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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen-Webb's
• Sale Name:
  Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
• Sale Date:
  29 Nov 2016 ~ 6.30pm (NZ time)
• Lot #:
  21
• Lot Description:
  Leo Bensemann
  Canterbury Landscape (Landscape Over Mt Torlesse)
  oil on board, 1980
  855mm x 605mm
  signed Leo Bensemann and dated 80 in brushpoint lower left; title inscribed CANTERBURY LANDSCAPE , signed Leo Bensemann , dated 1980 and inscribed oil on board in black ink verso
• Exhibited:
  Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch, 3-21 August 1981, cat. No.1.
• References:
  Illustrated: Douglas Lilburn. Canzona, Schola Musica, 1981, LP vinyl record cover
• Notes:
  In 1978, Leo Bensemann retired from the Caxton Press after 40 years as designer, printer and partner at the famous Christchurch publisher. Bensemann's painting was necessarily confined to weekends and summer holidays, while his days and often evenings too were spent at his demanding job. Even so, during these four decades, Bensemann exhibited more than 130 works at annual shows of The Group, which were the main outlet for his art. During these years, he held only one solo exhibition - a retrospective at the Pompallier Gallery in Akaroa in 1972. After retirement, Bensemann greatly increased his output as a painter and, during his last years (he died in 1986), mounted three more solo exhibitions - in 1979 and 1981 (at Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch), and in 1983 (at Galerie Legard, Wellington) - which added a further 60 or so works to his output. In these exhibitions, landscape (a mode to which he came late, mostly after 1960) was the predominant genre and oils on board his primary medium. Of the works in these three shows, 38 were oil landscapes, mostly of scenes in Canterbury and Takaka/Golden Bay. The former is where he lived (on Huntsbury Hill overlooking the city and the plains); the latter is where he grew up and where he spent his summer holidays from 1965 onwards. In his 1979 show, all the landscapes were of Takaka/Golden Bay subjects but, in 1981, he combined Takaka/Golden Bay with Canterbury subjects, before reverting largely to Takaka in 1983. Canterbury Landscape: Over Mount Torlesse was listed as No. 1 in Bensemann's 1981 show, Recent Paintings and Drawings , forming a pair with No. 2, the slightly smaller Canterbury Landscape: Over Mount Hutt. Both paintings depict the view from near his home: in the foreground, the lower slopes of the Port Hills and, in the middle distance, the vast Canterbury Plains, stopped suddenly by the mighty stretch of the Southern Alps. Meanwhile, towering above them, is a huge sky and the giant arch of rippled clouds signifying a nor'-wester. Mount Hutt is a winter painting - the mountains are blanketed with snow - while Mount Torless e is a summer painting - the mountains are (in Trevor Moffitt's words) ;sharply focused and steely blue in colour ( Landfall 138, June 1981, p. 148); the former is in landscape format while the latter (unusually for a landscape painting) is in portrait format. The tall format of Canterbury Landscape: Over Mount Torlesse emphasises the vast height of the sky and the spectacular and exquisitely delineated cloud formation, which together occupy almost three-quarters of the picture - an unusual arrangement for a landscape painting in which it is more usual for these proportions to be reversed. This bold and dramatic painting is the culminating vision of an artist who looked out across the plains to the mountains every day for decades, observing attentively the particular cloud patterns that occur when foehn winds create these familiar but unique formations. It is a classic representation of the most idiosyncratic, natural feature of the Canterbury region and one of Leo Bensemann's finest paintings. Peter Simpson
• Estimate:
  NZ$18,000 - 25,000
• 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.