Brett Whiteley

(1939-1992)

Untitled Painting III, 1961

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
The Matthiesen Gallery, London
Private collection, Scotland

EXHIBITED
Brett Whiteley: Paintings and Gouaches, The Matthiesen Gallery, London, 9 - 31 March 1962, cat. 10 (illus.)

LITERATURE
Kathie Sutherland, Brett Whiteley: A Sensual Line 1957-1967, Macmillan Art Publishing, Melbourne, 2010, cat. EE26, p. 248-249 (illus.)
Kathie Sutherland, Brett Whiteley: Catalogue Raisonné, Schwartz Publishing, Melbourne, 2020, cat. 58.61, vol. 1, p. 114 (illus.), vol. 7, p. 109


Brett Whiteley arrived in London in 1960 after being awarded the Italian Government Travelling Art Scholarship at the age of 20 which enabled a trip to Italy. He joined a high profile group of older expatriate Australian artists including Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and Charles Blackman who had seduced the London art world.

Bryan Robertson, Director of the Whitechapel Gallery from 1952 to 1968, chose to champion the young Whiteley's work by including three paintings in a group exhibition in 1961, Survey of Recent Australian Painting. Robertson describes choosing the paintings from Whiteley's Ladbroke Grove studio:

"The paintings were of startling maturity, richness and spiritual and imaginative poise, perfectly at ease in their medium and wholly original. It was hard to believe they were by such a young artist. The images weren't merely sophisticated or knowing, but totally realised in depth, filled with youthful panache and energy, and above all, a personal vision." 1

His abstract style was partly inspired by the sienna red walls and early Renaissance paintings that he had encountered in Italy, and partly informed by his interest in erotically charged figuration. He was undoubtedly influenced also by the contemporary art of the time. Through Robertson was introduced to influential American artists such as Helen Frankenthaler and Mark Rothko.

The response to Whiteley's startlingly sophisticated canvases was considerable. The Contemporary British Art Society acquired Untitled White Painting, 1961 and the Tate Gallery, London purchased Untitled Red Painting, 1961, making Whiteley the youngest artist ever to be acquired by the gallery. As Bryan Robertson explains, Whiteley's "arrival on the European scene in 1961 was dazzling; never had youthful precocity seemed so disconcertingly substantial, deep and alert in its light, its texture, its fabric... its spirituality"2

Encouraged by his success, Whiteley exhibited a further 31 works of a similar subject, scale and treatment, including the present work, at his first solo exhibition held at the Matthiesen Gallery in March 1962. Another example from the period, Untitled Warm Painting I 1961, is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

1. Bryan Robertson, 'The London Years', Brett Whiteley, Art and Life, Thames & Hudson and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1995, p. 9
2. Barry Pearce, 'Persona and the Painter', Brett Whiteley, Art and Life, Thames & Hudson and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1995, p. 9