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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 #:
  14
• Lot Description:
  Frank Jeffrey Edson Smart
  (1921-2013)
  First Study for Bus Terminus 1972-73
  acrylic and oil on canvas on board
  58 x 50 cm
  signed lower right: JEFFREY SMART
• Provenance:
  Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney
• Exhibited:
  Jeffrey Smart, Rudy Komon Gallery, 30 November-31 December, 1973, cat. no. 18 as Study I for Bus Terminus; Up Close and Personal: Works from the Collection of Dr Peter Elliott AM, S.H Ervin Gallery, Sydney, August-September 2011; 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:
  Peter Quartermaine, Jeffery Smart, Gryphon Books, South Yarra, 1983, p. 112 as First Study for Bus Terminus 1972/3; John McDonald, Jeffrey Smart: Paintings of the ‘70s and 80’s, Craftsman House, Roseville, 1990, p. 157, No. 73; Gavin Fry, The Peter Elliott Collection of Australian Art, The Beagle Press 2013, p. 81, cat. no. 62
• Notes:
  We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Stephen Rogers, the Archivist for the the Estate of Jeffrey Smart with the cataloguing of this work. Jeffrey Smart’s First Study for Bus Terminus of 1972-73 is unusually dynamic. Almost all of Smart’s works are characterised by a pictorial stillness, as though everything is caught in fixity - in motion as well as time. The present painting is different. Smart’s First Study for Bus Terminus is an important preliminary version of his Bus Terminus of 1973, now in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.  It carries the inscription “yellow and grey oil” next to his signature and its upward sweep is closed off by a “boxed” Jasper John-like section of variously coloured buses. Given the final painting’s inscription and the way it points to Smart’s underlying intentions, the present painting is at core a study in two colours: grey and yellow. Smart selected this restricted colour palette as a musical composer might use a deliberately narrowed range of chords or instruments. The subsequent artistic outcome of such a self-imposed limitation generates a pictorial field that is more restrained and throws closer focus upon the uncluttered nature of the composition. Once this is grasped Smart’s First Study for Bus Terminus of 1972-73 may, in essence, be seen as an abstracted study that uses just two pictorial elements. That is, of a graded line of an increasingly less intense shade of chrome yellow pigment, which acts as the “spine” of the painting. Its dynamic upward left-bending curve, as power laden as a straining fishing rod, is counterpointed against a static background field of upwardly shaded grey. Both colours, as line and plane, act in unison to convey the visual effect of an upward sweeping momentum. The painting’s subsidiary pictorial elements, traffic cones, a movable road sign, verge markings and a dotted blue edging line, all serve to add recognisable elements that help to “read” the painting as a street or freeway scene. These roadside elements serve to arrange, codify and “place” the composition in a pictorial location. All these elements (lines, cones, edge markings) decrease in size and perceived distance as they “progress” upwards in the picture plane. The overall effect accentuates the sweep of what is “read” as a roadside scene. In this way the viewer’s eye is led upwards and inwards to follow the suggested flow of pictorial elements. Considering the present painting in these ways not only allows the viewer to “deconstruct” Smart’s aesthetic intention, but also to appreciate how his artistic intention in a preliminary study “instructs” his final creation. Most experts agree that a preliminary study often reveals a creative “signature” in its initial grappling with a theme; its forms are more rudimentary, its size is smaller, its pictorial space is more balanced, its inner workings are plainer, it's handling is more free and its intentions are more clear – much like an unfinished building that reveals more than the finished product. This is especially the case with Smart’s significant First Study for Bus Terminus of 1972-73. 
• Estimate:
  A$120,000 - 180,000
• 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.