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• Auction House:
  Bonhams Australia
• Sale Name:
  Important Australian Art
• Sale Date:
  22 Apr 2021 ~ 6.30pm (AEST)
• Lot #:
  61
• Lot Description:
  Clarice Beckett
  (1887-1935)
  Silver Sea, c. 1931
  oil on board
  29.0 x 44.5cm (11 7/16 x 17 1/2in).
• Provenance:
  Mrs Hilda Mangan, Victoria, the artist's sister; Mrs Rosalind Hollinrake, Melbourne; Mrs Ruth Prowse, Canberra, acquired from the above in 1985; thence by descent; Private collection, Melbourne
• Exhibited:
  Ruth Prowse: Thirty years of Collecting, Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, 1 April - 16 May 2004; Clarice Beckett: A Collector's Passion, The Ruth Prowse Collection, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria, 12 July - 28 August 2005, cat. 38 (label attached verso); Clarice Beckett, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 29 April - 24 May 2014, cat. 13 (label attached verso)
• References:
  Clarice Beckett, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 2014, p. 16, cat. 13 (illus.)
• Notes:
  'Clarice Beckett liked to paint along the edge of the shore: sand and water, boat and jetty, cliff and bay. She painted early in the morning and again in the evening, at the edge of day when shadows were long and the light diffuse. There were practical, domestic reasons for both of these choices, rehearsed in every telling of Clarice Beckett, the artist who lived with her parent in the Melbourne beach suburb of Beaumaris. As the unmarried daughter, domestic care of her aging parents fell to her, limiting the work of her art to the time and the place of her circumstances. It wasn't until she was 27 that her father allowed her, in 1914, to attend the Victorian National Gallery School, and even then she was to be chaperoned by her sister Hilda. The freedoms of travel and study in Europe that opened for other woman painting in the years between the wars were not for Clarice Beckett. She never travelled beyond Victoria; she did not even have her own studio. Her father had ruled that 'the kitchen table would do'. But for an artist as serious as Clarice Beckett it did not do, which is why, early each morning and again in the evening, before and after the duties of the day, she set out for the streets and beaches within walking distance of the house, pulling behind her a small cart for her paints, with a lid that served as an easel for her smaller paintings... She explored the ambiguity of exactness and illusion, observing small changes in light and shadow, and experimenting with shifts in focus and angle... she developed the style and sensibility for which she is now known as one of Australia's finest early modernists'1 1 Drusilla Modjeska, 'Clarice Beckett: At the Edge', Clarice Beckett, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 2014, p. 2
• 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.