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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Peter Elliott Collection
• Sale Date:
  30 Aug 2015 ~ 6pm - Part 1 (Lots 1 - 193)
  31 Aug 2015 ~ 11am - Part 2 (Lots 194 - 340)
  31 Aug 2015 ~ 2pm - Part 3 (Lots 341 - 511)
  01 Sep 2015 ~ 10.30am - Part 4 (Lots 512 - 754) and 2pm - Part 5 (Lots 755 - 1013)
• Lot #:
  5
• Lot Description:
  Justin Maurice O’Brien
  (1917-1996)
  The Crucifixion 1969/1970
  oil and gold leaf on board
  58 x 42 cm
  signed lower right: OBRIEN
• Provenance:
  Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 1970 (label verso)
• Exhibited:
  Twelve Recent Works by Justin O’Brien, Macquarie Galleries, 1970; Justin O’Brien and Friends - A Birthday Celebration, S.H Ervin Gallery, 1987, cat. no. 31; Justin O’Brien, the Sacred Music of Colour, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 18 December 2010 - 27 February 2011, cat. no. 66; Masterpieces from the Peter Elliott Collection - curated by Lou Klepac, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, 6 December 2013 - 7 February 2014, Orange Regional Art Gallery, 2 May - 15 June 2014
• References:
  Gavin Fry, The Peter Elliott Collection of Australian Art, The Beagle Press 2013, pg. 71, cat. no. 51
• Notes:
  Justin O'Brien was a deeply religious artist, born in Australia, but based for much of his life in Rome. He won the Blake Prize for Religious Art in 1951 – the year it was launched – with the painting The Virgin Enthroned which has stylistic similarities to the present painting, The Crucifixion painted eighteen years later in 1969. O’Brien and his glowing paintings, watercolours and drawings were the subjects of a major retrospective entitled Justin O’Brien: The Sacred Music of Colour, which was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2011. It was the first full survey of his work since 1987 and the present painting was included in the exhibition as catalogue number 66 where it is listed as being painted in Rome and dated as created in 1969, just two years after he permanently moved to Rome. The paintings in the extensive AGNSW exhibition displayed visual characteristics and aesthetic attributes that are fully in evidence in his The Crucifixion. These emphasise bodily elegance through deliberate elongations to give figures a statuesque linearity. O’Brien’s pictorial perspective is always flattened and the compositional effect of such treatment lends to his works a fresco-like or bas-relief character, no doubt to provide a mental link back to the frontal visuality of Early Renaissance or Mediaeval Italian paintings. His artistic world was the one of the past and it was driven not by a slavish adherence to its forms but by an urge to match its visual simplicity, devotional integrity and stylistic unity – especially as found in the works of Giotto, Botticelli, Duccio, Della Francesca and, oddly enough, Derain. O’Brien’s The Crucifixion portrays a time-honoured theme that has attracted numerous artists over the past two thousand years. The Scripture-based theme of the death of Christ is presented in a fresco-like pictorial format that harks back to many traditional modes of depiction. O’Brien has used gold leaf in the background of the painting to overlay it with iconic associations and to add to its sense of sacred reverence. The painting’s arrangement of figures, in keeping with tradition, is hierarchically structured and centrally positioned. All seemingly extraneous elements such as skulls, the INRI legend, brooding sky, sombre shadows have been omitted, while others including angel with a chalice, higher cross bar “Eastern” crucifix have been added in deference to tradition. The overall ambience of O’Brien’s The Crucifixion is one of reserve and reverence – so much so that it comes as no surprise that The Vatican in Rome acquired one of his similar paintings for permanent display in its gallery of Modern Art.
• Estimate:
  A$30,000 - 40,000
• 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.