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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen-Webb's
• Sale Name:
  The Warwick & Kitty Brown Collection
• Sale Date:
  17 May 2017 ~ 6.30pm (NZ time)
  18 May 2017 ~ 6.30pm (NZ time)
• Lot #:
  18
• Lot Description:
  Don Binney
  La Chute d'lcare, Pureora: Last Flight of the Kokako
  oil on board, 1979
  2110mm x 910mm
  original Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland, label affixed verso, inscribed NY/NW/79 No. 32 Don Binney La Chute d'lcare, Pureora: Last Flight of the Kokako
• Provenance:
  Purchased Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland. Accompanied by original purchase receipt, dated 1/3/1979. Accompanied by a personal letter from Don Binney to Warwick Brown discussing the painting and exhibition dated 1979 and the?original touring exhibition documentation from The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, dated 2003.
• Exhibited:
  NEW YEAR / NEW WORK / 1979, Barry Lett Galleries, 1979. 40 Years On: Don Binney. Travelling Exhibition; Auckland Art Gallery, Toi O Tamaki, Auckland, 28 February - 9 May 2004; Waikato Museum of Art, Te Whare Taonga O Waikato, 9 May - 31 August 2004; Te Manawa Museum of Art, Science and Histrory, Palmerston North, 31 August - 31 November 2004.
• References:
  Dunbar Sloane Presents Binney 40 Years On, catalogue for the travelling exhibition p. 4. ILLUSTRATED: Skinner, Damian, Don Binney Nga Manu/Nga Motu-Birds/Islands,?Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2003, p. 48.
• Notes:
  A NOTE FROM WARWICK BROWN: Don Binney completed many of his renowned bird paintings during the 1960s. As these iconic works went on to become emblematic of our national artistic identity, they also came to be associated with and possess a sense of 1960s zeitgeist. In the 1980s, however, a threat to the West Taupo forest habitat of the kokako, posed by government logging proposals, compelled Binney to return to this great artistic motif and to consider the bird in flight once again. A national environmental group asked Don to create an image that it could use in producing a greeting card for fundraising purposes. This painting was the result. As yet, I did not own a Binney and the moment I set eyes on it I knew I had to have it. Don was pleased that I had bought it because we were both conservationists. All in all, the work possesses a compositional precision and rigour which places it alongside the very finest of Don's great bird paintings of the 1960s: utilising the classic two-thirds/one-third vertical ratio, the kokako, completely enchanting in itsscale and splendour, physically dominates the canvas. The lower section of the painting is based on Pieter Bruegel's Fall of Icarus, 1558. In that painting, a ploughman furrows a field aas a peasant rests on his hoe. Don exchanged these for a log skidder and a chainsawa operator. Kauri trees replace the masts of a ship in a harbour while the lake scene is taken directly from Bruegel. Icarus is replaced by the kokako, whose splendid plumage represents the very best of Don's combed paint and palette-knife technique.
• Estimate:
  NZ$300,000 - 500,000
• 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.