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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Fine Australian & International Art
• Sale Date:
  06 Jun 2017 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  13
• Lot Description:
  Margaret Olley
  (1923-2011)
  The Kitchen Window, 1990
  oil on board
  66.5 x 89.5 cm
  signed lower left: Olley
• Provenance:
  Australian Galleries, Melbourne (label verso); Eva Breuer Galleries, Sydney (label verso) ; Fine Australian & International Paintings and Decorative Arts, Sotheby’s, Sydney, 27 August 2001, lot 6; Private collection, Melbourne
• Exhibited:
  Margaret Olley, Australian Galleries , Melbourne, 10 - 27 October 1990, cat. no. 17
• Notes:
  Margaret Olley, Australian Art’s bon vivant, had a talent for entertaining lively dinner parties and gatherings of eccentric personalities. Her cosy, idiosyncratic home – the setting of these merriments – also doubled as her studio. Her longest standing residence and the most predominantly portrayed was the iconic Hat Factory in Duxford Street, Paddington. ‘Walking into Margaret’s home is like walking into a painting. It is brimming with art, flowers, furniture, books, objects and has the smell of flowers and fresh oil paint. The track to the kitchen passes by a familiar painting spot – there is a seat, a great lump of paint on a palette, brushes, mail, an ashtray and a warm light streaming from the skylight...’1 Marigolds and Cornflowers, apples a plenty, a full decanter and a half glass of wine ready for the tasting, Olley’s composition in The Kitchen Window leaves one thirsting for more. An energetic traveler at heart, Olley eventually fell captive to her illness, meningitis, causing decreased mobility and from the late 1980s onwards she remained predominantly housebound. The window offered Olley an ever-changing palette – the outside world provided abundant inspiration for a multiplicity of moods, all from the one location. As was her nature, Olley fixated on the interior of her home and composed a veritable treasure trove of still life assemblages amassed over years of collecting from her incessant travels. ‘I…came back to the Hat Factory – or ‘the shed’ as my mother called it. The carriers said it was the longest move they’d ever done, because they couldn’t get away with dumping pieces of furniture anywhere. I’d worked out exactly where I wanted everything to go.’2 The world Olley painted was a one of a good natured, hearty and unpretentious home life, which fosters a feeling of satisfaction and delight to beholder – in the eyes of her close friend Donald Friend each painting was imbued with ‘the warm colouring of her own affectionate constant, yet feminine unpretending self.’3 In each series of still lifes, as with The Kitchen Window, we can often see the repetition of such scenes from slightly different perspectives, with shifting light or a newly fashioned grouping of blooming flowers, bowls of ripening fruit and the usual eclectic assortment of tableware. While fellow artist and friend Justin O’Brien was convalescing in Sydney in the late 1990s, he enjoyed many visits to Olley’s sanctuary. ‘”There are”, he said, “so many wonderful things to draw. Everywhere you look there is another still life just waiting to be painted.”’4 This arrangement of home and studio afforded Olley a boundless array of scenes to discover, puzzle and capture without interruption. The Kitchen Window was exhibited at Australian Galleries coinciding with a Retrospective exhibition at S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney in 1990. This successfully propelled Olley’s career into long-overdue public recognition. Around this time, John McDonald’s review furnished the public with a sense of the magnetism of Margaret Olley’s paintings: ‘the evocation of atmosphere is intrinsic to the arrangement and choice of objects, the play of light and care given to the moulding of individual shapes…. conveys considerable breadth of feeling’.5 Subsequently, Olley was appointed Order of Australia in 1991. Shortly after she was declared an Australian National Treasure. 6 This cemented her reputation as one of Australia’s most icon painters. Her wit and vivacity is imbued in her paintings – each of which carries her own unique view of the interior living she revered and inhabited. In the words of Barry Humphries: ‘Cosier and richer than the QVB | Is Olley’s kitchen with its glows and glints. | This is her studio, her home, her bower | Distilled on canvas by her hand and brain | And we are witness to that witching hour | When The Domain morphs into Duxford Lane | Long may she reign, this wondrous national treasure | As frailer talents falter on the hill, | Long may she give us all the keenest pleasure: | A painter of still life who’s never still. ‘ excerpt from Ode to Olley by Barry Humphries 7 Sarah Garrecht 1 Steven Alderton, Margaret Olley: Interiors and Still Lifes, Lismore Regional Gallery, Brisbane, 2006, p. 9; 2 Meg Stewart, Margaret Olley: far from a still life, Random House Australia, Sydney, 2005, p. 473; 3 Donald Friend, The unpublished dairies of Donald Friend, NLA MS5959, item 46, entry from September 1982 ; 4 Christine France, Margaret Olley, Craftsman House, Sydney, 2002, p. 110 (see other reference); 5 John McDonald, Overdue Tribute to an Icon of Integrity, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 August 1990 ; 6 Meg Stewart, Margaret Olley: far from a still life, Random House Australia, Sydney, 2005, p. 476; 7 Barry Humphries, Ode to Olley in Margaret Olley: Home, Museum of Sydney, 2002, p. 17
• Estimate:
  A$44,000 - 56,000
• 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.