Margaret Preston

Grosvenor Galleries, Sydney
Gregory Roarty, Sydney; purchased from the above in 1929
Australian paintings, prints and books, Christie's, Melbourne, 14 April 1986, lot 227
Peter Gant Fine Art, Melbourne, 1988
The Painter's Gallery, Sydney, 1988
Savill Galleries, Sydney, 2004
Australian and International Fine Art, Deutscher-Menzies, Sydney, 7 December 2005
Private collection, Sydney; purchased from the above

Margaret Preston, Grosvenor Galleries, Sydney, 7-31 August 1929, cat. 10 (20 gs.)
Autumn Exhibition: modern to contemporary Australian Art, Peter Gant Fine Art, Melbourne, 17 May-14 June 1988, cat. 1
Sydney still life, The Painters Gallery, Sydney, 17 June-5 July 1986, cat. 29
Australian paintings, Summer 2004, Savill Galleries; Melbourne, 26 February-28 March 2004; Sydney, 2 March-3 April 2004
Australian and International Art, Deutscher-Menzies, Sydney, 7 December 2005, lot 17

Margaret Preston: recent paintings 1929, Art in Australia: Sydney, 1929
Autumn Exhibition: modern to contemporary Austrailan Art, Peter Gant Fine Art, Melbourne, 1988, cat. 1 (illus.)
Australian paintings, Summer 2004, Savill Galleries, Melbourne and Sydney, 2004 (illus.)
Deborah Edwards, Margaret Preston, Art Gallery of New South Wales: Sydney, p. 82, 106, 220

UV inspection confirms there are small areas of retouching in the curtain sections, upper left and upper right. The work has been relined, it is on ots original stretcher with new keys. The work appears in good stable condition.
"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."

For Margaret Preston, the reason 'why there are so many tables of still life in modern paintings is because they are really laboratory tables on which aesthetic problems can be isolated.'¹  Through still life she herself made a transition in the 1910s and 1920s from tonal realism, through a decorative, patterned post-impressionism to a thick, rich, fauvist-expressive mode. After 1925 she became even more radically modern, adopting a flat, heavily contoured pattern-cubism reminiscent of Fernand Léger, in which (to use Humphrey McQueen's phrase) 'black is massively present.'²  The critic Basil Burdett greatly admired Preston's project, stating that she 'has achieved the most individual work in still-life in this country, and it is noticeable that she insists greatly on the employment of purely local forms. In fact, she has rescued our flora from its customary banal exploitation at the hands of most of our artistic craftsmen.'

However, it would appear that even Burdett had difficulty with the machine-age angularity of works such as Banksia (1927, National Gallery of Australia) and Implement Blue (1927, Art Gallery of New South Wales). Writing diplomatically of 'experiments with which it was not always easy to be sympathetic', he lamented the temporary sacrifice of 'the sensuous beauty and fluency of her colour'³, and welcomed its return in the rich, colourful florals of 1929, of which the present work is exemplary.

New South Wales everlastings is quite closely comparable to the previous year's Australian gum blossom (1928, Art Gallery of New South Wales), specifically in its focus on a central, spherical arrangement of blooms in a vase. Within this centralised composition, the density and richness of the paint, the juxtaposition and chromatic balance of the blooms against each other and against the lighter tone and shadowed folds of the background clearly demonstrate what Hans Heysen called Preston's 'unerring eye for pattern.'⁴  At the same time the centrality and circularity is lightened by a number of tricky ambiguities and visual witticisms. In both works we get a sense that a piece of the pattern has fallen beside the vase: in Australian gum blossoms a sprig of flowers, here a shellwork box with floral decoration; while both works have a backdrop of cloth or curtain embroidered or printed with flowers.

Moreover, in 1924-25 Preston had begun what was to be a continuing, spirited advocacy of Aboriginal art and its specific relevance to 20^th century art and design. While the Aboriginal elements of the present work are limited, the roundels of the flowers and the craft shellwork from the La Perouse Aboriginal community are clearly derived from this enthusiasm, as is the red and white (ochre and pipeclay) palette.

New South Wales everlastings is a major work from one of the artist's most inventive and assertive series, a painting which displays not only the traces of European 20^th century style and the footprint of indigenous culture but the artist's unique capacity to combine these elements in a convincing vernacular modernism.

1.  '92 Aphorisms by Margaret Preston and others', in Sydney Ure Smith and Leon Gellert (eds.), Margaret Preston recent paintings, Sydney: Art in Australia, 1929
2.  Humphrey McQueen, The Black Swan of Trespass, Sydney, Alternative Publishing Co-operative, 1979, p. 153
3.  Basil Burdett, 'Some contemporary Australian artists', Art in Australia (third series), no. 29, September 1929, n.p.
4.  Letter, Hans Heysen to Sydney Ure Smith, 16 October 1928, MS 31/4/329, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales