Arthur Boyd’s early humanist/landscape work, Prodigal Son 1946-7, had been in the family collection of Douglas and Anne Cairns since 1950 until its recent sale on the secondary market. Their original purchase was astute; they were obviously drawn to the earthiness of the image and i

Jeffrey Smart’s fascination with the urban motorway and road signs stem from his belief in them as potent signs of modern life. Painted after a period spent living in the busy metropolis Rome, First Study for The Arrow Carriers 1978, links past explorations of the theme that he pain

Untitled 20070401 2007, shows Tim Maguire’s mastery of the expressive potential of painting, his explorations into the luxuriant quality of fruit and flowers and his demonstrated talent for breathing new life into traditional subject matter. The relationship between art and nature u

Banished for decades, the figure finally emerged in the art of Tim Storrier (born 1949) in an exhibition titled In Absentia, held at Australian Galleries, Sydney, in 2010. The figures were spectral entities given form by the clothes they inhabited and the accessories they sported. T

Rick Amor is among the best-known and most successful artists of his generation, gaining popular and critical acclaim not just for his painting, but also as a printmaker, illustrator and sculptor. His exploration of each art form is part of a deliberate and singl

Just what was it that made Ian Fairweather turn his back on his decidedly privileged background? 

Ian Fairweather was born on Tuesday 29 September in 1891 at Bridge of Allan in Stirlingshire in Scotland, the youngest of nine children. His father James, “a man of the most perfe

Jeffrey Smart’s Mother and Child of 2000 hides an important secret. It contains a very revealing number.

A number, that is, which is painted on the front of the partially out-of-frame blue bus depicted on the far right of the canvas. The number 943 is clearly seen on the l

Born in Holland in 1877, Cornelius Theodorus Maria (Kees) van Dongen, began his career as a student at the Rotterdam Academy at the age of fifteen. As a young man he was also engaged in radical politics and earned some extra money as a political cartoonist and illustrator. In fact until 1908

Brett Whiteley was an art world comet. We all look at comets and wonder where these blazing wonders come from. So it was with Whiteley – like a comet he came from nowhere but was noticed everywhere.

Whiteley may be thought of as Australia’s Nureyev (1939-1993, Russian) of the canva

Whiteley created his rare and almost forgotten masterwork Gauguin at the infamous Chelsea Hotel in New York in 1968. It is one of Whiteley’s most conceptually rich and emotionally charged paintings.

The famous American playwright Arthur Miller remained secluded at The Chel