- 52
JOHN PASSMORE Australian, 1904-1984
Description
- John Passmore
- MORNING, MILLER'S POINT
- Signed, dated 1952 and inscribed on label on the reverse: 'This landscape was painted from Julian Ashton's art school at Miller's Point looking across the harbour towards Kirribilli. It is morning, the year would be 1952. John Passmore. Sydney Australia'
Oil on composition board
- 50.7 by 60.8 cm
Provenance
Purchased in the early 1950s directly from the artist by the first owners, the Italian Ambassador to Australia and his wife;
thence by descent
Private collection, Italy
Catalogue Note
Growing up in Sydney, some of Passmore’s earliest memories were of the harbour. He studied intermittently and, through economic necessity, mainly part-time at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School for fifteen years from about 1918; and then independently in Europe from 1933 until 1950. Most of his time away was spent in England, including service in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He met many leading modern British painters, acknowledging particularly the influence of Keith Vaughan. He studied the Old Masters and, perhaps most of all, he was fascinated by Cézanne.
Passmore returned to Sydney in January 1951. His first few years back in Australia were prolific and for much of 1951-54 he had use of a studio at the Julian Ashton School in George Street North, overlooking the harbour. Other versions of this view from 1952 include Millers Point, morning, in the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Evening at Millers Point, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
In 1960 Passmore returned to Europe and stayed for some time in the Italian village of Bricherasio, where the first owners of this painting had given him use of an old silk-worm factory as a studio. Sidney Nolan, Paul Haefliger and David Strachan had all worked there in earlier years.