- 22
CLARICE BECKETT
Estimate
30,000 - 40,000 AUD
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Description
- Clarice Beckett
- ALMOND BLOSSOM
- Signed lower left
- Oil on composition board
- 49.7 by 34.5 cm
Provenance
Rosalind Humphries Galleries, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne; purchased from the above, 1971
Private collection, Melbourne; purchased from the above, 1971
Exhibited
Possibly Catalogue of Paintings by Miss Clarice Beckett, Athenaeum Hall, Melbourne, 5-16 June 1923, cat. 1
Homage to Clarice Beckett (1887-1935): Idylls of Melbourne and Beaumaris, Rosalind Humphries Galleries, Melbourne, 30 October - 20 November 1971, cat. 60
Homage to Clarice Beckett (1887-1935): Idylls of Melbourne and Beaumaris, Rosalind Humphries Galleries, Melbourne, 30 October - 20 November 1971, cat. 60
Catalogue Note
Clarice Beckett's posthumous reputation rests to a certain extent on her soft, grey-pink Beaumaris coastal scenes. However, the 'scientific' principles of tonal painting which she absorbed from her teacher Max Meldrum were as applicable to portraiture and still life as they were to landscape. Beckett's floral still lifes were a consistent sub-theme of her practice: her Memorial Exhibition at the Athenaeum in 1936 included paintings of camellias, carnations, chrysanthemums and marigolds.
The present work, a study of almond blossom, is at once strictly Meldrumite and softly Beckettian, with the crisp white highlight petals on the foreground plane emerging from a vague, geometric envelope of blue-green shadow.