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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Peter Elliott Collection
• Sale Date:
  30 Aug 2015 ~ 6pm - Part 1 (Lots 1 - 193)
  31 Aug 2015 ~ 11am - Part 2 (Lots 194 - 340)
  31 Aug 2015 ~ 2pm - Part 3 (Lots 341 - 511)
  01 Sep 2015 ~ 10.30am - Part 4 (Lots 512 - 754) and 2pm - Part 5 (Lots 755 - 1013)
• Lot #:
  7
• Lot Description:
  William Francis (Bill) Robinson
  (born 1936)
  Birkdale Farm Construction with Australorps 1982-83
  oil on canvas
  124 x 185 cm
  signed lower right: William Robinson
• Provenance:
  Acquired from a private collection
• Exhibited:
  William Robinson, The Revelation of the Landscape, S. H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, 11 January - 2 March 2003 and Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, 28 March - 18 March 2003, cat. no. 1; William Robinson: The Farmyards, William Robinson Gallery, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 23 July 2013 to 8 June 2014
• References:
  Lenny Ann Low, ‘Wreck ‘n’ roll’, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 Feb 2003, p. 11; Art and Australia, 1984, vol. 21, 3, p. 405, b/w; Gavin Fry, The Peter Elliott Collection of Australian Art, The Beagle Press 2013, p. 114-115, cat. no. 110; William Robinson: The Farmyards, Queensland University of Technology, Published on the occasion of the exhibition, 23 July 2013 to 8 June 2014, illus. p. 34
• Notes:
  William Robinson’s canvas Birkdale Farm Construction with Australorps of 1982-83 presents a scene with no horizon line. The animals and fowls within the frame are almost abstract elements set in a flat pictorial space. In keeping with his later paintings, the picture plane is tilted up as though to cram more visual information into the pictorial space. Consequently, Robinson’s Birkdale Farm Construction with Australorps is less about the physical content of a farmyard and more about its actual activity. The painting’s depicted scene brims with movement, the ground undulates, the colours “scurry” about the surface and activity progresses beyond the edges of the frame, as though the viewer sees only one part of a larger view. Most paintings in Robinson’s Farmyard series, executed from about 1979 to 1986 are, like the present work, almost all viewed from a high perspective; one that places their pictorial elements within an indeterminate space that leads the viewer to see the non-abstract elements in the painting almost as one would the painterly marks and deft daubs of an abstract painting. Robinson’s Farmyard series was an important pivotal phase that led the artist to the unusual perspectival and compositional characteristics of his later forest and environmental series of the 1990s. The composition of Birkdale Farm Construction with Australorps of 1982-83 shows signs of the hidden compositional finésse of Robinson’s later paintings in that its central section is made up of a triangular arrangement of pictorial elements that claim attention and give the painting a decentred visually immersive interest – one that attempts to capture the bustling movement of the homely rural scene.
• Estimate:
  A$180,000 - 250,000
• 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.