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Lot #35 - Charles Blackman

  • Auction House:
    Mossgreen
  • Sale Name:
    Important Art
  • Sale Date:
    20 Nov 2017 ~ 6.30pm
  • Lot #:
    35
  • Lot Description:
    Charles Blackman
    (born 1928)
    The Sisters, 1953
    oil on board
    62 x 74 cm
    signed and dated lower left: BLACKMAN 13 MAY 53
    RELATED WORK: The Exchange, 1952, oil on board, National Gallery of Victoria collection, Melbourne
  • Provenance:
    Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne (label verso); Savill Galleries, Sydney (label verso); Private collection, Perth
  • Exhibited:
    (possibly) 8 Melbourne Painters, Macquarie Galleries, August, 1953 as The Sisters; (possibly) Charles Blackman, Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane, 1960, cat. no. 9; Charles Blackman: The Schoolgirl Years (1951-1953), Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 10 June - 2 July 1988, cat. no. 15 (label verso); Charles Blackman: Intimate Reflections, Savill Galleries, Sydney, 13 March–12 April 1997, cat. no. 1
  • References:
    (possibly) ‘At Sydney Galleries: 8 Melbourne Painters’, Le Courrier Australien, Sydney, 7 August 1953, p. 2; Virginia Morrow, Charles Blackman: Intimate Reflections, Savill Galleries, Sydney, 1997, unpaginated, (illustrated)
  • Notes:
    No artist, Australian or international, traditional or modern, could be said to have explored the theme of the schoolgirl more extensively or powerfully than Charles Blackman. The Sisters (1953) belongs to this, his seminal work. It was this small group of pictures that launched the artist’s career successfully, giving him the critical nourishment and popular following that supported a rich oeuvre spanning over six decades. Blackman’s first sizable exhibition on the theme was opened at the Peter Bray Gallery on 12 May 1953 and was followed by another two solo shows that year at Mirka’s Studio in Melbourne and the New Gallery in Adelaide. That first show contained fifteen paintings, seven works on paper and two lithographs. The imagery was largely limited to the representation of young girls and boys, often depicted in the middle of some playful activity such as skipping, dancing, waving, swimming, scootering or biking. Sometimes, such as in the present picture, the figures are simply represented still and quiet. Several contemporary commentators remarked on the unconventional subject matter, though some literary and pictorial influences were made explicit or widely recognised. The minimally-designed catalogue for the Peter Bray exhibition had no introduction or preface. Only a short citation that gave a clue to the artist’s literary musings. It was an excerpt from John Shaw Nielson’s poem Schoolgirl Hastening: ‘Fear it has faded in the night. The bells all peal the hour of nine. Schoolgirls hastening through the light, Touch the unknowable divine.’1 Others identified visual traces of Ronald Searle’s St Trinians (1946-52), a comic strip series that centred on the misfortunes of a group of bratty schoolgirls.2 However, the comedic and caricaturistic nature of Searle’s illustrations were so far removed from the deeper, more personal, nature of Blackman’s work that any comparison rests on the subject matter alone. Literary and artistic influences aside, much of the material was drawn from lived experience. Blackman remembers how, on his way to various gardening gigs in Ivanhoe, he walked past ‘thousands and thousands of schools and schoolgirls.’3 The gruesome Gun Alley murder of a twelve-year-old schoolgirl in Melbourne in 1921 also had a lasting impact: ‘it had a direct and anguished effect on me’4 he later recalled. (In a curious, almost incredible twist – Blackman’s schoolgirl series led an amateur investigator to prove that the police had caught – and hung – the wrong person for the crime. This led to a posthumous pardon in 2008.)5 To undertake such themes, it was not just a way for Blackman to deal with an art historical oversight, but also an opportunity to reckon with literary and personal and shared experiences of innocence, fear and trauma. It was an artistic gamble but the response, for this young artist, was tremendously positive. Alan McCulloch was one of the artist’s early champions. Writing his review of the show, he noted how the works ‘speak rather aggressively, perhaps, but with the undeniable power and artistry. Meaningful art is always to some extent autobiographical, and in this case the artist has projected his personality, with all its hopes and frustrations, into the extremely difficult subject of the schoolgirl … in the hands of the merely competent painter such a subject would be ludicrous. In Blackman’s hands Neilson’s schoolgirl becomes a creature of endless aesthetic possibilities. With literally nothing in the way of subject matter to help him, this young artist has created a series of paintings which are at once exciting and extremely stimulating.’6 Ivor Frances, on seeing the show in Adelaide, claimed that ‘Blackman is the most stimulating, original and promising younger painter we have seen for a long time.’7 Blackman’s unusual style and idiosyncratic technique were evidently as fresh as the themes he was exploring. Like a number of comparable examples from the series, The Sisters, is made up of textured surface planes that fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. With no horizon, the steel-blue fence, a common leitmotif and peachy-pink pavement blocks recede to a vanishing point beyond the margins of the composition. The elementary use of foreshortening and lack of modelling of the figures or tree, make this a vertiginously tense picture. The two sisters, in their yellow pleated and flared skirts, walking in the midday sun (their square shadows cast directly below them), could seemingly slide down the precipitous footpath. The high vantage (voyeuristic) point of view ads a further layer of unease, a characteristic quality of the entire series. The 2017 exhibition at Heide, Schoolgirls, re-established the important place this series holds in the oeuvre of Charles Blackman and Australia’s art history. In reviewing the show, Sasha Grishin thought the series ‘as some of the best paintings that he ever made’8 Widely exhibited, illustrated and documented, this is the first time The Sisters (circa 1953) is being offered for sale through auction. Petrit Abazi 1 John Shaw Nielson, Schoolgirls Hastening, cited in Paintings and Drawings: Charles Blackman, Peter Bray Gallery, Melbourne, 1953, unpaginated catalogue; 2 Ivor Frances, ‘A promising painter’, News, Adelaide, 17 November 1953, p. 5; 3 Cited in Thomas Shapcott, Focus on Charles Blackman, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1967, p. 16; 4 Cited in Nadine Amadio, Charles Blackman: the lost domains, A.H. 7 A.W. Reed, Sydney, 1980, p. 14; 5 See Kevin Morgan, Gun Alley: Murder, Lies and Failure of Justice, Hardie Grant Books Melbourne, 2012; 6 Alan McCulloch, ‘Quantity and quality’, Herald, Melbourne, 12 May 1953, p. 10; 7 Ivor Frances, ‘A promising painter’, News, Adelaide, 17 November 1953, p. 5; 8 Sasha Grishin, ‘The Schoolgirls of Charles Blackman – haunting works from a politically innocent age’, The Conversation, April 2017, [cited online, October 2017, http://theconversation.com/the-schoolgirls-of-charles-blackman-haunting-works-from-a-politically-innocent-age-76692]
  • Estimate:
    A$60,000 - 90,000
  • 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.



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