(Nude with Flowers) 1971

CHARLES BLACKMAN (1928-2018)

(Nude with Flowers) 1971

oil on canvas
137.0 x 168.0 cm; 142.0 x 171.5 cm (framed)
signed and dated upper right: BLACKMAN 71

Provenance:
Vanessa Wood Fine Art, Sydney, 2000
Private collection, Sydney
Menzies, Melbourne, 20 March 2014, lot 69
Private collection, Melbourne

Estimate: $40000 - 60000

Result Hammer: $40000

Having cemented himself as a pillar of the Australian art scene with his celebrated Schoolgirls, Alice in Wonderland and Faces and Flowers series of the 1950s, Blackman and his family relocated to London for six years in 1961. Eventually missing the warm weather and sunny beaches of Australia, the family moved back to Sydney in 1967. In 1970 Blackman was awarded the Cité des Artes scholarship and spent a year in Paris, where he fully embraced the Parisian way of life, sketching often but painting relatively rarely. It was at this juncture in Blackman’s life that he ‘had a tremendous urge to start painting nudes.’(1) Upon his return to Sydney in 1971 Blackman set up a small studio at the back of their Paddington residence and embarked upon the enduring tradition in Western art of painting the reclining female nude, exemplified by the present work.

 Blackman describes the period fondly:

I met my old friend Paul Delprat and we used to hire models and paint them, three days a week, in my little room or in his studio. Some of them were very successful and were among my most relaxed paintings because I hadn’t painted for a year. I was very happy to be painting because there is nothing more lovely than a beautiful creamy nude.(2)

Not having worked with models since his life drawing classes as a young student, Blackman found this return to classical methods of creating to be a respite from his own mind, stating:

A painter works so much of the time by himself. Sometimes he longs for the presence of another human being involved in his work. A model is a classic form of relaxation. It takes your eyes from your inner world and turns them outwards. Your eyes are being poetic. There is a joy in painting the nude model. The human body is totally wonderful and it strikes the imagination.(3)

(Nude with Flowers) can also be seen as a continuation of Blackman’s distinguished Faces and Flowers paintings from the late 1950s, a motif which he returned to throughout his career. The Faces and Flowers pictures emerged in the immediate aftermath of Blackman’s Alice in Wonderland paintings, and the two series are closely related in their depiction of female subjects alongside vibrant natural forms, as seen here.  In Blackman’s Faces and Flowers pictures the female faces are depicted with expressions of introspection, often with their eyes closed and heads bowed. In an extension of that tranquillity, the figure here is portrayed sleeping peacefully. Significantly, the bouquet of daffodils is the only other identifiable object in the scene. It appears to sprout directly from her head, the loose strands of her brown hair blending into those of the green foliage, as though the flowers are blossoming directly from her dreams.

 Footnotes:

1. Charles Blackman quoted in Shapcott, T., The Art of Charles Blackman, André Deutsch Limited, London, 1989, p.44
2. Ibid., p.45-46
3. Charles Blackman quoted in Amadio, N., Charles Blackman: The Lost Domains, A.H. & A.W. Reed, Sydney, 1980, p.117

 Asta Cameron

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