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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 #:
  11
• Lot Description:
  Brett Whiteley
  (1939-1992)
  The Arrival - A Glimpse in the Botanical Gardens 1984
  oil, collage and charcoal on canvas
  107 x 92 cm
  signed lower right: brett whiteley; signed, dated and titled verso: brett whiteley, The arrival - a glimpse in the Botanical Gardens 1984
• Provenance:
  Acquired from the artist, 1984
• Exhibited:
  Brett Whiteley, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 1984, cat. no. 26; Brett Whiteley Retrospective, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1995 (as The Arrival - a glimpse in the Botanical Gardens), toured Museum and Art Gallery of Northern Territory, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery; Affinities - Brett Whiteley and Lloyd Rees, Brett Whiteley Studio, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2000; Up Close an
• References:
  Barry Pearce, Australian Artists, Australian Birds, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1989, illus. plate 127, p. 146; Barry Pearce, Bryan Robinson, Wendy Whiteley, Brett Whiteley Art & Life, Thames and Hudson, London and Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1995, illus. plate 146, p.208 (as The Arrival - A Glimpse in the Botanic Gardens); Michael Reid, ‘Portrait of Opportunity’, Art Times, The Weekend Australian, 22-23 December 2001, illus. p. 28; Affinities, cat. illus. in colour, 2001; Gavin Fry, The Pete
• Notes:
  Brett Whiteley’s The Arrival – A Glimpse in the Botanical Gardens of 1984 has all the characteristic hallmarks and artistic attributes that made him so remarkable. The painting depicts what is most probably the recollected amalgamation of a large Moreton Bay fig tree and a flame tree, in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens, justly famous for its lushness, waterlily ponds and harbourside vistas. The tree’s branches have been elongated and their sinuous qualities are pictorially accentuated to highlight their seemingly animated features. The tree looks over a pathway and its adjacent pond. The whole scene is bathed in strong hues that swirl around the canvas in ways that make perspective and pictorial depth visually ambiguous. It is as though Whiteley wished to convey a type of swooning identification with the colouristic aura of the sunset scene. All is caught in a swamping flood of colours and curves. Not one straight line is seen and the fact that the painting is based upon the glimpse of a view indicates that it was caught on the move and then recalled and created sometime after it was first perceived. This observation is supported by the fact that the visual components of the painting are amalgamations of things that drew Whiteley’s attention during a blissful stroll through the Botanic Gardens. Considered in this way the painting presents as a composite register of remembered effects and felt sensations. For instance, the dark trunk of the tree is rendered in cornflower blue tones as though these colours were recalled after passing by a jacaranda tree in full bloom at dusk. Furthermore, the colour of the tree’s violet flowers interweave with the Flame tree’s fanned scarlet blooms in a way that recalls the stylised clouds of Tibetan thangka wall hangings. Even the invisible flight pattern of a bird is seen traced like a dotted flight path threaded through the branches and boughs to underscore the coupling of the time-based sensations of the scene. Looked at as a whole, one can see that a Van Gogh-like euphoric connection underpins the blended vision and conflated sensation of the swaying pictorial rhythms of Whiteley’s blissfully inspired painting. For most people, a garden, a view into or of a garden provides a type of mental retreat from the bustling hustle of the everyday world. So it was, so often, with Whiteley. Whiteley’s The Arrival – A Glimpse in the Botanical Gardens of 1984 is a comparatively unencumbered painting, whose imagery and techniques are both freed from external urgency and expressive of a certain ease and repose.
• Estimate:
  A$400,000 - 600,000
• 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.