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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Fine Australian & International Art
• Sale Date:
  06 Jun 2017 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  20
• Lot Description:
  Charles Conder
  (1868-1909)
  Morning in the Park (Possibly The Serpentine, Hyde Park, London), (circa 1902-4)
  oil on canvas
  71.5 x 91.5 cm
  signed lower left: CONDER
• Provenance:
  Whitford and Hughes, London ; Private collection Australian, International & Aboriginal Art, Bonham’s & Goodman, Sydney, 29 March 2006, lot 1269; Private collection, Sydney
• Exhibited:
  (possibly) Drawings and Paintings, Carfax Galleries, London, April 1900, as ‘Morning in the Park’; Charles Conder 1868-1909: paintings, watercolours, drawings, The Fine Art Society and The Piccadilly Gallery (joint exhibition), 11-29 November 1969, cat. 1
• References:
  David Rodgers, Charles Conder 1868-1909: paintings, watercolours, drawings, The Fine Art Society and The Piccadilly Gallery, 1969, (illustrated, cover), (unpaginated)
• Notes:
  Charles Conder’s sojourn in Australia was as powerful as it was short lived. Although he spent just under six years between Sydney and Melbourne (1884-1890), his contribution to the development of Australian art was so great that it can be easy to ignore the artist’s later work in London and Paris. In Australia, alongside Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton, he was responsible in organising the momentous ‘9 by 5 Impression Exhibition’ - he not only designed the show’s front cover, but was one of its biggest contributors. At just twenty years of age, he was already considered a leader of Australian Impressionism.1 Nonetheless, local recognition for the young avant-garde circle was slow and thin. The lure of Paris, where modern tendencies were beginning to gain traction, was too strong, and shortly after the 9 by 5 Exhibition, Conder left Australia, never to return. In Paris, his gregarious nature drew him close to a number of key progressive painters. He shared a studio with William Rothenstein, frequented Louis Anquetin, and maintained a life-long friendship with Toulouse Lautrec. The latter used Conder as a model in a number of works, and painted his portrait in Aux Ambassadeurs, Gens Chics (National Gallery of Art, Washington). Being the protean artist he was, Conder soon came under the influence of his immediate group. Remarkably, the move to Paris led Conder to largely abandon, Pleinairism, Impressionism and Symbolism in favour of a more elegant and aesthetic style, closer to the art of Whistler and Lautrec. ‘Conder is more representative of the fin de siècle than any other English artist’ wrote David Rogers, in 1969, when this work was exhibited in London. ‘Alone among his contemporaries he records the passing of life and an awareness that all in transitory. In any attempt to sum up Conder’s art’, continued Rodgers, ‘one cannot improve upon the words of William Rothenstein written in 1932: “He is one of the rare lyrical painters, singing now with the morning innocence of the lark, now with the more sinister note of the nightjar. His richly suggestive art is at present underrated; but its vitality, I am sure, when the moment comes, will blossom again in men’s eyes”.’2 Although Conder struggled to find steady gallery representation in Paris, by 1898, he had was receiving an income from the recently founded Carfax Galleries in London. Although based in London, the gallery, whose artistic manager was Conder’s close friend, William Rothenstein, mostly exhibited works by English artists working in a French manner.3 It has been suggested that the present work may have been exhibited at Conder’s first one-man show at Carfax.4 That April 1900 exhibition was a huge success. As Ann Galbally has pointed out, ‘critics picked up on the eighteenth century ‘feel’ of his work, drawing comparisons with Watteau. His use of colour was seen as ‘masterly’.5 No doubt the present work would have been met with praise and delight as it remains as a superb example from this important period in Conder’s life and work. Petrit Abazi 1 Sophie Osmond, Table Talk, 28 June 1889; 2 David Rodgers, Charles Conder 1868-1909: paintings, watercolours, drawings, The Fine Art Society and The Piccadilly Gallery, 1969, (unpaginated); 3 See Ann Gallbally, Charles Conder: the last bohemian, Melbourne University Publishing, Melbourne, 2003, p. 194; 4 See David Rodgers, op. cit., cat. 1; 5 Ibid., p. 202
• Estimate:
  A$45,000 - 55,000
• 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.