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• Auction House:
  Bonhams Australia
• Sale Name:
  Important Australian Art
• Sale Date:
  29 Nov 2022 ~ 6pm (AEST)
• Lot #:
  57
• Lot Description:
  Brett Whiteley
  (1939-1992)
  Glass House Mountains, Queensland, 1976
  ink on paper
  73.5 x 101.0cm (28 15/16 x 39 3/4in).
  signed lower left: 'brett Whiteley'; stamped with artist's monogram lower right
  RELATED WORKS: Sketch for 'Glass House Mountains, Queensland', c.1976, pencil, charcoal on beige paper, 19.7 x 16.4cm, The Estate of Brett Whiteley, Sydney; The Glass House Mountains, Queensland, c.1976, pencil and charcoal on paper, 75.0 x 99.0cm, Private collection; Glass House Mountains, Queensland, c.1976, brush, pen, ink and ink wash on paper, 74.0 x 98.5cm, Private collection, Sydney
• Provenance:
  Australian Galleries, Melbourne; Corporate Collection, Melbourne; Sotheby's, Melbourne, 21 November 2006, lot 67; Private collection, New South Wales; Private collection, Melbourne
• References:
  Sandra McGrath, Brett Whiteley, Bay Books, Sydney, 1979, p. 222, cat. 39 (illus.); Kathie Sutherland, Brett Whiteley: Catalogue Raisonne, Schwartz Publishing, Melbourne, 2020, cat. 156.76, vol. 3, p. 373 (illus.), vol. 7, p. 370
• Notes:
  'Of all the subjects Whiteley painted in his career, landscape gave him the greatest sense of release. At school in Bathurst he set up his easel at the back of the classroom and drew the views though the window. The soft hills and fields of the surrounding countryside were indelibly embedded in his repertoire of images, and fed his imagination over many years. After leaving school he explored the edges of Sydney Harbour to emulate the visions of Lloyd Rees; he travelled to the old gold-mining towns of Sofala and Hill End in western New South Wales in the path of Russell Drysdale; and from the late 1970s, the influence of Japanese and Chinese art and Gauguin's painting The Yellow Christ reinforced his need to create landscape as a sanctuary. If in many of his other themes Whiteley confronted the difficult questions of his psyche, landscape provided a means of escape, an unencumbered absorption into a painless, floating world. He made paintings of central Australia as early as 1970. As he moved around the countryside of New South Wales – Oberon, Marulan, Carcoar, Bathurst – and to the Glasshouse Mountains in Queensland, he depicted the landscape in all its seasons with a tendency he called "Chinese". Repetition of certain motifs symbolized states of mind: the arabesques of rivers echoed the flight paths of birds, which in turn represented the artist's relaxed journey through his own domain.'1 1. Barry Pearce, Brett Whiteley, Art & Life 1939-1992, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1995, pp. 196
• Estimate:
  A$70,000 - 90,000
• 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.