Twenty exceptional paintings owned by the late Ron Walker AC CBE will be offered by Smith & Singer on 24 July 2024. Particular noteworthy is Brett Whiteley’s Her (1967) estimate $1,800,000–2,400,000 – an image of the artist’s wife Wendy reclining on her back on a mattress, with the startling and unnerving gaze of her single blue eye directed at both the artist and viewer – represented a natural progression and extension of Whiteley’s paintings of the early 1960s. Hailed as one of the brightest stars of the international art world and the youngest artist collected by the Tate, Britain, Whiteley’s art possessed the confidence and brilliance that certainly seemed to signal a fully mature artistic personality.
The sale represents one of the most significant and focused private collections of Australian art assembled in the last fifty years. At its core rests the trio of exemplary compositions by Brett Whiteley – Her (1967) (Lot 5 ) estimate $1,800,000–2,400,000, Not I – Me 1967 (Lot 6 ) estimate $1,000,000–1,500,000, and Reclining Nude (1978) (Lot 7 ) estimate $1,000,000–1,500,000 – all pivotal images in the artist’s career that have been widely published and exhibited. These works are complemented by outstanding paintings by Australia’s leading practitioners of the twentieth century, including Elioth Gruner, Charles Blackman, Sidney Nolan, John Olsen, Clifton Pugh and Albert Tucker. A particular highlight is the re-emergence of Elioth Gruner’s Spring Morning, Middle Harbour 1913 (Lot 1 ) estimate $250,000–350,000, formerly in the collections of Sir John Russell French KBE, Sir Leon and Lady Trout, and the Queensland Art Gallery.
Important Australian Art from the Estate of the Late Ron Walker AC CBE includes a masterpiece of Australian Impressionism by Elioth Gruner Spring Morning, Middle Harbour 1913 (Lot 1 ) estimate $250,000–350,000. The most ambitious of Gruner’s paintings to date, Spring Morning, Middle Harbour belongs to the artist’s ravishing sequence of canvasses celebrating Sydney Harbour shown under the dreamy effects of misty and hazy light. Gruner’s fascination with introducing a pronounced discipline and structure to the Australian landscape that emphasised clarity and simplicity and foreshadowed Modernism, remains clearly evident. For Gruner, light and form were paramount, as was his desire to distil the emotional essence of place and country, mood and moment.
Charles Blackman’s The Sleepwalking Nude 1968 (Lot 4 ) estimate $450,000–650,000, featured as catalogue number one in Blackman’s greatly anticipated and acclaimed solo exhibition at South Yarra Gallery, Melbourne, in October 1968 and was hailed as a highlight of the year in art in Australia. As testament to its significance, the painting was selected for the artist’s retrospective organised by the National Gallery of Victoria in 1993 that toured to Sydney, Brisbane and Perth.
Notably, the sale features two important works by John Olsen with, Fleurieu Peninsula 1983 (Lot 2 ) estimate $350,000–450,000 belonging to Olsen’s superb suite of diptych landscapes that originated in August 1982, when Olsen participated in an ambitious cultural geography expedition which would lead to the book The Land Beyond Time. Fleurieu Peninsula has long been acknowledged as a masterpiece form this important series and represents a highpoint in the artist’s career.
Offered to the market for the first time in over half a century, Albert Tucker’s Faun and Parrot 1965 (Lot 8 ) estimate $250,000–350,000, is a painting resonating with power and beauty, which celebrates Tucker’s highly personalised and idiosyncratic view of Australia, its land and its inhabitants.
