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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 #:
  36
• Lot Description:
  Toss Woollaston
  Portrait of Lesley Blucher
  oil on board, 1942
  620mm x 470mm
  signed Woollaston and dated 1942 in brushpoint lower left
• Provenance:
  Held on long-term loan at the Waikato Museum, Te Whare Taonga O Waikato until 2016.
• References:
  Illustrated: Barnett, Gerald. Toss Woollaston: An Illustrated Biography . National Art Gallery, Wellington, 1991, p. 53.
• Notes:
  For Toss Woollaston and his family, 1942 was a significant year: his wife, Edith, gave birth to their third child and only daughter, Anna; his mother, Charlotte ( Tosswill), died after a long illness; and, in this third year of World War II, Woollaston was called up for service in the armed forces. He appealed and was eventually granted exemption because of family responsibilities and because orchard work - he was employed on the apple orchard of Decimus Wells in Mapua - was considered an essential occupation. Among the few works he completed that year were an oil of Edith, Woman with a Lamp, now in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and a portrait drawing in ink of himself wearing a straw hat, now in Hocken Collections. Also in 1942, the family of Decimus Wells was visited from the North Island by a 14-year-old niece, Lesley Blucher, for the school holidays. Woollaston, always opportunistic in seeking new subjects among family, friends and neighbours, painted a portrait of the visiting schoolgirl which, apart from being on loan to Waikato Museum in recent years, is unknown to most followers of Woollaston's work. In a revealing anecdote, Woollaston's friend, poet and collector Charles Brasch, while visiting in 1949, wrote in his journal: ;Toss has no interest in doing lifelike portraits - I had suggested a life drawing of Rodney [Kennedy] - a mutual friend with whom Brasch shared a house in Dunedin - ;something I would like someone to do; he said he would not know how to begin (Journal, 19 June 1949). Earlier, in 1938, Woollaston expounded his aesthetic philosophy to the poet Ursula Bethell: ;What I have to see is not the object, but the form that will be objectified when I have drawn or painted well; One does not ever, in true painting, imitate objects. One paints objects, one paints paint. The question of likeness never really enters into it at all; Hence it may be a very impressive likeness, yet a bad picture (Toss Woollaston: A Life in Letters, Jill Trevelyan (ed.), Te Papa Press, 2004, p. 103). In the case of Lesley Blucher's portrait, Woollaston achieved both an 'impressive likeness' and a good picture. There is a convincing fidelity to the gir s appearance, as an exactly contemporary photograph reveals - dark hair with centre parting, youthfully rounded features, pale complexion, dark school uniform set off by a white shirt-collar - but it was his concern to make a good picture that was paramount. The elegant curves of the handsome armchair (a gift from Colin McCahon) envelop the girl, while her head, arms and body form a series of circles echoed by the contours of the furniture. In colour, the picture is dominated by the blue-black of the uniform, while her face, hands and shirt-collar provide contrasting lighter passages alongside the ochres, greens and browns of the armchair. This strong and thoroughly satisfying work is a fine example of Woollaston's portraiture from the first decade of his long career. Peter Simpson
• Estimate:
  NZ$25,000 - 35,000
• 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.