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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Fine Australian Art
• Sale Date:
  28 Oct 2014 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  45
• Lot Description:
  Margaret Hannah Olley
  (1923-2011)
  Poppies
  oil on board
  66 x 60.5 cm
  signed 'Olley' lower right
• Provenance:
  Browse and Darby, London; Private Collection, Melbourne
• Exhibited:
  Browse & Darby London at The Temple Gallery Sorrento Exhibition, The Temple Gallery, Sorrento, 24 January - 18 February 2007
• Notes:
  Margaret Olley was born in Lismore, NSW and enjoyed an enviable reputation as one of Australia's leading female artists. Margaret Olley was active in the Sydney art scene and embraced close friends throughout her life including Godfrey Miller, Sidney Nolan, William Dobell and Russell Drysdale. During her stellar career Margaret Olley held more than ninety solo exhibitions, with her first at Macquarie Galleries in 1948. It was at her first exhibition that the Art Gallery of New South Wales acquired Still Life with Pink Fish and the National Gallery of Victoria Hill End Ruins. Olley's prominence and reputation was recognised by the Art Gallery of New South Wales when they held a major retrospective of her work in 1997. Olley was awarded the Archibald Prize twice for her portraits of William Dobell 1948 and Ben Quilty 2011. Margaret Olley had an affinity with the still life and the poppy drew particular interest throughout her oeuvre. Olley was heavily influenced by Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, stylistic qualities that are evident in Poppies, seeking to transform moments of reality into compositions of beauty and tranquillity. The intensity of colour, the fluidity of movement and the sublime balance of composition, is reminiscent of other masterpiece works by the artist including Poppies and Apples 2007 and Poppies in a Glass Vase 2005. Olley's celebration of colour and bold use of the palette is no more evident than in Poppies, which brings beauty to the everyday. 'Out of this maelstrom, this happy confusion of life, comes her paintings, in which we see Olley the artist distilling the experience and reality into moments of tranquillity, permanence and reaffirmation. Her paintings are about the everyday, the familiar, the bits and pieces, the clutter that makes up our lives. But here is the picture, the painting, with all its calming softly lit candle; all that is captured in pictures in disarming modesty, but absolute certainty. Her pictures distil the common place world around us into certainty, beauty and immortality.'1 1 Edmund Capon in Barry Pearce, Margaret Olley, The Beagle Press 2012, pg. 8
• 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.