Private Collection, Sydney 

Depicting the busy intersection of roads surrounding the iconic Parisian monument the Arc de Triomphe, this expressive drawing pulsates with energy. Whiteley has collaged the monument itself and surrounded it with bold and gestural strokes of swiftly applied charcoal. This picture predates and precedes the artist’s famous images created several years later following his return to Paris at the age of 50 which culminated in a highly popular exhibition held soon after at the AGNSW.

Mrs Winifred Onslow Dunban, Sydney (prior to 1915); by descent, Gwendolen Onslow Dunban (on her 20th birthday) 1929;

Deutscher Fine Art Exhibition, Melbourne, Nov/Dec 1988 Cat. No. 24, 1989;

Private collection, Sydney since 1988

Exhibition and Sale of Paintings by Tom Roberts, Previous to his leaving Australia, Society of Artists of New South Wales, Vickery’s Chambers, 76 Pitt Street, Sydney 14 November 1900, cat 28, At Watsons Bay, 1 ½ gns.

The location of this painting is Watsons Bay, specifically Camp Cove. It fits stylistically into a group of Harbour panels (of Circular Quay, Rose Bay, Kirribilli and Sirius Cove) executed by Tom Roberts in the late 1890’s.

A forty year old Tom Roberts married Lillie Williamson in Melbourne in early 1896; in January 1898 their son Caleb was born. After the marriage Roberts left the makeshift Curlew Camp at Sirius Cove, which he had shared with Arthur Streeton and others since coming up from Melbourne in 1891 and took up residence in Paul Street, Balmain. He continued however, to work and teach from a city studio in Pitt Street.

Roberts executed two historical bush-ranging subjects in the mid 1890’s, Bailed Up and In a corner on the Macintyre c1894-95. After 1895 he worked on the large droving theme, A mountain muster (c1897-98) but his small portrait studies and rare (compared with Streeton) Sydney Harbour views on un-primed cedar panel, such as, At Watsons Bay c1898, are arguably the most appealing works he created at the time.

The painting has a charming provenance – it was given to the previous owner by her mother, Winfred Onslow Dunban, on her 20th birthday in 1929.

Rudy Komon Art Gallery, Paddington

The Estate of Ray Hughes

In the late 1960s Fred Williams re-directed his painterly form. Through abstract motifs he transformed the vision of his landscapes to combine a feel for their openness and expansiveness. As identified in Australian Landscape, within the picture plane scattered gestural strokes and dotted markings become suggestive topographical abstractions of trees, rocks and fences one might find in remote, rural areas. Also evident are the active edges of the field where the placement of motifs run off the plane as if to suggest the continued sparseness. Patrick McCaughey identifies the Australian Landscape series as Williams’ “most distinctive” as they encapsulate “so much of his development through the sixties and so much of what was new and important in that decade”, which was most relevantly the colour field movement.(1) Also notable in William’s new artistic direction was his medium. In January 1969 Williams first developed strip gouaches where he divided his sheets into rectangular panels as identified in Australian Landscape. They went on to be a typical pattern for his gouaches in the early years of the 1970s.

(1) Patrick McCaughey, Fred Williams, 1980, Bay Books, New South Wales, p218

Private collection, Sydney

Provenance:
The artist
John Young, Sydney; gift from the above circa 1920s
Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
Private collection, Melbourne; purchased from the above in 1962
Sotheby’s Australia, Important Australian Art, Melbourne, November 23, 2009, Lot 48
Private collection, Sydney

Literature:
Helen Topliss, Tom Roberts 1856 – 1931: a catalogue raisonné (2 vols), Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985, vol. 1, p. 88, vol. II, plate 10 (illus.) (as Untitled. Thames Landscape).

The Cazneaux family estate