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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen-Webb's
• Sale Name:
  Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
• Sale Date:
  29 Nov 2017 ~ 6.30pm (New Zealand Daylight Time)
• Lot #:
  23
• Lot Description:
  Adele Younghusband
  The Scientist
  oil tempera on board, 1951
  555mm x 425mm
  signed Adele Younghusband and dated 1951 in brushpoint lower left; signed Adele Younghusband, inscribed The Scientist, 146 Ireland Road, Pamure, Auckland in graphite verso, inscribed exhibited in Phoenix Group, Auckland 1952, ditto in Wellington 1953 in ink verso
• Exhibited:
  Phoenix Group Exhibition: Five Contemporary Painters, Auckland Art Gallery, September-October 1952; Cursive Line - Adele Younghusband, Whangarei Art Museum, Te Manawa Toi, 16 August - 30 November 2008.
• References:
  Cursive Line - Adele Younghusband, Whangarei Art Museum, Te Manawa Toi, exhibition catalogue, p. 19.
• Notes:
  ESSAY: Adele Younghusband (1878–1969), as the sole supporter of three children, made a serious commitment to painting only when she was in her 40s but, alongside her own work, still found time for other artists, giving art classes from time to time, and cofounding art societies in Whangarei in 1921 and Hamilton in 1934. She was a pacifist and theosophist so, although there is no record of her campaigning for animal rights, the subject matter of The Scientist, subtitled Vivisection, should not altogether surprise us. A bearded man in an apron examines, with narrowed eyes, a toad crouching in front of him, anthropomorphised in its apprehensive wide eyes and human-like hand. The creature is poised on a horizontal carpenter’s saw: an exaggerated substitute for a scalpel, which brings home the cruelty of animal experimentation. And, over the man’s shoulder, a portentous goat’s skull – sometimes a satanic symbol – adds a further disturbing note. In his 2008 catalogue on Younghusband, Scott Pothan identifies the architectural forms in the background as references to The University of Auckland and suggests a possible link to research scientist David Graham. But the painting is not a portrait; it is an allegory, bringing together diverse elements like a modern vanitas still life and presenting not the brevity of human life but the death of animals sacrificed to extend human life. However, The Scientist of 1951 is no macabre trompe l’oeil memento mori like those of the 17th century. Nearing 60 years of age, Younghusband had gone to Australia in 1937 and studied with George Bell in Melbourne, learning more about European modernism from this well-travelled artist, and paintings like this demonstrate her engagement with the simplified forms of abstraction. Her free arrangement of objects in space seems to pay homage to works like Malevich’s witty assemblage, An Englishman in Moscow (which, coincidentally, also includes a saw). Like those created by Malevich, Younghusband’s objects are emblematic but are transformed by her distinctive pastel palette – pale ochres, greens, greys and lilacs – into a gentle reverie: an elusive, dream-like vision of floating forms. Elizabeth Rankin
• 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.