IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN ART

The exhibition will be on view in Sydney today, Wednesday 17 April, 10 am to 5 pm, at 30 Queen Street, Woollahra.

Among the highlights of the sale is Brett Whiteley's magnificent Doves on the Balcony, Lavender Bay 1979 (lot 19, estimate $800,000–1,000,000, pictured above).  

Brett Whiteley is widely and appropriately celebrated as one of Australia’s great cultural identities: both a charismatic artist pop star and a phenomenally gifted draughtsman and painter.  Versatile and expansive, Whiteley’s oeuvre encompasses a wide range of media and subjects – in 1978, the year before Doves on the Balcony, Lavender Bay was completed, he became the first and only artist ever to win all three of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ prestigious painting prizes; the Archibald (portraiture), the Wynne (landscape) and the Sulman (subject/genre).

In Doves on the Balcony, Lavender Bay Whiteley achieved the ideal synthesis of all his skills, learned or guessed, providing us the ‘Great Glimpse’ of his and our world.  A perfectly formed and articulated statement reflective of the ‘very quiet, very minute and very silent’, Whiteley has produced in Doves on the Balcony, Lavender Bay a composition of quiet exhalation that elevates the soul and provides the ultimate statement on the highest achievements of Australian art.

The auction will be held at the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, 111 Queen Street, Woollahra at 6.30 pm tonight, 17 April 2024.

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