The Lindens' Lemons 1990

MARGARET OLLEY (1923-2011)

The Lindens' Lemons 1990

oil on board
77.0 x 107.5 cm; 96.0 x 127.0 cm (framed)
signed lower right: Olley

Provenance:
Acquired from the artist, private collection, New South Wales
Thence by descent, private collection, Sydney

Exhibited:
Margaret Olley, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 10-27 October 1990, cat.3 (label attached verso)
Important Australian Paintings, Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane, 4-29 June 2024, cat.9

Reference:
This work has been catalogued by The Olley Project (courtesy of The Margaret Olley Art Trust & Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane)

Estimate: $70000 - 90000

Result Hammer: $70000

In the summer of 2020, almost eleven years after her death at the age of eighty-eight, Sydney’s S.H. Ervin Gallery paid homage to Margaret Olley in an exhibition called Margaret’s Gift.(1) The show comprised sixty-five works of art that Olley had donated to Australian public collections, both during her lifetime and posthumously via the Margaret Olley Art Trust.  The works presented a captivating portrait in absentia of their donor, revealing Olley’s diverse aesthetic interests as well as her innate talent for friendship. The exhibition included the art of Olley’s great 19^th century heroes (Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard, Edgar Degas); her close friends and contemporaries (Margaret Cilento, Russell Drysdale, Justin O’Brien, Jeffrey Smart, Barry Humphries); and younger artists she had openly supported (Cressida Campbell, Nicholas Harding, Ben Quilty). The overwhelming impression was of Olley’s immense generosity, and of a life well lived.

This largesse was reflected in Olley’s approach to still-life, the genre for which she is best known. As illustrated by the present work, The Lindens’ Lemons 1990, Olley brought an unerring warmth and vitality to her paintings of flowers and fruit.  Here, Olley presents a characteristically abundant display of citrus, crockery and table linen. In the left of the composition, the viewer is treated to a partial view of Sydney Harbour, beyond the gabled rooftops of Paddington terraces.  The composition is unified through Olley’s harmonious use of colour, with a restricted palette of yellows, greens and rusty browns. As with so many of Olley’s paintings, there is an appealing unfussiness to the image. Her vision of still-life was worldly and material, with each object accorded a certain visual weight.   

Olley created the present work following a visit to the Kangaroo Valley, south of Sydney, where her friends owned a small farm called ‘The Lindens’.  The property included the remnants of a small orchard, where bush lemons grew in abundance.  Olley took away whole branches of lemons to paint, before presenting her friends with the finished still-life.(2) 

The vibrant ‘real-ness’ of Olley’s paintings owes much to her technique, which is rarely discussed in the literature surrounding her work. The artist explained, ‘I prefer to work direct from models or still life, have an actual thing there … [rather] than relying on one’s memory, which is a sort of risky thing. You can be more interested in the actual painting of whatever you are doing.’(3) The notion of working from a photograph was also seemingly anathema to Olley. Instead, the preliminary idea for a composition would be sketched onto a scrap of paper or card (often an empty packet from her beloved cigarettes),(4) before being worked out in chalk on a prepared sheet of Masonite. As Olley memorably described the process: ‘I prepare the ground like a coloured bone, then put on the oil and the struggle begins.’(5)

Footnotes:

1. ‘Margaret’s Gift,’ National Trust S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, 2020 (accessed May 2021): https://www.shervingallery.com.au/event/margarets-gift/
2. Email correspondence with the owner of the present work, 18 September 2024
3. Margaret Olley, quoted in Pearce, B., Margaret Olley, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1996, pp.17-19
4. Christine France, quoted in Hawker, M. et al, Margaret Olley: A Generous Life, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2019, p.187
5. Margaret Olley, quoted in Pearce, B., op. cit., p.19

Catherine Baxendale

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