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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Fine Australian & International Art
• Sale Date:
  02 May 2016 ~ 6.30pm - Part 1 - Lots 1 - 47
  03 May 2016 ~ 2.30pm - Part 2 - Lots 48 - 320
• Lot #:
  12
• Lot Description:
  Norman Lindsay
  (1879-1969)
  Garden Party, Springwood
  pencil
  61 x 52 cm
  initialled lower right: N. L
• Provenance:
  Private collection, Queensland
• References:
  Lin Bloomfield, Norman Lindsay: 80 years of pencil drawing, Odana Editions, Bungendore, 2007, pp. 281, 288-9, (illustrated front cover)
• Notes:
  Norman Lindsay was the most successful and prolific of the creative artistic clan which included his siblings Percy, Lionel, Ruby and Darryl Lindsay. Throughout his life he worked in various media: ink and pencil drawing, etching and engraving, watercolour and oil paintings, stone and bronze sculpture. His work would embrace an equally broad range of subjects: the comical creatures in his novel The Magic Pudding; nationalistic and propaganda battle scenes for the Sydney Bulletin; studies of nude women; portraits of friends and models; and a cast of fantastical characters including libertine pirates, the Don Juan's of the literary and imagined world, femme fatales, dancers, courtiers, maidens, nymphs, fauns, and other mythological figures. In this constant torrent of creative output, which spanned a remarkable eight decades, Lindsay was probably at his best when drawing the nude. Struck by a mystery disease and bedridden for much of his early life, Lindsay discovered a precocity to draw academically as a young child. He would draw on any paper he could get his hands on using pen, pencil or crayons; nurturing an ability to distil observed and imagined objects and figures with a sharp intensity of an inquiring mind. Drawing, in all its mediums, played a central role throughout his art; it was the foundation on which his entire oeuvre lay. His response to a consistent impulse to draw led Lindsay to produce fine and exquisite sketches. As Lin Bloomfield has noted: 'This was the only medium which remained fresh and strong from infancy to old age.'1 Indeed, his pencil drawings demonstrate an assurance in execution which is not always evident in other mediums. The present work is a fine example of the artist's highly detailed pencil work. Set in the grounds of Lindsay's Blue Mountains retreat, the scene is a melange of the real and fictional. The artist moved into Springwood with his wife Rose in 1912, and continually built and redeveloped the home, studio and gardens. In 1945, at sixty-six, Lindsay modelled and constructed a large cement Seahorse fountain which is the nucleus for the present work; along with the wisteria walk in the background, it positively identifies the current setting as Lindsay's own backyard. Nonetheless, in the hands of Lindsay, the garden paradise at Springwood achieves a somewhat fabled air. It recalls - ˆ la franaise - the fancy and fantastical fte galanteÊof eighteenth century painters Watteau, Fragonard and Boucher. To Lindsay, these artists and the eighteenth century world they lived in was the epitome of nonpareil beauty. Complete with period costume, this intimate gathering suggests a lost age of European refinement, decadence and elegant sumptuousness. Four amorous couples exchange glances and engage in intimate banter; they show little interest in the three nude women bathing in the fountain - a reference to the three graces of Greek mythology - as they ignore the viewer entirely. There is no obvious sense of awkwardness between the clothed and nude figures either; the ease and graceful air recalls Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe (Musée d'Orsay) particularly since the antique garb creates a sense of the theatrical and fanciful, thus muffling the scandalous nature of this rendezvous. Offered here for the first time through public auction, the present work is a complete study for the related oil painting Garden Party, Springwood (private collection). It featured as the cover illustration in Lin Bloomfield's recent book Norman Lindsay: 80 years of pencil drawing and is a fine example of Norman's clear and crisp matured work. Petrit Abazi 1 Lin Bloomfield,ÊNorman Lindsay: 80 years of pencil drawing, Odana Editions, Bungendore, 2007, pp. 281
• Estimate:
  A$15,000 - 20,000
• 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.