Early Whiteleys arrive at Australian auction

When Australian art scene icon Brett Whiteley (1939-1992) arrived in February 1960 in Rome on an Italian Government Travelling Scholarship, he was not quite 21 years old.

After brief stints in Paris – where he met his muse and future wife Wendy – and Florence, in November that year they moved to London and the now legendary Ladbroke Grove of Notting Hill.

It was here that the precocious Whiteley’s enormous artistic talents were first revealed to the international market, including Whitechapel Gallery’s highly regarded director Bryan Robertson who selected three of his best paintings for a June 1961 exhibition entitled Recent Australian Painting.

One, Untitled Red Painting, was bought by the Tate Gallery – making Whiteley at the time the youngest artist to have entered the Tate collection.  

A forceful reminder of these early Whiteley days will be unveiled at Menzies forthcoming Sydney auction from 6.30pm on Wednesday April 9 at 12 Todman Avenue, Kensington – with two of the artist’s works from that period never before seen in Australia.

One is entitled Untitled Painting III (lot 35), also painted in 1961, along with the 1960-61 work Untitled Black Painting (also known as The Black of Anxiety) (lot 36).

These paintings were part of Whiteley’s solo exhibition in March 1962 at London’s Matthiesen Gallery, where they were purchased by the late Kaaren Lynn Welo and are now being sold as part of her estate with respective catalogue estimates of $450,000-$650,000 and $300,000-$500,000.  

Whiteley painted most of his abstracts on board, but Untitled Black Painting is a mix of board and canvas with the line between the two mediums faintly visible.

Another of Australia’s well-known modern landscape artists Arthur Boyd (1920-1999) features in the auction with the powerful and very large painting entitled Flame Trees, Horses Skull, Black River 1983 (lot 34) at a $200,000-$300,000 catalogue estimate.

The painting’s foreground is devoted to the remains of a horse’s skull entangled in barbed wire – apparently a reminder of a family pet named Flame who met such a fate during a flood and was then buried under a flame tree.

Boyd’s painting, entitled Jinker on the Sandbank (lot 37), is another high estimate work at $120,000-$180,000.

Two works by Howard Arkley (1951-1999), one painted in conjunction with his second wife artist Christine Johnson and entitled Suburban Landscape 1987 (lot 31), are other strong auction attractions.

Arkley was always fascinated with Australian suburbia, explaining to one British television interviewer during his 1999 stint as the Australian representative to the Venice Biennale that that was where 95 per cent of Australians lived.

His other auction work Sampler: Formal 1998 (lot 30), featuring a single chair, is a striking example of his highly distinctive 20^th century urban style.

It is one of four similar paintings adapted from a favourite source book The Instant Decorator by Frances Joslin Gold 1976.

A major work with a $300,000-$400,000 estimate by Australian impressionist Rupert Bunny (1864-1947), called The Hours c1902 (lot 45), also known as Les Heures, Rite of Spring, La Ronde des Heures and Fete Champetre, is symptomatic of his five decades in Paris from the age of 20 and was part of his first solo exhibition.

Leading indigenous artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye (c1910-1996) is represented with Awelye 1996, also known as Awelye – My Story and Emily’s Story, (lot 29), a tribute to country and Aboriginal women’s law ceremonies.

Norman Lindsay’s (1879-1969) famed The Dancer 1935 (lot 44) is another worthwhile auction highlight, with the artist using dancer Gloria Williams, from the popular Sydney vaudeville and variety theatre the Tivoli, as his erotic model.  

Portrait artist William Dobell (1899-1970) also makes an auction appearance with his painting of retired William Sydney Robinson (1876-1963) (lot 49), ‘Collins House group’ leader and part of the force behind Australia’s mining industry in the early 20^th century.

Contemporary artist Patricia Piccinini’s eye-catching Cyclepups: Nebula 2005 (lot 71) is an intriguing entry bound to attract many auction goers.

 

Melbourne viewing:

10am-5pm

Thursday March 27 to Saturday March 29,

1pm-5pm

Sunday March 30

1 Darling Street, South Yarra

 

Sydney viewing:

10am-5pm

Thursday April 3 to Saturday April 5

1pm-5pm

Sunday April 6

10am-5pm

Monday April 7 to Tuesday April 8

12 Todman Avenue, Kensington