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| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dec 3, 2024 | Bonhams | Sydney | Important Australian Art | 31 | $****** - ****** | Double Image | |||
Nov 11, 2002 | Deutscher-Menzies | Malvern | Lowenstein Sharp Collection | 80 | $****** - ****** | Double image |
paintings
61.5 x 74.5 cm (24.21 x 29.33 in)
oil on card on canvas
signed upper left: "C BLACKMAN"
Collection of the artist
Lowenstein Sharp Collection, Melbourne
Deutscher~Menzies, Lowenstein Sharp Collection of Contemporary Australian Art , Melbourne, 11 November 2002, lot 80
Private collection, Melbourne
In early 1960 Charles Blackman moved his young family to London having been awarded the Helena Rubenstein travelling scholarship the previous year. At the time, Australian contemporary art was on the rise on an international scale, thanks to the likes of Sidney Nolan and Brett Whiteley. Their overlapping social circles saw Blackman mixing with English aristocracy alongside modern British artists such as Keith Vaughan and Michael Ayrton, thrusting him towards the world stage of Contemporary art. This new, heightened environment encouraged a more sophisticated approach to his work, allowing his practice to take on a new direction. During his time in London, Blackman emerged as an artist whose pictures achieved a rare and extraordinary degree of poetic reality. Throughout the 60s and the decades that followed, Blackman"s three strongest influences were the world of literature, the lost domain of childhood, and the nature of the women surrounding him, each of these can be seen in the present work.
In Double Image , Blackman combines several characteristic motifs of his personal style. The central image is a woman sleeping, her head poised in an ambiguous dreamlike state. This is a motif seen in similar compositions such as Afternoon , 1960 which graces the front cover of Ray Mathews" 1965 publication on the artist. Yet here Blackman appears to twist the narrative - prioritising the subject"s subconscious. From the darkness a second face emerges, giving the appearance of the pale faced, red-lipped Alice from his defining Alice in Wonderland suite of works of 1956-57. His subtle use of colour heightens the dream-like quality of the work, an eloquent and endearing evocation of his connection with the subject.
Charles Blackman (1928-2018)
Double Image, c.1960
signed upper left: "C BLACKMAN"
oil on card on canvas
61.5 x 74.5cm (24 3/16 x 29 5/16in).
