Find Lots

• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Fine Australian & International Art
• Sale Date:
  29 Aug 2016 ~ 6.30pm - Part 1 (Lots 1 - 78)
  30 Aug 2016 ~ 2.30pm - Part 2 (Lots 79 - 328)
• Lot #:
  14
• Lot Description:
  John Perceval
  (1923-2000)
  Bayswater Train Colliding with a Gold Mine 1989
  oil on canvas
  76 x 96.5 cm
  signed and dated lower right: Perceval; signed, titled and dated verso: Bayswater/ Train/ Colliding/ With/ A Goldmine/ Perceval 89
• Provenance:
  Gould Galleries, Melbourne, 1993 (label verso); Private collection, Sydney; Company collection, Melbourne; Australian and International Fine Art, Deutscher~Menzies, Sydney, 06/12/2006, lot no. 57; Private collection, Queensland
• Exhibited:
  John Perceval: Williamstown and Other Images, Gould Galleries, Melbourne, 24 October - 12 November 1989, cat. no. 2 (illustrated); John Perceval AO: 70th Birthday Exhibition, Gould Galleries, Melbourne, 2 - 22 April 1993, cat. no. 26; John Perceval: Survey Exhibition 1943 - 1995, Gould Galleries, Sydney, 22 July - 17 August 2003, cat. no. 19
• Notes:
  John Perceval was a leading member of the group of painters, including Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester, Albert Tucker and Danila Vassilieff, who in the 1940s and 50s in Melbourne radically shifted the local art scene away from the conservative academy towards a new and radical style of expressionist painting focusing largely on social themes. In 1942 when Perceval was just nineteen he exhibited paintings at the Contemporary Art Society in Melbourne and was immediately recognised as a painter of great talent. These early paintings were dark, angst-filled audacious works, concerned with depicting anguish and suffering, and their impact led to Perceval being included in the Anti-Fascist exhibition in Melbourne and Sydney later that year; he thus became one of the Angry Penguins group that advanced the cause of contemporary art in Australia. Perceval had a difficult childhood, contracting poliomyelitis when he was fifteen, a condition that would adversely impact his health for the rest of his life. However, it was whilst recuperating that Perceval honed his drawing and painting skills. He was unfit for service during the Second World War, but his largely self-taught draughting abilities enabled him to become a member of the Survey Corps, where he met and befriended the artist Arthur Boyd, later marrying his sister, Mary in 1944. After the war Perceval's intensely dramatic early style reflecting the social impact of war and suffering, became more expressive, spontaneous and exuberant, and thereafter increasingly lighter in mood and more vibrant with high-keyed colour. With a renewed sense of delight in the vitality of the world he looked to the works of the Old Masters such as Breughel the Elder, Hieronymous Bosch and Rembrandt among others. During the late 1950s he started making ceramics at the Arthur Merric Boyd pottery in Murrumbeena, producing engaging ceramic angels and cherubim sculptures that as high-spirited figures commented on the foibles and fallibility of being human. The exuberance and gaiety of these works served as a prelude to Perceval's next series of paintings when he reconnected with the joy of painting landscapes outdoors at Williamstown and other locations around Melbourne, with a renewed vigour and expressionist delight in colour and texture. Now the tactility and plasticity that he had employed in his ceramics increasingly found expression in his paintings, which became more gestural with thick paint applied directly from the tube, with the artist using fingers as well as brushes to build up the expressive surfaces. Perceval's approach to painting with extraordinary vitality and energy also stemmed from his intense admiration for the work of Van Gogh that increased over the years. Reflecting this passion, Perceval's paintings became more spontaneous and high-keyed in colour and he even produced his own versions of Van Gogh's famous Sunflowers. This direction coalesces in Perceval's vibrant late painting Bayswater Train Colliding with a Gold Mine 1989 where a train hurtles forward through a riotous explosion of colour and texture. Here, the inclusion of the green and rickety Jacob's ladder connecting this earthly world of mayhem to the heavens above, also provides a link back to Perceval's earlier works with their Biblical references and frequent deployment of this symbol. Frances Lindsay AM
• Estimate:
  A$38,000 - 50,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

  Can't see the realised price? Upgrade your subscription now!

• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.