Charles Blackman

Gift of the artist to Barbara Blackman in 1957
Lauraine Diggins Gallery, Melbourne
Mr and Mrs J. A. McGregor, Adelaide; purchased from the above in 1984
Private collection, Adelaide
Savill Galleries, Sydney
Private collection, Sydney; purchased from the above in April 1996
Savill Galleries, Sydney
Private collection, Sydney; purchased from the above in February 2004

Probably Paintings from Alice in Wonderland, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 12-22 February 1957
'Alice in Wonderland' by Charles Blackman, South Yarra Gallery, Melbourne, 21-30 March 1967, cat. 25
Charles Blackman: 'Alice in Wonderland', David Jones Art Gallery, Sydney, 14-26 October 1968, cat. 30
'Alice in Wonderland' painted in 1956-57 by Charles Blackman, Heide Park and Art Gallery, Melbourne, 24 May-10 July 1983, cat. 34
Alice's large cups, Lauraine Diggins Gallery, Melbourne, October 1984, cat. 38
Modern paintings by leading Australian artists, Savill Galleries, Savill Galleries, Sydney, 2 May-6 June 1992, cat. 28
The golden tea party, Alice in Wonderland, Savill Galleries, Sydney, 12 March-10 April 1996, cat. 1
The golden tea party, Alice in Wonderland, Savill Galleries, Sydney, 2 March-3 April 1996, cat. 39
Charles Blackman: Alice in Wonderland, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 11 August-15 October 2006, cat. 29

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Illustrated by Charles Blackman, A.H & A.W Reed, Sydney, 1982, p. 81 (illus.)
Geoffrey Smith and Felicity St. John Moore, Charles Blackman: Alice in Wonderland, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, pp. 96-97 (illus.)

UV inspection confirms there has been no retouching. This work is in good original condition.
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The paintings of Charles Blackman's 1956-1957 Alice in Wonderland series are amongst the most loved and admired in 20^th century Australian art. Directly and often rapidly painted, these colourful confections of exploding flowers and self-pouring teapots, of high-backed blue kitchen chairs and 'Drink Me' medicine bottles, of floating things and falling things, of bodily distortion and crazy perspective, fall somewhere between the pictorial love songs of Marc Chagall and the inventive mythography of Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly paintings.

The Alice pictures were first exhibited at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Melbourne in February 1957, and three works were also included in the artist's solo show at the Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane, later that same year. But it was not until after Blackman's return to Australia after five triumphant years in London (1961-1966) that the Alice in Wonderland sequence was recognised as a major achievement. Exhibitions in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne through 1967 and 1968 attracted both wide public attention and critical acclaim, and 'by the 1970s, the Alice in Wonderland series was acknowledged as one of the more substantial and significant contributions to twentieth century Australian art to date.'¹  In 1982 A.H. & A.W. Reed published an edition of Alice in Wonderland with the Blackman paintings as illustrations, and in the following year most of the series was shown in an exhibition at Heide Park and Art Gallery, the John and Sunday Reed property then recently acquired by the Victorian State Government. Finally, in 2006 the National Gallery of Victoria marked the 50th anniversary of the series with a comprehensive show of 46 works, declaring Blackman's Alice in Wonderland 'one of the truly inventive, perceptive and memorable series in the history of twentieth-century Australian art.'²

Despite their being ostensibly illustrations to Lewis Carroll's classic children's story, Blackman's Alice paintings contain a distinct autobiographical resonance. The series' immediate inspiration was a 'talking book' borrowed by his blind writer wife Barbara. Previously unfamiliar with the story (his was not a bookish childhood), Blackman was 'thrilled to bits with it,' and used its imagery to express his own sense that 'the world is a magical and very possible place for all one's dreams and feelings.'³  The series also captured more intimate truths: Alice's constant growing and shrinking and the 'Drink Me' and 'Eat Me' medicines reference Barbara's first pregnancy, which was coincident with the development of the series, while the recurrent images of table settings reflect Charles's then current 'day job' as a short order cook at the Eastbourne Café. The couple even owned their own white rabbit, a knitted toy that they called Dosty Wovsky. But the very heart of the series, its driving force, is a simple love story. Apart from the very occasional dormouse, bird or cat, the dramatis personae of the series is restricted to the White Rabbit, representing the artist, and Alice, symbolic avatar of his adored Barbara.

In the present work, their courtship takes place across the Mad Hatter's table. Mad Hatter's tea party is in many ways a bold, simple composition, built around a truncated grey-white wedge – the table top – which runs up from the bottom right almost to the top edge of the masonite support. With Alice and the White Rabbit perched on either side, the table is laid with two teacups and a vase of flowers, while a spare chair sits to one side in the bottom left corner. Yet through this deceptively straightforward structure, Blackman essays considerable pictorial and psychological complexity. Formally, the six elements arrayed on or around the table resolve into three distinct dyads: the two teacups, the rabbit and the bunny-eared chair, Alice and the flowers (or rather her pink-red head and neck and the maroon vase). Once this principle of repetition and subtle variation is recognised, other patterns emerge. The blueness of Alice's eyes matches that of the rabbit's, for example, while their lenticular form is echoed in the perspective ellipses of the tops of the teacups.⁴

Considered against the source imagery of Carroll's book, and specifically the original illustrations by John Tenniel, the picture is still further complicated. The main characters of the Mad Hatter's tea party – the Mad Hatter himself, the March Hare and the Dormouse – are here noticeably absent. But White Rabbit-Charles could be regarded as a stand-in for the hare, while his Terry-Thomas buck teeth make him look not unlike the several Tenniel portraits of the Hatter. Furthermore, 'the cup with no handle that might as well be a top hat'⁵ is very much like the one worn by the Hatter in the Tenniel illustrations.

Simple in its formal structure, yet rich in formal, personal, poetic and literary associations, Mad Hatter's tea party is a major work by the artist, and a representative of his most highly acclaimed series. Whatever its private meanings, this sunny, golden fantasy is a disarmingly direct and immensely appealing picture, which is here offered at auction for the first time.

1.  Geoffrey Smith, 'Which way, which way? The production and reception of Alice in Wonderland', in Geoffrey Smith and Felicity St John Moore, Charles Blackman: Alice in Wonderland, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2006, p. 31
2.  ibid., p. 37
3.  Charles Blackman, interview with Robert Peach, Sunday night, ABC Radio 2, 9 September 1973, quoted in Felicity St John Moore, 'Conception to birth: the Alice in Wonderland series', in Smith and St John Moore, op. cit., p. 10
4.  In terms of the broader, extended series, this form also recalls the distorted head of Alice closing up like a telescope (1956, Private collection, Melbourne)
5.  Smith and St John Moore, op. cit., p. 96