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• Auction House:
  Bonhams Australia
• Sale Name:
  Important Australian Art
• Sale Date:
  25 Nov 2020 ~ 6pm (AEDT)
• Lot #:
  30
• Lot Description:
  Lloyd Rees
  (1895-1988)
  The Evening Star, Bathurst, 1979
  oil on canvas
  89.0 x 122.0cm (35 1/16 x 48 1/16in).
  signed and dated lower left: 'L REES / 79'
• Provenance:
  Private collection; Sotheby's, Melbourne, 19 August 1991, lot 242; Private collection, Melbourne
• References:
  Art and Australia, Vol. 18, No. 2, Summer 1980 (illus. front cover); Renee Free, Lloyd Rees The Last Twenty Years, Craftsman's Press, Sydney, 1983, pl. 23 (illus.)
• Notes:
  In an interview with Lloyd Rees, Renee Free discusses his time spent in Bathurst. 'Not liking to go off alone Lloyd Rees could work each year from the homes of the Pollard family in Bathurst. Marjory Pollard Rees, his wife, was born in Bathurst and spent her early years there. Her brother Russell Pollard and his wife have a house at Mount Rankin. The Reeses would come there in the September holidays, at the beginning of spring, while it was still cool weather. Rees has described the significance of this home for him:.. 'When I set out to do another painting of Bathurst again, after a lapse of years of not painting from nature, I was doing a pallid, insignificant picture. It did not state nature with the feeling of the warm actual sun in the way of earlier pictures. It was anaemic. It was then I played about with fuller colour on the canvas – richer colour – and a vision started to form. Now there can be a creative moment that you work to, and the time may come when the picture may take control of you, and that happened with The Dawning Day, Bathurst (Private collection)... In the foreground of that picture there is an area of water which is simply one of the dams on the orchard. It was an invaluable note, because with that water I was able to reflect the cloud. That bit of reflection in that pool is the marvellous feature for me in the whole composition because it links the cloud with the foreground. The picture started to take on a sort of grand mood... Exactly the same subject gave rise to The Evening Star in 1979. I had painted an Evening Star many years previously. I had the feeling, having witnessed these silent nights that you get over the mountains, that I wanted to do another one. In the earlier one, Saddleback Mountain is the feature and in this it is the plains of Bathurst. I used the same dam as in The Dawning Day, Bathurst and it gave me the same excuse of reflecting the star in it. Now, that painting came very freely and evenly. I was not conscious of a great struggle, because I had a vision of it, and by that time I think I had enough knowledge of what I might do with the paint to bring it through.' Painted in the latter part of his career, The Evening Star, Bathurst, 1979 is a visionary masterpiece demonstrating an artist with a clear awareness and understanding of colour and light. Here Rees lights up the evening sky with a solitary star, using a brilliant array of colours he transforms the majestic dusk landscape into a transcendent beauty. In his final interview with Janet Hawley, Rees reflected on the principle which guided his practice, 'I felt if there was any sort of propaganda I could distribute, it was to paint beautiful pictures and send them out into the world to make people happy, because there is far too much unhappiness. that's my philosophy'.1 Alex Clark 1. Janet Hawley, 'Lloyd Rees: The Final Interview', Good Weekend, The Sydney Morning Herald, 15 October 1988
• Estimate:
  A$160,000 - 220,000
• 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.