Portrait of Margaret Olley 1998-99

NICHOLAS HARDING born 1956

Portrait of Margaret Olley 1998-99

oil on board
150.0 x 96.0 cm
signed, dated and inscribed verso: PORTRAIT OF MARGARET OLLEY/ 1998-9/ Nicholas Harding

Provenance:
Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney, 2005
Private collection, Sydney

Exhibited:
Archibald Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1998

Estimate: $28000 - 36000

Result Hammer: $20,000

Margaret Olley was no stranger to portraiture, being immortalised in paint by many celebrated Australian artists. Olley and Harding enjoyed a close friendship through Olley’s support and patronage of the younger generation of Australian artists, and indeed Harding was afforded the enviable opportunity to paint and draw a series of portraits of this icon of Australian art. 

In this remarkable early rendering of Margaret Olley, Harding, who now more typically paints with a smooth and glossy impasto, uses a grittier layering technique, creating a painting that is almost 3D in its spatial complexity. This thick bulking up of the oil paint involves a process of mixing and manipulation to create depth and tonal harmony. 

Up close, there seems to be no structure to the thick splotches and textural quirks of the paint. As the viewer moves back to fully appreciate how these individual components come together, Olley’s environment and her relationship to it come into focus. One can sense the familiarity of the relationship that Harding and Olley enjoyed. She sits in a well-loved chair, very much at home and confident in her bearing, framed by the familiar terracotta walls of her living room, Persian rug and her own creative stimuli, including the glass bowl filled with rich, red apples. No doubt we have seen these before in one of Olley’s own still life paintings.

Anna Groden BA (Hons); MA (Art History)