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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Contents of Prince Albert House, Mosman
• Sale Date:
  21 Aug 2016 ~ 2pm
• Lot #:
  28
• Lot Description:
  Ray Crooke
  (1922 - 2015)
  Islanders by the Shore
  oil on canvas
  121.5 x 182.5 cm
  signed lower left: Ray Crooke; bears Holdsworth Galleries, Sydney label verso
• Notes:
  The present work is a brilliant example by one of Australia's most loved artists, the late Ray Crooke. We commonly associate Crooke's work with two distinct, yet closely related, places and themes. Firstly, there is the group of lush Pacific Island scenes which have been supremely popular among collectors (Thursday Island, 1964, sold $115,900, Mossgreen 2011). Secondly, there are the mostly arid and golden landscapes of Northern Queensland (Early Morning Cairns Suburb, c.1962, sold $97,600, Mossgreen 2011). Born in Melbourne, Crooke first came in contact with the tropics in 1938 after joining the Second Australian Imperial Force, when he was stationed in Cape York and Borneo. After the war, in 1949, he returned to live in Cairns and Thursday Island. He would later make Sydney his base, but throughout his life spent many months of the year travelling to Queensland and the neighbouring islands. Here, he found the leitmotifs that would become central to his art. Crooke recalls when he first began painting, how he 'hadn't yet formed any distinct style - I had a lot of things I want to say but I didn't know how to say them. So one day, I thought I'll just paint a place I like and where I know, and I did a tempera painting of Thursday Island in a style which I like and exhibited at the Australian Galleries and it was an immediate success ... that was the first breakthrough ... when I realised all I had to do was paint things of my own experience.'1 In forming his 'distinct style', Crooke looked back to Europe and found inspiration in the legacy of the modern masters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His debt lies most clearly with the art of Paul Gauguin. In him, he found a shared interest in the lives, traditions and customs of Islander life, seen from the perspective of an interested, yet respectful outsider. Pictorially, Gauguin also demonstrated that a synthesis of form and flatness of perspective can still give an (abstracted) impression of depth and space. Additionally, Crooke must also have seen Matisse as a guiding force for his art. The feeling of tranquillity and idle repose which distinguish this, and so many of Crooke's best work, is surely borrowed from Matisse's Luxe, Calme et Volupté, 1904 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris). The present work is remarkable for the bright and shimmering light which permeates the entire composition; even the shadows seem somehow bathed in a soft, hazy light. The air, common in Crooke's best work, is crisp and limpid, as calm as the ocean and the figures which take reprieve from the midday sun. Mossgreen is honoured to be entrusted with the sale of Islanders by the Shore - one of the largest paintings Crooke ever executed, and one of the most impressive from the series to come onto the market in recent years. Petrit Abazi 1 Ray Crooke, interview with Barbara Blackman, 23 October 1983, cited in Sue Smith (ed.), North of Capricorn: the Art of Ray Crooke, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville, 1997
• Estimate:
  A$70,000 - 90,000
• 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.