Monarchy at Sunset 1995

GARRY SHEAD born 1942

Monarchy at Sunset 1995

oil on canvas
76.0 x 91.0 cm; 79.5 x 93.5 cm (framed)
signed and dated lower right: Garry Shead 95
signed and inscribed verso: TO LYALL BURTON GALLERY SMALL MONARCHY AT SUNSET GARRY Shead

Provenance:
Lyall Burton Gallery, Melbourne
Eva Breuer Art Dealer, Sydney
The Estate of Eva Breuer, Sydney
Menzies, Sydney, 26 March 2015, lot 73
Private collection, Melbourne

Reference:
Grishin, S., Garry Shead: Encounters with Royalty, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1998, pp.27, 36, 107 (illus. p.37, pl.3)

Estimate: $40000 - 60000

Since their conception in the mid-1990s, Garry Shead’s Royal Suite paintings have become some of his most acclaimed and sought after series of work.  Art historian Sasha Grishin describes the series as ‘history paintings … looking back to the Australia of the 1950s when the omnipresent figure of [Prime Minister Robert] Menzies dominated.’(1)

The inaugural Australian tour of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh in 1954 had a lasting impact on Garry Shead, who was twelve years old at the time.  Queen Elizabeth II was the first reigning monarch to ever set foot on Australian soil. Her visit prompted a massive outpouring of patriotism and admiration for the monarchy, and it was estimated that 70 per cent of the population flocked to see the Queen in person during her two-month national tour. Shead’s youthful memories of the royal visit are unusual and vivid:

I remember seeing her and feeling the eye contact as she passed. I also remember dreaming about her (sometimes sexual dreams) - there was possibly nothing sexy about her, she was like a Walt Disney Cinderella, but I encountered her at the dawning of my own pubescence. There was something unearthly and untouchable in her beauty … so that even a prime minister could not touch her elbow. She passed like an incarnate spirit.(2)

Monarchy at Sunset 1995 draws upon the incongruent relationship between the young Queen and 1950s Australia.  Queen Elizabeth II is shown alongside Prince Philip and a lady-in-waiting beneath a crude open-sided structure of corrugated iron, on the scrubby foreshores of Sydney Harbour. In the far distance, the Sydney Harbour Bridge is backlit by the setting sun.  In all respects, the Queen appears from another world; as ‘unearthly and untouchable’ as she first appeared to Shead in the dreams and memories of his childhood.     

Footnotes: 

1. Grishin, S., Garry Shead: Encounters with Royalty, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1998, p.22
2.Garry Shead, interviewed by Sasha Grishin, Canberra, 16 March 1996, quoted in Grishin, S., op. cit., p.28

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