Lot #25 - Leo Bensemann
-
Auction House:Mossgreen-Webb's
-
Sale Name:The Peter Jarvis & Helene Phillips Collection
-
Sale Date:30 Nov 2017 ~ 6.30pm (New Zealand Daylight Time)
-
Lot #:25
-
Lot Description:Leo Bensemann
Portrait of Trevor Moffitt
oil on Swedish hardboard
675mm x 575mm
original Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch exhibition label affixed verso -
Provenance:Purchased from the collection of Trevor Moffitt, May 2001.
-
Exhibited:The Group Show 1975, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christcurch; Portraits of Group Members by Group Members, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, 1977.
-
References:ILLUSTRATED: Gregory O'Brien, Lands and Deeds, (Auckland: Godwit Publishing, 1996), p.171; Chris Ronayne, Trevor Moffitt - A Biography, (Auckland: David Ling Publishing, 2006), (back cover illustration); Richard Wolfe, New Zealand Portraits, (Penguin/Viking, 2008), p.156/157; Caroline Otto, Leo Bensemann, Portraits, Masks and Fantasy Figures, (Nelson: Nikau Press, 2005), p.108.
-
Notes:ESSAY: Is this Leo Bensemann’s greatest portrait? Richard Wolfe seemed to think so in selecting it to represent Bensemann’s work in his 2008 compilation: New Zealand Portraits. He had plenty to choose from. Bensemann was one of the country’s most prolific portraitists, completing well over 100 portraits and self-portraits in oils between 1934 and 1982; the best of them were of exceptional quality. This portrait of Bensemann’s friend and fellow artist, G T (Trevor) Moffitt, was first exhibited in The Group Show of 1975 and again in Portraits of Group Members by Group Members, which accompanied the survey exhibition The Group 1927–1977, held at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery as The Group disbanded after 50 years in business. Moffitt, known best for his narrative paintings and landscapes, was a generation younger than was Bensemann but the two became good friends and drinking companions in the 1960s when Moffitt was teaching at Burnside High School in Christchurch. Moffitt exhibited regularly with The Group from 1961; he painted a return portrait of Bensemann, which was first shown at The Group in 1976. Previewing Bensemann’s 1981 exhibition at the Brooke Gifford Gallery in Landfall, Moffitt wrote about a double portrait in terms which could well be applied to Bensemann’s portrait of him: “It has a sense of place, it is in many ways a visual statement of fact and yet it is equally a product of his mind, both a vision and a description growing out of a thorough filtering process that identifies the important elements and then reassembles them in paint with painstaking care and patience to exist wholly in its own reality”1. The portrait of Moffitt is notable for its careful balancing of elements. The artist’s bulky figure is placed centrally, his torso filling the picture plane; his smooth fleshy face is presented ‘full frontal’ while the features – greying hair, arching eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, dimpled chin, facial creases – are all sharply delineated. The figure is placed against an elaborate landscape of clouds, sky, mountains, hills and river: in every case not vague and generalised but specific to the Canterbury back-country environment, especially the Rakaia Gorge region, which Moffitt himself regularly painted. The clouds, for instance, echoed by hair and brows, form the familiar nor-west arch while the head is placed against clear blue sky beneath the arch with the brilliantly white, snow-covered mountain range arrayed on both sides. The sitter’s brown cardigan and open-necked white shirt are vertically grooved and fluted like the landscape behind him, though not so obviously as to seem overstated. He is at home in this setting. It is an outstanding painting in every way and one of Bensemann’s very best. 1. (Landfall, 138, June 1981, 147–48) Peter Simpson
-
Estimate:NZ$50,000 - 60,000
-
Realised Price:
-
Category:Art
This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.
