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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Important Art
• Sale Date:
  20 Nov 2017 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  22
• Lot Description:
  Ray Crooke
  (1922-2015)
  (Islander with Pink Hibiscus)
  oil on canvas on board
  101 x 75 cm
  signed lower left: R. Crooke
• Provenance:
  Fine Australian and European Paintings, Sotheby's, Melbourne, 25 August 1997, lot 268 (as Islanders); Corporate collection, Sydney
• Notes:
  Islander with Pink Hibiscus is a fine, early painting by one of Australia’s most prodigious artists, the late Ray Crooke. A great deal of Crooke’s landscape and figurative oeuvre is drawn from two distinct, yet proximal locations. Firstly, there are the rugged golden landscapes of Northern Queensland (Early Morning Cairns Suburb, c.1962, sold $97,600, Mossgreen 2011). Then there is the group of richly saturated Pacific Islander compositions which most popular among collectors (Thursday Island, 1964, sold $115,900, Mossgreen 2011). Although the subject of Islander folk, going about their quotidian duties, remained central to his practice, this second body of work can be further subdivided into two unmistakable periods, the early and the late. And this is most noticeable in the choice of palette and tone. Crooke’s early compositions, to which this example belongs, have a feeling of being wrapped in a film of flat tonal veils, adding a sense of brooding mystery to the exotic environment. His later work, by contrast, is defined by saturated colours that reveal a crisp and limpid atmosphere. 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. 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 has echoes of Matisse’s Luxe, Calme et Volupté, 1904 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Islander with Pink Hibiscus belongs to Crooke’s early oeuvre where atmospheric density covers the figurative subjects. The majority of the composition is almost an exercise in monochromatic design where almost every object is drenched in varying hues of green. This chromatic uniformity, however, is broken with dashes of complimentary colours. At the centre of the canvas, a lone figure, wrapped in a red pareo, stretches her arms out to hold a pale pink hibiscus. The figure, immured in a forest of greenery, but close to domestic quarters in the background, is captured in a moment of quiet engagement with the flower. The scene is imbued with contemplation and reflection, the qualities in many of Crooke’s best work. 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$20,000 - 30,000
• 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.