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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Important Art
• Sale Date:
  20 Nov 2017 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  17
• Lot Description:
  § Charles Blackman
  (born 1928)
  Housefront, 1954
  oil on paper on board
  90 x 120 cm
  titled, signed and dated lower left: “HOUSEFRONT” BLACKMAN 54
• Provenance:
  Mahoney’s Galleries, Melbourne; Ms. Sandra Powell and Mr. Andrew King, Melbourne; The Australian Art Collection of Sandra Powell and Andrew King, Mossgreen, Melbourne, 19 March 2014, lot 24; Private collection, Melbourne
• Exhibited:
  Contemporary Art Society Exhibition, Tye's Gallery, Melbourne, 6?-?23 April 1954, cat. no. 16, 40 gns.
• References:
  Arnold Shore, ‘It’s modern art: they mean it!’ The Argus, Wednesday 7 April 1954, p. 9; Contemporary Art Society Exhibition Catalogue, Melbourne 1954, p. 3
• Notes:
  The inner suburban paintings of Charles Blackman from the 1950s were largely inspired from the artist’s habitual early morning walks in Melbourne’s laneways and empty streets. Richmond, Burnley, Fitzroy and Collingwood were among the suburbs most commonly frequented by Charles and his then wife and model, Barbara. Rather than painting en plein air, Blackman would return to his studio, where he would synthesise and reformulate these memories of alleys and dark corners. Fuelled by the critical and financial success of his first solo exhibition at Melbourne’s Peter Bray Gallery, the previous year, Blackman was working feverishly in his studio for up to thirteen hours a day. Although Melbourne streetscapes can be identified as direct referents, it is well known that literature was an equally important stimulus, a fact most readily identifiable the Alice series of paintings. When not at his easel he would read Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment aloud to the visually impaired Barbara1. In the opening chapter, the housebound protagonist, Raskolnikov, fears leaving his small apartment, as ‘he had become so completely absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows, that he dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but anyone at all’2. Further into the story, and speaking in first person, Raskolnikov recounts how, ‘at night I had no light, I lay in the dark and wouldn’t earn money for candles. I ought to have studied [but] I preferred lying still and thinking’3. Whether the figure in Housefront4 is a reference to the young Russian student or a self portrait of Blackman reading the very novel, the literary connection is central to the narrative of the work. Painted in a key period of Charles Blackman’s formative years, Housefront is a remarkable work, both in its simplicity and its sombre tone. Closely related in form and content to the Schoolgirl, Hoardings and Terrace House paintings of the same era, the current work is also noteworthy for its formal qualities. Blackman is here at the tail end of his experiments with minimal abstraction. In reviewing the Contemporary Art Society’s 1954 exhibition, in which the current work was included, Arnold Shore singled out Housefront 1954 from the 182 works exhibited and commended the painting for its ‘effect of mystery and detachment’5. The single figure, set against a darkened interior, and as with many of Blackman’s most charged paintings, powerfully conveys a deep sense of meditation, loneliness, peace and silence. Petrit Abazi 1 Felicity St John Moore, Charles Blackman: Schoolgirls and Angels, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1993, p.18; 2 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, Cricket House Books, 2010, p. 3; 3 Ibid., p. 280; 4 Since the painting first came to the market in 2000 (see Australian Modern Masters and 19th & 20th Century Fine Australian and International Art, 3 May 2000, lot 91), the work has been erroneously titled Houseboat. With the support of the literature above the painting’s correct title is here re-instated. 5 Arnold Shore, ‘It’s modern art: they mean it!’ The Argus, Wednesday 7 April 1954, p. 9 § - Resale Royalty of 5% will be applied to the hammer price of this work.
• Estimate:
  A$30,000 - 40,000
• 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.