Richard Larter

(born 1929)

Untitled (Australians), 1981

Footnotes

PROVENANCE:
Purchased from Watters Gallery, Sydney, April 2002

EXHIBITED:
Richard Larter and Vicki Varvaressos - Figurative Paintings from the 70's and 80's, Watters Gallery, Sydney, 29 January - 23 February 2002, cat. no. 6 (label attached verso)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts...
William Shakespeare

For Richard Larter, The process of bringing disparate images together and adapting them in the paintings of the 1970s was often intuitive rather than calculated. At times, the images that caught his attention were simply
those that he liked and he enjoyed the chance elements and unexpected consequences of bringing them together. They were not intended to be prescriptive but rather invited a range of responses... In Larter's
world... culture heroes could never exist solely of an elite group of recognisable icons... [he] wanted to include a somewhat veiled element of satirical humour.

Deborah Hart, "La comédie humaine", in Richard Larter, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2008, p 31; 64; 70; 73 (published on the occasion of the exhibition Richard Larter: a retrospective 20 June – 14 September 2008, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra).

Portraits identified by Geoffrey Legge, Director Watters Gallery include: Germaine Greer, Louis Nowra, Kate Fitzpatrick, Barry Humphries, Sandra Nelson, Bunny Brooke, Sandra Nelson, Joan Sutherland, Nellie Melba, Garry McDonald, Pat Larter, Pamela Stevenson.