Paintings from the estate of Eric Westbrook, former director of the National Gallery of Victoria to be sold.

By , on 12-Jun-2013

Notable 18th and 19th century European paintings along with works by an Australian art industry icon will be the major feature of Philips Auctions latest sale from noon Sunday June 16 at 47 Glenferrie Road, Malvern. Works attributed to French artists Lazarre Bruandet, whose paintings appear in Paris's Musée D'Orsay, and Charles Eschard - who has works on display at Musée Caen and the Louvre - are among the European artists involved in the auction, which also includes several Italian paintings from the same period.

Work attributed to French artist Lazarre Bruandet, whose paintings appear in Paris’s Musée D’Orsay, is among the European artists represented at the Philips Australia auction of the estates of Eric Westbrook, former director of the National Gallery of Victoria, and artist Dawn Sime.

Of particular note is the European School’s Italian early to mid-19th century painting of a Mediterranean port scene (lot 305) and the 18th century rural and river scene (lot 306).

The Australian art industry icon is Eric Westbrook – the man responsible for building the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in St Kilda Road.

Eric Westbrook was appointed NGV director in 1954 and, at the time, the gallery was housed in a decrepit Victorian-era building – later redeveloped as the State Library of Victoria.

Westbrook worked hard to achieve State government support and funding for the new St Kilda Road building, designed by Roy Grounds which opened with great fanfare in 1968. Under his guidance from 1956 to 1973, the NGV built up an extensive art collection.

While Eric Westbrook achieved enormous success as a gallery director (and later became head of Victoria’s art ministry), what many people don’t realise is that he also was a trained artist – having studied art during World War II before moving to curatorial work.

Born in 1915 in London, Eric Westbrook married Ingrid in the 1940s and they had a daughter, Charlotte, who now lives in Canada with her husband and two children.

With the NGV appointment, the family settled in Melbourne – but in 1963 the marriage collapsed and Ingrid returned to England with 17-year-old Charlotte.

Westbrook subsequently married Dawn Sime, a noted artist who from 1954 to her death in 2001 held many solo exhibitions. Several of her works appear in public institutions such as the NGV and the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

When Sime and Westbrook retired in the early 1980s to Castlemaine in central Victoria, their art practice flourished as they worked side by side in a studio overlooking a bush garden.

About two years after Eric Westbrook died in 2005, Charles Nodrum Gallery organised an exhibition of both artists’ works – along with paintings, sculptures and works on paper by well-known Australian artists from the 1960s and 1970s the couple owned.

The Philip Auctions paintings (which include Dawn Sime’s works) are mainly from this exhibition and one at University Art Gallery, and part of the proceeds will go to Breast Cancer Research Australia.

A notable Dawn Sime work in the auction is lot 324 “Untitled Black Apple” while Eric Westbrook’s “Untitled Sketch of Robert Menzies” (lot 337) should create plenty of buyer interest. 

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