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• Auction House:
  W T Macalister
• Sale Name:
  40 Years of Leo Bensemann
• Sale Date:
  28 Mar 2012 ~ 6:30pm (NZDT)
• Lot #:
  7
• Lot Description:
  Leo Bensemann
  (1912-1986)
  Apart from some early Japanese-influenced watercolour landscapes belonging to the years 1933-37, Bensemann painted no landscapes before this exquisite
  Oil on canvas on board
  210 x 287mm
• References:
  LB to W.H. Allen, January 1944, quoted in Otto, Landscapes & Studies (Nikau Press, 2006), p. 22; see also Simpson, Fantastica, pp. 71-73
• Notes:
  Apart from some early Japanese-influenced watercolour landscapes belonging to the years 1933-37, Bensemann painted no landscapes before this exquisite tiny oil painting of 1944. Admittedly some of his early portraits had landscape backgrounds but this was his first straight landscape in oils. What makes this noteworthy is that his fellow Group members, including Angus, Henderson, Spencer Bower, Woollaston, Lusk, McCahon and co. all painted landscapes regularly. Group Shows were overwhelmingly dominated by landscape paintings. In avoiding landscapes altogether (at least until 1945 when this work was exhibited at The Group), Bensemann deliberately set himself apart from his fellow Group members. In January 1944 Bensemann wrote to his friend W.H. Allen (the art teacher at Nelson College) whom Bensemann knew through their common interest in folk dancing: 'You will be pleased to hear I've begun a small landscape - rather a rummy little composition involving concrete posts against a stormy sky. I saw it on the way down and made a tremendous effort to memorise the essentials. It was worth doing it as I've had a great deal of pleasure out of the doing of it and it's a relief not to have to worry about whether the mouth's right It is possible that in making this work Bensemann was to some degree influenced by Grant Wood the American Scene painter with whose work he was familiar in reproduction. I recall that when Bensemann showed me this work in 1984 he turned it upside down and said words to the effect of 'See, it looks just as good this way up'. The point he was making was that the work despite its small size has an underlying structural coherence, a characteristic of all the landscapes Bensemann was to paint subsequently. Having so long avoided the conventions of 'regional realism' as practised by his fellow Group artists, Bensemann showed himself in this work to be an immediate master of the mode. The painting, which was reproduced in the first Yearbook of the Arts in New Zealand in 1945, is an economical assemblage of regional signs - the curving road, the fence, the road sign, the magpies, the power poles, the hill-sides, the pine trees, the barn, the stormy sky. Given its mastery it is surprising that he repeated the exercise so seldom over the next fifteen years. It was not until 1961 that landscapes became a regular feature of his output.
• Estimate:
  NZ$10,000 - 14,000
• 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.