek fame and fortune, travelling the world and making paintings inspired by the scenes people went overseas to see – the Lux- embourg Gardens in Paris, the beach in the south of France, Arab souks in Morocco and Casa- blanca and so on. Their easy impressionist style suited these subjects, which could be dashed off in an hour or two and worked up in the studio if necessary. Often they painted the same scene side by side. They sold well and kept the artists on the road through 1907-12.

Unusually, the current work is a gouache, not a medium Carrick used often. But she’s clearly capable with it, deploying washes of high colour to suggest a sun-drenched landscape with a jetty, stone bridge, boats and distant cottages. She has casually left the bottom right edge unpainted, revealing the grey paper support, while the paper itself is buckled along the top edge. This simply adds verisimilitude to the work, also giving it a strong physical presence as an object. Given the 7. ETHEL CARRICK FOX intensity of the light, I’d suggest the location was Cottages by a bridge on France’s Mediterranean coast, possibly Nice, gouache on paper Cannes or Antibes. 20.5 x 28.5 cm $4,000 - $6,000 Carrick Fox has two paintings in the list of the top ten most expensive paintings by Australian women artists. So she’s a heavy hitter in the market, making this appealing work potentially good buy- ing. While the estimates are a come on, the work could be buyable around $8,000. This painting has some wow factor in the flesh, although the frame – hideously pur- ple/pink and green – fights the paintwork terribly. It is a relatively early work by the artist, the paint application in small square facets showing an appreciation of divi- sionist techniques of post-impressionism, pioneered by Seurat and Signac.

The work’s most most notable quality on first look is that it is painted into the light. This allows the artist to contrast the passages of bright sunlight with the shadow areas – done with great effect in this painting on the tree trunks, grassy bank and water. Like the Carrick above, it is a painting about light and how it can be captured in paint.

It is also very finely wrought, with lovely detailed passages in the mid ground used to suggest areas of light and shade. Taken in total, it really sings. While not large, it has enough scale to make quite a strong impact – it’s a very classy object. Notice that it was gift from the artist to his cousin. Fox obviously likes and respected his cousin, and gave him an exemplary small painting.

Fox’s works have sold well into the hun- dreds of thousands, making this work seem suspiciously cheap. It’s not signed, 9. EMANUEL PHILLIPS FOX that is true, and it needs a new frame. But Landscape c1889-90 it has a terrific provenance and its quali- oil on canvas ty shines through. If it was buyable at or 30.5 x 46 cm close to $20,000 hammer, it would be a $8,000 - $10,000 very cheap impressionist painting by a leading name. Recommended. The intriguing story of peripatetic English artist Ian Fairweather is well known and has provided good copy for generations of catalogue essayists. He is particularly well known for his love of China, which he first visited in the 1920s, and the use of Chinese subject matter in his art. But it is the paintings that have made the biggest impact. With his fluid calligraphic drawing and tertiary colours, Fairweather is instantly recognizable.

The current work dates from 1933, the year which most Fairweather scholars regard as his first year of mature painting. It depicts a bridge in Pekin, and is quickly rendered in a mix of oil and gouache. While the composition is possibly too obvious, the paint handling is interesting and the colours typically dry, rendered in chalky paint.

The work was first shown in Cynthia Reed’s gallery in Melbourne, and two years later at the Redfern Gallery London. It also features in Murray bail’s book, so is well in the canon. However, for me it isn’t quite good enough, unless you want a bargain priced Fairweather.

44. IAN FAIRWEATHER Bridge in China (also known as Bridge in Pekin) 1933 oil and gouache on paper 40 x 60 cm $40,000 - $50,000 72. CONSTANCE STOKES Marguerites and cornflowers 1930 oil on composition board 52.5 x 44 cm $9,000 - $12,000

Constance Stokes (nee Parkin) was born in 1906. A talented student, she studied at the National Gallery School in Melbourne, winning the 1929 travelling scholarship, which allowed her to study at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, and later with Andre Lhote in Paris.

Her paintings of this period show the artist taking on various modernist styles through the genre of still life. The current work contrasts the floral subject matter – Marguerites and cornflowers – against a piece of painted fabric that also features flowers, the whole anchored by two vases, the larger containing the flowers and the other echoing the tur- quoise colour of the painted drop. The colours are soft overall, but the work is pleasing in the flesh. To me there were definite echoes of the modern flower paintings of Margaret Preston, which were successfully shown in Sydney in 1929.

The painting was exhibited in the artist’s first solo exhibition in Mel- bourne in 1933, which was reviewed by two newspapers – showing the interest in the work of this young woman, recently returned from the UK. Its first provenance is the artist’s sister, by descent.

On her return to Melbourne in 1933 she married and had three children in five years, leading to a reduction in the number of works she painted. Later she studied and painted with the George Bell. A career highlight was the selection of one of her paintings in an exhibition of 12 leading Australian artists that toured to New York’s Metroploitan Museum of Art in 1941, and later to Canada.

This work is subtle and distinctive, typical of Stoke’s flower paintings. It was offered at Deutascher and Hackett in August 2015, where it passed against estimates of $15-20,000. The current estimates make the work much more buyable, and I’d recommend it to the top estimate, or a bid above, but hope to get it for less. 73. MARGARET PRESTON NSW orchids 1925 hand coloured woodblock 12 x 12 cm $12,000 - $16,000

Margaret Preston is justly feted for her woodblock prints, which she employed as experimental platforms to develop the radical simplicity of motif – often a vase of flowers – she later used in her oil paintings. The NGA has devoted a major publication to her prints and has a vast collection, including most of the best known images.

The current work was made in 1925, in the middle of the decade which saw Preston push from the literal to the highly patterned. The small bunch of flowers are almost alive – they writhe and pulsate, suggesting a profuse lifeforce. Although tiny, it is an image of some power.

The current impression was sold at Menzies in June 2011 for $12,273 against estimates of $12-15,000. The following year an impression sold at Lawson-Menzies for $17,796 against $14-18,000 At $12-16,000, the work is fairly priced and should sell at the top of the estimate.. 93. LLOYD REES Untitled pencil on paper 23 x 19.5 cm $5,000 - $7,000

Among Lloyd Rees’ most celebrated works are his detailed pencil drawings done around Sydney Harbour and surrounds in the late 1920s. They show an extraordinary attention to detail and ability to render light and textures defined by light.

Recently the Museum of Sydney on the Site of the First Government House had a survey exhibition of this subset of Rees’ work. It was a popular show which helped refocus attention on this aspect of Rees’ practice. Unfortunately I did not see the exhibition, but I did see its influence on show at Deutscher and Hackett’s last auction of 2015, which a superb example, larger than the current work, was bid to $164,000. In the same round of auctions a smaller but lovely work, also a harbor scene, made $39,040.

I don’t think the current work has the same picturesque appeal. But what Rees has done with this tree in a suburban backyard shows his transformative ability and the tendency of his early work to strike spiritual echoes. It’s a terrific piece of drawing and will hopefully sell not too far north of the top estimate. Recommended up to $10,000.