RUPERT BUNNY

The artist's estate
Private collection, Melbourne
Christie's Melbourne, 14 March 1974, lot 429
Joseph Brown Gallery, Melbourne
Sir Leon and Lady Trout, Brisbane
Private collection, Perth

Rupert Bunny Exhibition, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1 October - 10 November 1946 [extended], cat. 75, illus.
Rupert Bunny Retrospective, Newcastle City Art Gallery, 31 July - 3 September 1968, cat. 20
Aspects of the Trout Collection, Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane, 1989, cat. 3, illus.

Clive Turnbull and Tristan Buesst, The Art of Rupert Bunny, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1948, pl. 17, p. 75
David Thomas, Rupert Bunny, Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, 1970, p. 76, cat. O280, illus. 24

The story of Mars and Venus is one of love conquering war, for amor vincit omnia.¹ The goddess of beauty calms the aggressive masculine passions by another, more engaging one. Bunny caught them in their celebrated embrace of infidelity. Vulcan, the exceedingly unattractive husband of Venus, and his colleagues appear behind the lovers with a golden net to catch them in their illicit embrace for the ridicule of the gods. While pink clouds of passion rise across the blue sky, white doves of peace fly overhead. Bunny was as familiar with the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus as with his next door neighbours. His early salon paintings sought great heights. The later ones celebrated in colour all the exhilaration released on Paris by Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes - wild, extravagant, pulsating with movement and daring. Mars (Ares in Greek) was the Roman god of war, second only to Jupiter, top of the gods. Venus (the Greek Aphrodite) was the goddess of love, unbelievably beautiful. In Bunny's painting the accoutrements of war, the helmet and shield in the foreground, are cast aside for the love of the patroness of persuasive seductions.

The overtones of the red pointed spear resting against the blue column to the left are quite explicit. Scarlet poinsettias are symbols of purity, and the red rose was sacred to Venus.The lovers' passion is expressed through the excited movement of forms, colours and fluid technique. Of all his mythological decorations Mars and Venus is one of the very best. Bunny certainly thought so for he selected it for illustration in both the catalogue to his 1946 retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria - the first of its kind - and in the later monograph published by Sydney Ure Smith. The subject is, of course, famous in Western art. The best known version is Botticelli's Venus and Mars, circa 1487-88 (National Gallery, London). Bunny provided a variation on the subject in An Idyll, 1901 (Art Gallery of South Australia). Significantly, the models are himself and Jeanne Morel, his future wife.

We are most grateful to David Thomas for assistance in cataloguing this work.

1. Love conquers all