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Lot #23 - Tony Fomison

  • Auction House:
    Mossgreen-Webb's
  • Sale Name:
    The Peter Jarvis & Helene Phillips Collection
  • Sale Date:
    30 Nov 2017 ~ 6.30pm (New Zealand Daylight Time)
  • Lot #:
    23
  • Lot Description:
    Tony Fomison
    White Faced Lady #151
    oil on hessian on plywood panel
    395mm x 540mm
    inscribed #151 "White Faced Lady" $300 in artist's hand verso, original Elva Bett Gallery stamp applied verso
  • Exhibited:
    Fomison/Clairmont/Albrecht Elva Bett Gallery, Wellington, 6-16 June 1987, cat. no. 2.
  • References:
    What Shall we Tell Them?, City Gallery Wellington, 1994 cat. no. 585.
  • Notes:
    ESSAY: Tony Fomison trained at the University of Canterbury from 1957 to 1960 and, although his specialisation was sculpture, it is often said that he was influenced by Rudolf Gopas, who taught painting there. But if Gopas pricked Fomison’s interest, it was in the anti-academic and expressive quality of his paintings, not in the older artist’s characteristically free brushwork and brilliant colour that were taken up by other students, such as Philip Clairmont. Fomison works in rather thin, even oil paint, the only texture in his paintings supplied by his favoured support of hessian on board, which gives the surface a palpable overall continuity. And his palette is restrained, almost monochromatic, as we see in White Faced Lady #151 of 1977, with its warm chiaroscuro of muted sepia tones. The title of the work might imply that Fomison was portraying a startled female, colloquially ‘white faced’ with fright. But the evocative way the head emerges from the darkness suggests something beyond the anecdotal. The face is broadened and flattened, so that it appears mask-like, and the head is covered, shrouded like some ancient crone in one of Goya’s black paintings. Fomison studied old masters like Goya while in Europe in the mid-1960s but his early interest in Māori lore is well known – evinced in his work on rock art and his stint as assistant ethnologist at the Canterbury Museum – so we might guess that the painting has an indigenous reference. The figure is suggestive of the pale patupaiarehe spirits, who live on misty hilltops or deep in forests and prefer the hours of darkness, or perhaps the white-skinned ponaturi sea fairies, who also come out at night. The latter are known for their long claws, evoked by the painting’s attenuated hand that grasps a drape in the foreground, as though drawing a curtain to exclude us from the view of this mysterious, spectral world. Elizabeth Rankin
  • Estimate:
    NZ$45,000 - 65,000
  • 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.



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