MOSSGREEN the PETER ELLIOTT COLLECTION Sydney 30-31 August 2015 & 1 September
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MOSSGREEN THE PETER ELLIOTT COLLECTION Sydney 30-31 August 2015 & 1 September Mossgreen has gone all out on the sale of the collection of Dr Peter Elliott. The catalogue is a bumper volume including tributes from noted artworld figures to introduce Peter Elliott to the broader public. And the highlights of the almost 1,000 lot auction have toured widely, beginning in London in late June, then Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane before selling in Sydney at the very end of August. Mossgreen are market leaders with single owner sales, as opposed to the more common mixed vendor sales. The prevailing wisdom is that having a discrete collection put together by a known and respected collector attracts the art buying public and adds an imprimateur to each and every work, based on the quality of the collection and the taste and discernment of the collector. Mossgreen had great success selling the very large collection of celebrated collector and gallerist Ann Lewis in late 2011, and the two sales from the collection of Colin and Liz Laverty have also shown the effectiveness of the single owner approach. Like the Ann Lewis sale, the Peter Elliott auction has something for everyone, spanning Australian art (both indigenous and non-indigenous), tribal and oceanic art, Asian art and decorative arts. But considering the art in the sale work by work, it is clear that Peter Elliott did not aspire to a collection of great works, as did Ann Lewis or the Lavertys. He chose the right artists – Dobell, Miller, Nolan, Boyd, Smart, Blackman, Dickerson, Williams, Olsen, Whiteley, William Robinson – but very often he selected minor works or signature pieces. While not quite shopping, Elliott’s approach as a collector does not seem to have valued research or discrimination or a desire for the best. It is also reasonably obvious that he liked a bargain. However, there are a reasonable number of quality works in the mid range and cheaper price levels which are worth considering. There is also a small group of very works in the indigenous section, several from Balgo, an area Peter Elliott obviously felt a strong connection to. JOHN CRUTHERS rococo pop pty ltd 2. FREDERICK (FRED) RONALD WILLIAMS 1927-1982 Yarra Embankment 1970 gouache 46 x 23 cm $20,000 - $30,000 Fred Williams painted a steady stream of small paintings through certain parts of his career. They provided an opportunity to respond directly to motifs and try things that he could use in more major works. The current work is from the year in which Williams reversed his long slow move into minimal landscape and plunged back into colour, texture, impasto and naturalistic detail. Rivers, ponds and water in general played a major role in this return to nature, and so it is not surprising to see a corner of suburban Melbourne featuring in a work. Williams was probably attracted to the motif because it offered both gum trees and ferns and the stratigraphic section of soil produced as the Yarra River cut into the embankment. Williams was equally attracted through his career to the use of circular, oval and lozenge shaped supports, which offered new compositional challenges. The current work is an attractive example without being a major work in size or ambition. But given that standard size gouaches, 56 x 76 cm, regularly sell for above $60,000, it could be quite good buying at the low estimate for someone wanting a distinctive Williams at a more affordable price. 10. ROBERT HENRY (BOB) DICKERSON Born 1924 Harlequins 1966 retro-reflective road signs on plywood 91 x 121.5 cm $30,000 - $50,000 Robert Dickerson was one of the more distinctive Australian artists of the1950s and 60s. His doe eyed children in urban streets were often the first works to catch the attention of new collectors, along with similar works by Charles Blackman. Dickerson’s interest in such subjects came form his tough upbringing in depression era suburban Sydney. Later he was a boxer in travelling circuses and worked in factories to make ends meet, all the while struggling to keep painting and sell work. He stayed faithful to his humanist creed, painting a range of Sydney’s less fortunate people. The current work, from a little later in his career, focuses on two performers in what is possibly a mime show. They wear heavy make-up which gives their faces a mask-like appearance, while their pink costumes isolate their heads and draw attention to the possible relationship between them, presumably mother and son. For Dickerson this is a very strongly composed, almost monumental painting, in which elements of performance and stylization are well captured and exploited. It has some gravity and I am not surprised it was included in a 1983 retrospective of his work in Sydney. This painting may be just too odd for most people, but as a striking and original Dickerson it’s the kind of work I’d happily recommend. It is not expensive at estimates of $30-50,000, and should be buyable within this range. By the time I began looking at Australian art in the late 1960s, Sali Herman had already become characterised as Australia’s “terrace house painter”, and one of his scumble-surfaced Paddington slum scenes was on every local art collector’s shopping list. As time passed, these scenes became more and more dashed off and soulless – an example of an artist trapped by his success. But earlier in his career Herman was a strong painter. A Swiss Jew born in 1898, he came to Australia in the late 1930s. In Europe he’d been an art dealer, but in his new country he decided to try his hand as an artist, and began classes with well known Melbourne teacher George Bell. Later he moved to Sydney, and his early paintings showed a lively city captured in wartime. He enlisted in the army in 1941 but continued to paint. In 1944 he won the Wynne Prize for McElhone Stairs, a wonderfully fresh painting of the long staircase connecting Potts Point to Woolloomooloo. He was to win the Wynne Prize three more times in his career. In 1945 he was appointed an official war artist and served with distinction in the Pacific and New Guinea. His war paintings were characterized by a feeling for humanity, whether friend or enemy, and infused with a sense of 17. ARTHUR BOYD 1920-1999 the pointlessness of war. Nautilus 1965 pastel on paper After the war Herman returned to Sydney and continued 46.9 x 62.6 cm painting inner city views, interspersed with portraits $10,000 - $15,000 and still life paintings. The current work is typical of its genre, with a slightly melancholy ambience as the two street singers ply their trade, their only audience a dog. Although not large, this work has a fineness of execution and a genuine soulfulness, which is what Herman’s work lost as he became the “terrace house painter”. Herman’s market is not strong and I wouldn’t be surprised to see this work struggle to reach the low estimate. But it’s a nice thing, and if bought well it would 22. SALI (YAKUBOWITSCH) HERMAN 1898-1993 be a good addition to a collection of post war painting. Street Singers 1947 oil on canvas on board 34.5 x 39.5 cm $15,000 - $25,000 Italian born, George Baldessin came to Melbourne with his family in 1949. They lived in Carlton and his parents worked in factories. In 1958-61 the young Baldessin studied painting at Royal Melbourne Technical College, but was drawn more to print- making and sculpture. He worked his passage to London in 1962, where he attending print-making classes at Chelsea School of Art. In 1963 he studied under the sculptor Marino Marini in Milan. In 1964 he returned to Melbourne to teach printmaking at RMIT and prepare for his first solo exhibition. Between 1966-75 his prints were shown in the United States of America, Yugoslavia, Poland, England, South East Asia, New Zealand, India, Japan and at the XIII Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he represented Australia. He worked at such a high level of achievement that in 1974 – a mere 10 years into his working life - he was accorded a retrospective, after which the National Gallery of Australia acquired 279 of his prints and etching plates. From 1975 Baldessin and his wife lived in Paris, where he continued to develop new print-making techniques. In Paris he also met the Australian conceptual artist Imants Tillers, with whom he did a notable series of collaborative etchings. He died unexpectedly as the result of a motorcar collision in 1978, aged 39. He remains one of Australia’s most prodigiously talented and influential printmakers, with a legacy that has generated three further retrospectives and two publications. His is an art that has continued to speak to audiences long after his death. The current work is an etching, aquatint and colour stencil from 1972. It combines three of Baldessin’s most common motifs – pears, flags and the idea of enclosed space. Pears particularly are a Baldessin trademark, and one of the first artworks the viewer sees when approaching the NGA in Canberra is his group of seven very large pears cast in bronze. It is a superb entrance piece and the pears themselves are fittingly entrancing. This print 38. GEORGE JOSEPH VICTOR BALDESSIN 1939-1978 places the pears into a walled enclosure with a flag, also depicting Pears (Yellow Version) 1972 a pear. It seems to be a wry statement about the need felt by all etching, aquatints and colour stencil ed.