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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Fine Australian Art
• Sale Date:
  28 Oct 2014 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  9
• Lot Description:
  Lindsay Bernard Hall
  (1859-1935)
  Resting
  oil on canvas
  31 x 70 cm
  signed 'B. Hall' lower left
• Provenance:
  Private Collection, United Kindgom; Private Collection, Melbourne
• Notes:
  Bernard Hall was a painter and Director of the then National Gallery, Melbourne (as well as Head of its art school) for 43 years, from 1892 until 1935. In this role he oversaw the development of the National Gallery of Victoria's collection, including through acquisitions made possible by the generous Felton Bequest from 1904. The last work Hall acquired for the NGV was an unknown masterpiece by Rembrandt, Two Old Men Disputing, 1628. Hall's importance in Melbourne's art world as an artist, art teacher and administrator, has recently been reinforced through the publication of L. Bernard Hall - The Man the Art World Forgot in 2013. Hall was born in England and studied art at the School of Design (Royal College of Art), South Kensington, undertaking postgraduate studies in Antwerp and Munich. His first painting to be hung by the Royal Academy was in 1883 and he also exhibited with the Society of British Artists.ÊIn Melbourne, as Head of the National Gallery School, Hall trained a number of significant artists, such as Hugh Ramsay, W. B. McInnes and Margaret Preston, and he exhibited at the Federal Art Exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts and the Victorian Artists' Society. Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne exhibited a number of works by Hall in the mid-late 1970s, including The Quest c.1905 in 1977; Hall's best known subject. A large oil painting of The Quest is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia and a study was presented to the National Gallery of Victoria by Dr Joseph Brown as part of the Joseph Brown Collection of Australian art gifted in 2004. Hall mostly painted nudes, small portraits and still lifes, frequently in the Symbolist manner, and his influence from the likes of Johannes Vermeer, Diego Velasquez, James McNeill Whistler and Gustave Moreau is also evident. A similar work to Resting is Sleep, 1904-6, which is in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria (Felton Bequest, 1919), as are a number of other works by Hall, mostly sketches. Resting appears to be from around the same period. Sketch for Sleep, c.1904 is in the collection of the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum and other major works by Hall are in public collections; for example, The Marble Staircase (Art Gallery of New South Wales) and After Dinner (Art Gallery of South Australia).1 In the early 1900s, Hall used at least two different models for his nudes. They were known only as N.M. and F.S. Hall's biographer Gwen Rankin noted, 'His nude studies were receiving gratifying reviews from the critics and he recognised that this was not only a genre suited to his restricted painting time, but also the one most likely to sell...the restrained neo-classicism of his work in 1903 almost certainly reflected his understanding of the conservative Melbourne market.'2 Dr Shireen Huda 1 Ann E. Galbally, 'Hall, Lindsay Bernard (1859-1935)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hall-lindsay-bernard-6528/text11209, published in hardcopy 1983, accessed online 2 September 2014 2 Gwen Rankin, L. Bernard Hall - The Man the Art World Forgot, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, 2013, pp.111-112
• Estimate:
  A$25,000 - 35,000
• 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.