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• Auction House:
  Bonhams Australia
• Sale Name:
  Important Australian Art
• Sale Date:
  04 Apr 2023 ~ 6pm (AEST)
• Lot #:
  37
• Lot Description:
  Roy De Maistre
  (1894-1968)
  Still life with lamp, c.1946
  oil on canvas
  80.0 x 61.0cm (31 1/2 x 24in).
• Provenance:
  Collection of Mrs Michell, London
• References:
  Ian Maclean'Two Modern Artists', Art Notes, Vol.X, No.2, Summer 1946, pp.18-26 (illus.); Heather Johnson, Roy De Maistre: The English Years 1930-1968, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1988, p. 138-139, pl. 54 (illus.), p. 230
• Notes:
  'Roy de Maistre was fundamentally an intellectual painter. The purely visual stimulus of colour and form left him unsatisfied. Awarded the Society of Artists' Travelling Scholarship in 1923, he spent three years painting in France and England and his return to Australia in 1926 was obligatory rather than chosen. Whilst away he had become interested in Cubism and in the intellectual analysis and stylisation of form. Back in Sydney, however, he missed the creative stimulus and encouragement he had found in Europe and so left Australia for good two years later. He was to spend the rest of his life in England with intermittent stays in the south of France. De Maistre's first one-man show in London was held at the Beaux Arts Gallery in 1929. This was soon followed by one in the studio he shared with his friend Francis Bacon. In 1934 he opened a school of painting in London with Martin Block. During the second World War de Maistre stopped painting to work for the Red Cross and it was at this period that his art began to receive public recognition. A major exhibition of his work was held at Leeds in 1943 and another at the City of Art Gallery, Birmingham, in 1946. Even before he left Australia, de Maistre had fallen under the spell Max Meldrum's theories of tonal painting. This subsequently led him to periodic abnegations of colour. His stay in Europe had generated an interest in severe shapes and forms of cubism and he remained fascinated with its intellectual and compositional possibilities throughout his life.'1 The present work, Studio Still Life with Lamp, c.1946, 'de Maistre has employed a flattened cubist space but left the objects as solid forms rather than as ones penetrated by spatial planes. De Maistre's depiction of the relationship between object and space in this work stems more directly from Cezanne than from Picasso and Braque. The work is evidence of de Maistre's arriving at his own method of expression and style, where the objects in the painting have been compacted to a whole but at the same time rendered separately readable. The space between the objects is at once flattened to be almost non existent but at the same time surrounding each other. The lamp, the candle-stick and the vase of flowers advance and reced almost at the viewer watches them. The desk is in front of and on top of the gate-winged table but in the middle ground of the painting, seemingly part of the same surface top. The vertical table and desk legs, the lamp base, back and front of the desk top impose quite a rigid geometric grid but at the same time the painting dissolves in a jumble of cluttered objects. The colour is muted – almost dull – but at the same time, because of the number of shafes and tones used – of mainly green and red – relatively small areas of each colour and the pattern of the brush strokes, is very rich and even lively.'2 1. Ann Galbally, Forward for Homage to Roy de Maistre: a Memorial Retrospective Exhibition, Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne, 1971; 2 . Heather Johnson, Roy de Maistre: The English Years, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1995, pp. 138-140
• Estimate:
  A$60,000 - 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.