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• Auction House:
  Bonhams Australia
• Sale Name:
  Selected works from the collection of Bill Nuttall and Annette Reeves
• Sale Date:
  07 Jul 2020 ~ 6pm (AEST)
• Lot #:
  19
• Lot Description:
  Peter Booth
  (born 1940)
  Untitled, 2007
  oil on linen
  56.5 x 111.0cm (22 1/4 x 43 11/16in).
  signed and dated verso: 'BOOTH 2007'
• Provenance:
  Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne (label attached verso); Niagara Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso); The Bill Nuttall & Annette Reeves Collection, Melbourne
• Exhibited:
  Peter Booth: 21st Century, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, 8 - 31 May 2008; Blue Chip XVII: The Collectors' Exhibition, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 2015, cat. 1 (label attached verso)
• Notes:
  Peter Booth is one of Australia's most significant and highly influential artists of his generation. It was his early large scale abstractions that initially attracted widespread attention having been included in the landmark exhibition, The Field - The inaugural exhibition for the National Gallery of Victoria St Kilda Road building in 1968. However today, it is his immensely vivid and emotionally charged apocalyptic figuration that has captivated his audience. Early memories of his childhood growing up during and post the war years in the bleak industrial town of Sheffield, England, infuse his work shaping their dramatic sceneries. His paintings becoming a culmination of his observations from the real world and the inner realm of his imagination. 'Booth's art unifies a deeply personal, inner reality with a singular vision of the external world, alerting us to the pleasures and pitfalls of life. His visions of urban chaos, landscapes cast in alternately bleak and Arcadian light, and hybrid beings, grotesquery and the carnivalesque, rise from observations of the surrounding world... His pictures can be terrifying and apocalyptic, bizarre, but often heart-warming and amusing.'1 The present work has moved beyond the austere landscapes and narratives in which we are accustomed to. Booth focuses on the direct relationship between the viewer and the subject, though here the tables are turned as the anonymous man gazes intensely, mesmerising the viewer in a mirror-like state. On one side reality, on the other side imagination. Painted with a typically restrained palette, perhaps reminiscent of his childhood – the dashes of pink offer a sense of calm and warmth to the man's weary face. On the surface, what appears to be a far more intimate environment, one can only imagine what the desolate landscape may hold beyond the frame. 1. Gerard Vaughan, Peter Booth: Human Nature, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2004, p. 5
• Estimate:
  A$40,000 - 60,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.