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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Barry & Anne Pang Collection
• Sale Date:
  18 Oct 2015 ~ 2.30pm
• Lot #:
  32
• Lot Description:
  Charles Blackman
  (born 1928)
  Three Girls c.1953
  oil and tempera on composition board
  57 x 77.5 cm
  signed upper right: BLACKMAN
• Provenance:
  Sotheby's, Important Australian Art, Melbourne, 11 April 2006, Lot No. 13
• Exhibited:
  Mossgreen, Melbourne, Charles Blackman, 25 March 2010
• Notes:
  Charles Blackman's schoolgirl series of paintings together with those of Alice in Wonderland are among his most successful and sought after works. The former introduces the artist's extraordinary ability to enter into the mind of children and see and depict things from a young person's point of view. Three Girls is a classic example, the foreground figures representing different stages of perception and response. Ranging through inquiry, unease and uncertainty, their wide-eyed looks and images of isolation draw the viewer to them evoking a desire to protect. Within their world of the painting, they are facing the strange and unknown, expressed through the colours as much as through the forms. The mood is blue and a little apprehensive. The setting is unfamiliar; and the threat is unknown. Behind, a lone, school-hatted girl takes her dog for a walk, the unworldly light in which she treads seemingly casting her shadow in the wrong direction - leading not following. And to the far right there is the shadow cast by the unseen. The question of its source, of familiarity or menace, remains unanswered. The twilight breeds its own unease. The sources for the schoolgirl series are several and well known - Barbara Blackman's poem, Child Away; another poem, 'Schoolgirls Hastening' by John Shaw Neilson; the daily Melbourne sight of many children on their way to and from school; and a notorious murder. While commentary on these paintings often emphasises the tragic, their very poetic and lyrical qualities should not be overlooked. Cast the mind back and recall the mixture of scary moments and untrammelled joy that made up your childhood. Blackman summed up the schoolgirl theme thus - '...that childhood is alone . '1 1. Quoted in Nadine Amadio, Charles Blackman; The Lost Domains, Alpine Fine Arts, New York, 182, p.14.
• Estimate:
  A$80,000 - 120,000
• 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.