JEFFREY SMART

Private collection, Victoria

Christopher Allen, Jeffrey Smart: unpublished paintings 1940 - 2007, Thames and Hudson, Fisherman's Bend, 2008, pp. 26, 27 (illus.)
Peter Quartermaine, Jeffrey Smart, Gryphon Books, South Yarra, 1983, p. 26 (illus.), p. 107 (cat. 372)
Barry Pearce, Jeffrey Smart, The Beagle Press, Roseville, 2005, p. 65 (illus.)

This work is presented in a gold painted timber frame. There are areas of stable drying cracks across much of the surface of the shadow in the road and similiar area on figure with umbrella. Varnish discolouration in sky area.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The paintings in Jeffrey Smart's 1961 Macquarie Galleries show were deliberately and noticeably larger than those in his previous two shows. Barry Pearce notes that he 'did not exaggerate his new approach too much, but changed scale enough... to awaken the contemporary audience to a more competitive, muscular realist vision, seeing this exhibition as a turning point.'¹ The tactic appears to have worked, with the artist reporting happily the day after the opening: 'People were queuing up at 9.30... and the whole exhibition of paintings has been sold except for three.'²

The critics, too, were impressed. Wallace Thornton felt that the exhibition showed 'considerable advances on his last show. There are depths gained by the use of more muted harmonies against which are opposed the bite of acid colour and the unexpected forms. Drama is not forced as in the past, but now has a chance to gain in intensity through a sense of mystery. Space is strangely accentuated and time is momentarily transfixed in these paintings of figures halted in expansive surrounds.'³ In that last sentence, Thornton may well have been thinking of the present work – it was one of only two⁴ which his review singled out for particular praise.

The Road has a distinct Italian feel, and is clearly informed by lingering memories of the artist's European sojourn ten years previously. The conjunction of the building on the left, with its complex, mannerist façade, and the empty open roadway in the foreground, with its geometric shadows and bright yellow road markings, certainly recalls Smart's stated response to Italy: that he 'adored the modernity as well as the antiquity.'⁵ More specifically, the setting recalls Michelangelo's Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome. The tall pilasters, flat entablature and pink colour of the façade are strongly reminiscent of the Palazzo Conservatori (albeit also with a possible local reference, to the Bathers' Pavilion at Sydney's Balmoral Beach), while the lane lines and directional arrows on the road echo the Piazza's famous starburst pavement.

The Road is in fact one of the earliest paintings in which Smart explores and exploits the patterns of road markings,⁶ a device which was to become one of his signature motifs over the next decade, in works from The Cahill Expressway (1962, National Gallery of Victoria) to the several versions of Approach to a City (circa 1968-69) and The Arrezzo Turn-off  (circa 1972-73).

It should also be noted that, as with all of Smart's paintings, the literal and compositional architecture of the picture is anchored by human interest, in this case the distant, Felliniesque figure of a woman in a white dress, her head obscured by a red, white and blue umbrella. She is the picture's fulcrum. From her location on the horizon, the road rushes towards the viewer in a hail of golden arrows, while the woman herself, surrounded by drifting seagull-chevrons, stares out to the ominous far horizon of wine-dark sea and lowering clouds.

Gary Catalano has argued that the hoary old chestnut of Smart criticism, 'the question of whether Smart's figures are alienated or at home is quite beside the point', and that 'his main intent is to show that they, too, are watchers... With a consistency that cannot be ignored, he orientates these watchers in such a way that they are made to gaze at something that we can have no knowledge of. Smart's paintings are dramas which the viewer experiences as a sort of excluded witness.'⁷ This is certainly the case with the present work. Like all the very best of Smart's paintings, The Road not only gives us a movie-still slice of narrative drama, but also constitutes in itself a drama of the act of seeing.

1. Barry Pearce, Jeffrey Smart, The Beagle Press, Roseville, 2005, p. 122
2. 'Neo-realism', Daily Telegraph, 19 October 1961, p. 29
3. Wallace Thornton, 'Neo-realist Sets His Own Pace', Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October 1961, p. 2
4. The other was The Tarpeian Chase
5. Jeffrey Smart, quoted in Geoffrey De Groen, Some Other Dream: The artist, the artworld and the expatriate, Hale & Ironmonger, Sydney, 1984, p. 50
6. The foreground zebra crossing of The Stilt Race (1960, Art Gallery of New South Wales), also in the 1961 exhibition, is the only notable precedent.
7. Gary Catalano, 'The art of being a good detective', The Age, 10 May 1989, p. 14