BRETT WHITELEY

Australian Galleries, Sydney (label on reverse)
Gould Galleries, Melbourne (label on reverse)
Private collection, Melbourne; purchased from the above in 2003

Brett Whiteley, Australian Galleries, Sydney, 16 August – 15 October 1994, cat. 21

Work is in good condition. Sealed in frame under perspex. Studio splashes top margin, centre left and upper right. Two small holes top centre.
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During the mid-1970s 'the lyrical intensity of Whiteley's work flowed on in an expanding stream of... peace – rivers, harbours, nudes, interiors and still life'¹ His October 1975 exhibition at Bonython Galleries, Sydney – Sights: 24 looks at 4 sights on 3 themes – was described by critic Sandra McGrath as 'brimming with brilliant drawings... probably the best exhibition Whiteley has ever had in Australia.'²

The present work dates from this most inventive and productive period, after the artist had moved from his Waverton gasworks studio to the downstairs studio in his house at Lavender Bay. It typifies the Matissean mood of his Lavender Bay interiors, with their rich array of domestic pleasures, their air of 'luxe, calme et volupté', their tantalizing window-glimpses of Sydney Harbour. Barry Pearce puts it well when he says 'these works exude an equilibrium and the sumptuous ecstasy of living.'³

But while the paintings of this period often show Whiteley's world through a filter-field of all-over orange or ultramarine (deliberately reprising the way Matisse had flooded his room with colour in The Red Studio, (1911, Museum of Modern Art, New York), in his ink drawings Whiteley remains taut and tactile. After all (to use his own words), 'drawing generally has a lot to do with the elbow as well as the eye. Calligraphy is in the wrist.'⁴ The present work is plenty wristy, with an oriental-calligraphic flow in the contours of the two nudes, with their sensuous curves and expressive distortion, in the arabesques of the bentwood rocker (shades of Matisse's 'art... something like a good armchair'), and in the sweeping frame of the archway. There is Eastern dash, too, in the soft, black, sumi-e blots of leaves and snoozing terrier.

McGrath described these works as 'suffused with the sense of the intimate and the domestic. They are pictures within pictures, pictures of pictures, mirroring his life and the spaces in which he lives. They reflect his inside world as well as the world he looks out on to.'⁵ The present work is full of such shifts of perception, of levels of reality. There are the trees outside, the huge indoor palm and the leaves painted on a hanging scroll. There is the nude on the couch and the nude on the easel. And then there is the signature touch, the ultimate visual pun of the artist's hand bottom right, drawing the picture and drawing itself drawing.

1. Sandra McGrath, Brett Whiteley (rev.ed.), Bay Books, Sydney, 1992, p. 180
2. Sandra McGrath, 'Whiteley's homage to Matisse', Sydney Morning Herald, 25 October 1975, Weekend Magazine 6
3.  Barry Pearce, 'Return to Sydney: Lavender Bay', in Barry Pearce (ed.), Brett Whiteley: Art & Life 1939 - 1992, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 1995, p. 142
4. Brett Whiteley, in 'Painting the Infliction of Life' (interview with Rudi Krausmann), Aspect: Art & Literature, vol 1 no. 4, Summer 1975 - 76, p. 5
5. McGrath, op. cit. (1975)