Lot 48
John Olsen(born 1928)Spring, Cottles Bridge, 1969
21 November 2019, 18:00 AEDT
Melbourne, ArmadaleSold for AU$9,760 inc. premium
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Merryn Schriever
Managing Director, Australia
Alex Clark
Head of Sale, Senior Specialist
John Olsen (born 1928)
Spring, Cottles Bridge, 1969
signed and dated lower right: 'John Olsen, '69'
gouache and watercolour on card on board
47.5 x 69.0cm (18 11/16 x 27 3/16in).
signed and dated lower right: 'John Olsen, '69'
gouache and watercolour on card on board
47.5 x 69.0cm (18 11/16 x 27 3/16in).
Footnotes
PROVENANCE
Geoff K. Gray, Sydney, 11 April 1979, lot 151
Corporate collection, Sydney
'By the beginning of 1969, John Olsen and his family were living in the Victorian countryside of Cottlesbridge, about thirty-three kilometres north-west of Melbourne. It was here, in the early 1950s, that the artist Clifton Pugh and a small group of people had instigated the community settlement called Dunmoochin. Pugh's house there had been a regular meeting place for the Antipodean group and Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman and John Perceval had painted in the area. Perceval had bought land there, and although he never lived on the property, it continued to be referred to by Olsen and Pugh on their painting excursions as 'Perceval's Hill'. The move was timely for Olsen: 'I felt at a crisis time in my career, I felt that the work I had been doing in my thirties had come to an end'.
The Cottlesbridge landscape, characterised by dusty, rolling hills, eucalypts, bright yellow wattles and numerous spherical dams, now became a major source of inspiration for his paintings. In general, his contact with the bush landscape resulted in a shift away from the overt exuberance of his earlier work to a more contemplative and lyrical response.'
Deborah Hart, John Olsen, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1991, p. 95
