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• Auction House:
  Bonhams Australia
• Sale Name:
  The Fred and Elinor Wrobel Collection | A Curated Salon
• Sale Date:
  23 Apr 2023 ~ 2pm (AEST)
• Lot #:
  29
• Lot Description:
  Dorrit Black
  (1891-1951)
  Portrait of Rawi Bhavilai, c.1950
  oil on bitumen paper on board
  48.5 x 40.0cm (19 1/8 x 15 3/4in).
  signed lower right: 'Dorrit Black'
  RELATED WORK: Portrait of Rawi Bhavilai, c.1949-51, oil on composition board, 41.7 x 37.9cm, illustrated in Tracey Lock-Weir, Dorrit Black: Unseen Forces, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2014, p. 121 and p. 195
• Provenance:
  The Fred and Elinor Wrobel Collection, Sydney
• Exhibited:
  Faces in the Crowd: An Exhibition of Paintings from the Collection of Woolloomooloo Gallery, Sydney, Stanthorpe Art Gallery, Queensland, 2 - 28 November 1992, cat. 15, then touring; Tweed River Regional Art Gallery, New South Wales, 9 December 1992 - 3 January 1993; Australian Women Artists of the Twentieth Century from the collection of Elinor and Fred Wrobel, 8 March 1995, Penrith Regional Art Gallery, Sydney
• Notes:
  This work was included in the 1995 exhibition, Australian Women Artists of the Twentieth Century from the collection of Elinor and Fred Wrobel which was held at Penrith Regional Art Gallery. The exhibition attracted positive coverage in the press, notably Joanna Mendelssohn who commented in the Sydney Morning Herald on 23 June 1995, 'The importance of the Wrobel Collection comes from the way they have always collected away from the fleeting fashions of the glossy auction catalogues... and now have gems by minor artists and major works by artists who only now are coming into their own.' Without doubt, one of those artists is Dorrit Black. It would be at least another decade after the Penrith Regional Art Gallery before her work started to gain the appreciation and market recognition it so richly deserves. Only now, over 70 years on from her death, have we come to fully embrace her unique vision as a leading artist of her generation. This portrait of Rawi Bhavilai is one of two works by Black of the sitter; the other being illustrated in the Art Gallery of South Australia monograph, Unseen Forces. It is likely that Black painted Bhavilai when he lived in Adelaide as a UNESCO Junior Fellow from Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.1 At the time of this portrait, Bhavilai was studying for a Master of Science at the University of Adelaide, and like Black, had a keen interest in the mathematics of the divine. Following a PhD, he returned to Thailand where he became a Professor of Physics at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Science in Bangkok and was actively involved in promoting studies of Buddhism and science through the Thousand Stars Buddhism and Science Group. Bhavilai became an award-winning author, and was a renowned astronomer, religious practitioner and scholar.2 1. Tracey Lock-Weir, Dorrit Black: Unseen Forces, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2014, p. 120; 2. ibid, p. 169. Merryn Schriever
• Estimate:
  A$10,000 - 18,000
• 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.