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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen-Webb's
• Sale Name:
  Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
• Sale Date:
  11 Apr 2017 ~ 6.30pm (NZ time)
• Lot #:
  27
• Lot Description:
  Leo Bensemann
  Te Tara-o-te-Rakitiaia (Summit Road Peak and Southern Alps)
  oil on board, 1985
  610mm x 790mm
• Provenance:
  From the family of Leo Bensemann. Passed by descent to the present owner.
• References:
  Otto, Caroline, Leo Bensemann Landscapes and Studies, Nikau Press 2006, p. 115.
• Notes:
  This striking landscape was one of the last paintings Leo Bensemann completed before his death at the age of 73 in 1986. It was worked up from a photograph by his daughter Anna of a distinctive conical peak near Gebbie's Pass on the Summit Road of Canterbury's Port Hills. According to letters quoted in Caroline Otto's Leo Bensemann: Landscapes & Studies (Nikau Press, 2006), Bensemann immediately saw the potential of the scene: I'm glad you sent that nice photo of the small peak on the Summit Road it's quite inspiring and I will certainly do something about it (p. 115). A month later (June 1984), he told another daughter, Cathy, that working on the landscape had "given him a lift" (he had been ill with cancer for some time) and that The sky in the painting is one of my best ever. Although the conical peak retains much the same shape and dimensions as those in the source photograph (Otto, 2006, p. 114), Bensemann has freely modified both foreground and background. Into the foreground, he has introduced white rocks, hillocks and yellow tussock not visible in the photograph while, as background, he has painted a broad vista of the green Canterbury Plains of late autumn, ending in a distant band of snow-covered peaks of the Southern Alps, with a delicately depicted sky above. Bensemann gave the peak its Māori name and wrote into his notebook that Gebbie's Pass (Kawa Taua) was used regularly by Māori war-parties crossing into or from Lyttelton Harbour. This strong and distinctive landscape, dominated by the compelling triangular shape of the central motif, shows that Bensemann retained his painterly powers until the end of his life and was painting as memorably and idiosyncratically as ever. PETER SIMPSON
• Estimate:
  NZ$15,000 - 20,000
• 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.