Portrait of Rose (Black Hat) c1940

NORMAN LINDSAY (1879-1969)

Portrait of Rose (Black Hat) c1940

oil on board
51.0 x 41.0 cm; 65.5 x 55.0 cm (framed)
signed upper left: NORMAN LINDSAY.

Provenance:
The Philip and Fran Bloom Collection, Sydney
Lawsons, The Philip and Fran Bloom Collection, Sydney, 2 March 1997, lot 268
Private collection, Sydney
Estate of the above

Estimate: $40000 - 60000

Result Hammer: $40000

Norman Lindsay was an artist who loved to paint and draw women.  More often than not, Lindsay’s female subjects would appear nude: as nymphs, chattels or heroines in a fantastical narrative scene; or as a lone figure in the studio, sprawling on a chaise longue. But Lindsay also enjoyed depicting women in more conventional portraits, as in the present example from around 1940, Portrait of Rose (Black Hat). As the artist explained, ‘I have taken the feminine image as a dominant factor in my concept of life, both because I love the beauty of women, and because they are the continuity principle which drives life eternally on into the future.’(1)   

The subject of this portrait is Lindsay’s wife Rose, with whom he enjoyed a fruitful - if at times, fraught - partnership spanning six decades.  Alongside her talents as a model, Rose performed a multitude of creative roles: she was Norman’s confidante, master printmaker, some-time framer and business manager.(2) In 1959, as he approached his final decade, Norman paid a heartfelt tribute to Rose in a letter to his biographer, John Hetherington:

Since the feminine image is the central motif of my work, Rose compacted for me an experience of all its most vital contents, mentally, emotionally, and physically … Another important facet of our union is that from some inherited source she was gifted with an amazingly sure sense for values in plastic art … such an understanding cannot be intellectually acquired - it must be an intrinsic faculty of mind.  It has been an immense value to me in the technical problem of work. Her critical acumen in that respect has often staggered me.(3)  

Lindsay was a relative latecomer to the art of oil painting, having first honed his considerable talents as a watercolourist, draughtsman and printmaker. In 1934 Lindsay took up a studio at 12 Bridge Street, Sydney, and began to work expansively in oils for the first time.(4) Lin Bloomfield has observed that oils allowed Lindsay to more faithfully capture flesh tones – this being an essential objective for any painter of nudes.(5)  

In Portrait of Rose (Black Hat), the artist depicts his wife in the guise of a wealthy courtesan. Rose is ostentatiously dressed in a large hat decorated with ostrich feathers, and a low-cut dress of taffeta and lace. Her ample décolletage is adorned with a long string of pearls.  Rose’s gaze is sultry and seductive, conveying an unmistakable charisma.   

Footnotes:

1. Letter from Norman Lindsay to John Hetherington, February 1968, quoted in Bloomfield, L., Norman Lindsay Oil Paintings 1889-1969, Odana Editions, New South Wales, 2006, p.10
2. Bloomfield, L., op. cit., p.2
3. Letter from Norman Lindsay to John Hetherington, op. cit., p.2
4. Bloomfield, L., op. cit., p.1
5. Ibid.

Catherine Baxendale

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