IMPORTANT JEWELS & WATCHES 

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF THE LATE MURRAY ROSE AM, SYDNEY

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF THE LATE
MURRAY ROSE AM, SYDNEY 

WILLIAM DOBELL

Smith & Singer are delighted to offer William Dobell's Lady Lloyd Jones (1951) for private sale.

By the time Dobell completed this dashing portrait of Lady Lloyd Jones, he was Australia’s most famous artist and his entries to the annual Archibald Prize for portraiture were eagerly awaited by the art world as well as the broader public – this portrait was included in the 1951 exhibition.

Lady Hannah Lloyd Jones OBE (died 1982) was the third wife of Sir Charles Lloyd Jones, the chairman of David Jones Limited from 1920 until his death in 1958.  Born in Wales and the youngest of thirteen children, she and Lloyd Jones married in Chicago in July 1929, a week after Lloyd Jones’ divorce from his second wife was finalised.  Returning to Sydney in the early 1930s, the couple moved to Rosemont, a colonial-era mansion in Woollahra.

At Rosemont, Lady Lloyd Jones became an indefatigable hostess, holding receptions for local and visiting dignitaries, including Sir Robert and Dame Pattie Menzies, Lord and Lady Casey, Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, and Noel Coward, all of whom were friends of the family.  Tireless in her support of charities, amongst them being the Royal Blind Society, Legacy and Barnardo’s, and a major fundraiser for organisations such as the Art Gallery Society of New South Wales, National Trust, St. John’s Ambulance, and Sydney Symphony Orchestra, she was a leading member of Sydney society and known as an arbiter of taste in matters of fashion, fine art, interior design, and gardening.

Sir Charles and Lady Lloyd Jones were important patrons and collectors of contemporary Australian and international art, with William Dobell as undoubtedly their favourite.

Smith & Singer are delighted to announce the forthcoming exhibition by renowned contemporary Australian painter Criss Canning.  The exhibition will feature 14 new works by the artist and will be open to the public from 24 November – 17 December 2022 Monday to Saturday, 10 am – 5 pm at 14-16 Collins Street, Melbourne.

Widely acclaimed for her meticulous still-life subjects, Canning is inspired by her immediate environment and often includes flowers sourced from her vibrant gardens outside Ballarat.  She has enjoyed an extensive career as an artist, establishing a unique and distinguished contemporary style in the genre of still-life within a sharp modernist framework, whilst integrating traditional and contemporary references and techniques.

Canning’s works are held in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat; Castlemaine Art Museum, Castlemaine; Cairns Art Gallery, Cairns; Artbank, Melbourne; and private collections in Australia, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Singapore, United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

RUPERT BUNNY

Smith & Singer are delighted to offer Rupert Bunny's On the Cliff (1910) for private sale.

On the Cliff, one of the most panoramic and delightful of Rupert Bunny’s paintings remaining in private ownership, has its origins in one of the many seaside summer vacations taken by the artist from the late 1880s.  In 1908 Bunny was on the Atlantic coast of south-west France, staying at the Villa Lili in Saint-Georges-de-Didonne, near Royan.  A sketchbook from that holiday (circa 1908, private collection) preserves studies and notations for a number of later paintings, including On the Beach, Royan (1908, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney), Summertime, Royan (1910, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Newcastle), Under the Trees, Royan (1910, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth) and The Cliff Path (1910, Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth) as well as the present work.

As with the majority of Bunny’s compositions from this period, On the Cliff depicts an elegantly attired woman swathed in a catalogue of fashions, including dress, hat, shawl and shoes.  Shown seated reading on the cliff of Vallières, it is a determinedly naturalistic picture of modern life and leisure.  Contemporary critics particularly praised such works for their ‘expression of the rhythm, momentariness, dazzle of fleeting light, and shadow, and atmospheric envelopment of nature.’ On the Cliff, like several of its closely related subjects, depicts a small group of holidaymakers in separate social groups as they fossick amongst the rockpools on the shore below.  Between cliff edge and ocean, the small, distant figures are barely visible on the rocky beach covered with a carpet of seaweed.

Despite this essentially prosaic (if distinctly elegant) descriptive character, On the Cliff nevertheless retains something of the feel of the artist’s earlier symbolist work, not only in its restricted, contained and flattened topography and Puvis de Chavannesque, frieze-like composition, but also in its evocation of hidden narratives.  The solitary figure, reflective and with her gaze fixed to the horizon, together with the several figures on the beach below, offer an image brimming with atmosphere that is simultaneously enigmatic and contemplative.  

IMPORTANT JEWELS & WATCHES 

PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF THE LATE
MURRAY ROSE AM, SYDNEY 

IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN ART

The exhibition will be on view in Sydney today, Wednesday 16 November, 10 am to 5 pm, at 30 Queen Street, Woollahra.

Among the highlights of the sale is Brett Whiteley's magnificent Vision of Bali 1976-1978 (lot 12, estimate $800,000-1,200,000, 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, his oeuvre encompasses a wide range of media and subjects – in 1978, the year in which the present Vision of Bali (1976-1978) was completed, Whiteley 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).

While Whiteley’s practice is panoramic and plural – landscapes, interiors and still life, figure paintings, nudes and animals – there are nevertheless a number of persistent, recurrent motifs and symbols.  Some of the most familiar and admired are the supremely seductive and beguiling images of Whiteley’s world viewed from the window – including Bali, Fiji, London, New York, Paris, Tuscany, and of course the most renowned, Sydney – a bird’s eye view of the scene that lay before him in which he could express his creative genius.  

Vision of Bali is the artist’s most splendid visual culmination of a place that resonated with meaning and purpose, a place to which he returned in moments of great happiness, as well as despair.

The auction will be held at the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, 111 Queen Street, Woollahra at 6.30 pm on 16 November 2022.

AndrewMcIlroy.com  |  Andrew McIlroy

Criss Canning’s great grandmother’s delicately embroidered table cloth sweeps across the plane of one of her cherished paintings, bringing together a closely-held assortment of Japanese and Western glazed vases and earthenware and thoughtfully placed flowers.