Turramurra Landscape c1926

GRACE COSSINGTON SMITH (1892-1984)

Turramurra Landscape c1926

oil on wood panel
33.5 x 35.5 cm; 48.5 x 50.0 cm (framed)

Provenance:
Gift from the artist to Miriam Freeman Morrice, New South Wales
Estate of the above
Sotheby's, Melbourne, 26 November 1990, lot 186
Private collection
Sotheby's, Melbourne, 22 April 1996, lot 102
Private collection, Victoria
Deutscher + Hackett, Melbourne, 29 August 2007, lot 80
Private collection, Melbourne
Deutscher + Hackett, Sydney, 10 May 2017, lot 89
Professor John Roberts AM, Sydney

Exhibited:
(possibly) Grace Cossington Smith, Grosvenor Galleries, Sydney, 23 July - 4 August 1928, cat.26 (as Red Cottage, Turramurra)

Estimate: $20000 - 30000

Menzies is pleased to present two of Cossington Smith’s exquisite landscape paintings from the collection of prolific Sydney collector, Professor John Roberts. Side by side they demonstrate the progression of her formidable artistic style. Turramurra Landscape c1926 was created within the artist’s first decade of oil painting, showing her intrinsic sense of colour and form, while Devon - Trusham Landscape 1949 exemplifies her established painterly style, employing short, bright brushstrokes which come together to create a sparkling whole.

Cossington Smith returned to Australia from the United Kingdom in April 1914, and moved into the family’s new home in the northern Sydney suburb of Turramurra. They named the house Cossington, after the ancestral home of her mother, Cossington Hall in Leicestershire; a name which Grace also adopted as part of her identity as an artist.1 This house remained the artist’s home for over 60 years and the area was a constant source of inspiration, as seen in Turramurra Landscape c1926. The National Gallery of Australia holds in their collection a work titled Eastern Road, Turramurra also dated c1926, which similarly depicts a road cutting its way through the green hills of Turramurra (the Aboriginal word is thought to mean ‘big hill’).2

Cossington Smith learnt the Divisionist technique - using small brushstrokes of primary colours to create the effect of light - from her teacher Dattilo Rubbo (1870-1955). However, this style of painting always came naturally to her. ‘I saw things as a pattern expressed in colour. It was quite a natural thing. I didn’t force myself to do it.’3 As seen in Devon - Trusham Landscape 1949, she applied her paint in ‘firm, separate notes of clear unworried paint.’4 This bold and captivating style placed her thoroughly at the forefront of modernism in Australia from the 1920s onwards.  

Between 1948 and 1951 Cossington Smith travelled to England and Europe with her sisters Madge and Diddy, and they spent some time with their cousin Frances Crawshaw in Devon. Trusham is a traditional Devon village situated near the Haldon Hills, which are depicted in Devon - Trusham Landscape 1949. Here we see Cossington Smith’s style has blossomed into her mature vision, with a gentler colour palette than her Australian works to reflect the softer atmosphere of England.

Footnotes

1. Hart, D. (ed.), Grace Cossington Smith, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2005, p.1
2. ‘Turramurra’, Ku-ring-gai Historical Society, accessed 11/2/2024: https://khs.org.au/turramurra-local-history/
3. Cossington Smith, interview with Alan Roberts, 9 January 1970, quoted in Hart, D., op. cit., p.27
4. Cossington Smith, quoted in Thomas, D., Grace Cossington Smith, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1973, p.6

 Asta Cameron

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