A large (69 by 102 cm) watercolour of the Yorkshire seaside resort, Scarborough Town and Castle. Morning Boys Catching Crabs, has become the property of the AGSA Australia after a loan agreement which placed it in the gallery lasting for several decades.
Showcased in the exhibition Turner from the Tate, The Making of a Master, this early and endearing slice of British provincial seaside activity means that two major J.M.Ws have come into Australian public collections since fateful advertisements about another artist called Turner were placed in Australian newspapers since 1973-74, writes Terry Ingram.
The National Gallery of Victoria was just acquiring the oil Val d Aosta Mountain View, a more expressionistic later Turner with the help of the finance company Associated Securities Ltd.
Perhaps with this in mind the newspaper advertisements placed by Melbourne stockbroker Mr Gordon Moffat said: "Wanted Works by Turner J A Not J M W."
Selling at as little as $200 each works by J A Turner (his first names James Alfred were then unknown) made this artist, very popular at the turn of the 19th/20th century, not even a poor man's McCubbin.
On Mr Moffat's buying J.A.'s prices rose in value. Their nostalgic pull suddenly became extremely powerful and he was a popular artist again just like when he lived.
J.A. appeared in many rich men's collections - mostly self made businessmen like Laurie Connell and Warren Anderson.
Charlie Zucker, a specialist dealer in currency notes, bought his work.
In what was still the height of the Cold War Adelaide dealer Hugh Bonython built a bomb-proof shelter for his stock of traditional artists in which Turner featured heavily.
J.A's biggest trade promoter, however, was a woman, Moorabbin art dealer the late Dana Rogowski.
Local collections meanwhile, were far from replete with genuine works by J.M.W, world famous for his oil painting of The Fighting Tremeraire in the National Gallery in London.
Australian buyers were starting to hug their past in the 1980s and had not embraced the new globalism the internet was to bring in the 2000s.
J.A. Turner's (paintings of) swagmen and pioneer wagons continued to rocket.
The deal which sealed Scarborough for the AGSA was put in place in the last years of Mr Ron Radford's directorship of the AGSA.
The sophisticated nature of the arrangement is spelt out by the painting's label.
It is a “gift from the collection of the late Mrs Crabtree by her children Rosalind, Robert, Richard and John assisted by the Roy and Marjory Edwards Bequest Fund and the Art Gallery's Foundation.” The deal was an innovative mix of cash and esteem.
The most eminent local member of the globally dispersed Crabtree family, winemaker Mr Robert Crabtree, explains how the work came to go to the AGSA.
”The family was aware of the extensive Turner Holdings in the UK and did not want the work to disappear into the Turner abyss in a large institution.
“They had visited him in Adelaide and had experienced the warmth of the AGSA and had met its director Dr Daniel Thomas and decided to send it on loan to Adelaide where it would be a landmark work. (Thomas preceded Radford as director).
Mr Crabtree declined to give the value that had been placed on the painting but it seems $5 million might be conservative.
The high value also helped explain why it was in the gallery. The loan agreement covered insurance by the gallery. The Crabtrees had just sold a Renoir because of high insurance costs..
The present exhibition goes onto the National Gallery of Australia of which Mr Ron Radford is now a director.
Radford has always declined to comment on what he is said to have done for J.A Turner when he was director of the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.
The gallery is believed to have once owned 14 works by Alfred. When he left there were hardly any. But the gallery had a lot of acquisitions of new works by other artists considered more mainstream..
The agreement to acquire the work has ended the uncertainty that has attached to its future.
Dealers and auction agents have been known to visit galleries, looking for loaned works and if there is money to be made out of it, approach them to sell.
Mr Crabtree said that his family had been big buyers at auction early last century. Mr Geoffrey Agnew, a member of the family of Agnews Gallery fame, had more politely shown an interest in the painting, he said.
The provenance of the painting is believed to be Yorkshireman Walter Fawkes, a great patron of Turner but no record seems to have survived of how or where the work was purchased. It is now being shown in the exhibition alongside Scarborough for The Ports of England from the Tate Gallery's collection.
In Scarborough Turner portrays the bustling life of the town with great diversity and catches a lot of its energy. Children are catching crabs, women are laying out clothes to dry, a bathing machine is being pulled to the water's edge, and cargo is being transferred from a beached brig.
The gallery's possession of this work was a catalyst for the current show which are set to overturn any remaining notions about the relative importance of the two Turners.
And no, the crabs in the picture had nothing to do with the purchase, said Mr Crabtree.
The painting was purchased by a member of the extended family called Hamilton.
The auction record for a J.M.W. Turner is now £29.7 million paid for Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino by the J Paul Getty Museum at Sotheby's in London in February this year.
Turner’s final painting of the Italian capital, it fetched far more than the expected sale price.
J.A Turner established an auction record for any Australian painting when The Homestead Saved An Incident in Gippsland sold at Joel's for $82,000 in May 1980.
J.A. Turner has brought great joy not only to lovers of the bush with a total of 869 paintings changing hands at auction during the period covered by Australian Art Sales Digest 's records..
The auction record for a Turner is $242,00 for View Down Collins Street from King Street paid at Sotheby's in 1987.
