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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Australian Art Collection of Sandra Powell & Andrew King
• Sale Date:
  19 Mar 2014 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  20
• Lot Description:
  William Delafield Cook, Junior
  (Born 1936)
  Pine Tree, Kyoto, 2003
  acrylic on canvas
  97.5 x 131cm
  signed and dated lower right
• Provenance:
  Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney (label to verso)
• Exhibited:
  William Delafield Cook: Paintings, Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney, August 10 - September 4, 2004, catalogue no. 7
• References:
  William Delafield Cook: Paintings, Sydney, 2004, [invitation], back cover (illustrated)
• Notes:
  Winner of the Wynne Prize in 1980 and the Sulman prize the following year, William Delafield Cook's is a poetic craftsman of stillness and of enigmatic beauty. The Melbourne born, London based painter is a highly collectable artist and this is due partly to the limited supply of his work. Using acrylic paints and often working on large canvasses, the artist seldom produces more than six paintings a year, and only ten have appeared at auction in the last decade. Cook's appeal is also partly due to the lyrical quality that his 'photorealist' paintings convey which go beyond the trompe-l'Ïil works of Richard Estes or Ralph Goings. For Cook, it is as though the photorealist technique is but a means to an end and not a raison d'tre. In a recent survey exhibition, Simon Gregg wrote that Cook 'evokes photo realism, but his works are not photorealist. While born from the language of photography they transcend that medium to bespeak another kind of realism altogether; a hyper realism, where the undercurrents of atmosphere are rendered as chillingly as surface detail. We observe not so much the thing that is depicted, but the essence of the thing1'. Thus, Pine Tree, Kyoto, is a portrait of the essence of a Japanese Pinus thunbergii, frozen in time and space, which recalls Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, the moment before the nymph metamorphoses into a tree. Set against a light Tasman Blue sky, the timeless anthropomorphic subject is poised in the air with no earthly base, horizon or illusionary perspective. The artist sums it up perfectly, when he suggests that, 'there's a poignancy about certain single, silent objects. When you isolate a single image and focus on it deadpan, very tightly, even familiar objects start to gain an intense hovering strangeness'2. And like Bernini's capolavoro, the viewer is transfixed not only by the beauty of the tree but also by the technical brilliance which gave it life. Pine Tree, Kyoto, is a meticulously constructed and finely painted work by one of Australia's most poetically subtle and technically brilliant artists. 1 Simon Gregg, William Delafield Cook: a Survey, Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale, 2001, pp.11-12 2 Janet Hawley, 'The Fine Detail', The Age, Good Weekend, 24 October 1998, p. 28
• Estimate:
  A$60,000 - 80,000
• 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.