First Study for 'The Dome' 1977

JEFFREY SMART (1921-2013)

First Study for 'The Dome' 1977

oil on canvas-board
30.5 x 37.5 cm
signed lower right: JEFFREY SMART

Provenance:
Australian Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso)
Private collection, Melbourne

Exhibited:
Jeffrey Smart, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, 29 March - 11 April 1978, cat. 20

Reference:
Pearce, B., Jeffrey Smart, The Beagle Press, Sydney 2005, p.137 (illus.)
Quartermaine, P., Jeffrey Smart, Gryphon Books, Melbourne, 1983, p.84, p.115, cat.702
McDonald, J., Jeffrey Smart Paintings of the 70's and 80's, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1990, p.30,158, cat 144, (illus. p.30, pl.2)
O'Grady, D., 'Agog at Coke Crates', The Age, Melbourne, 11 March 1978, p.18
Miller, R., 'Urban Visions from Foreign Lands', The Australian, 10 April 1978, p.25

Related Works:
Second Study for 'The Dome', 1977, oil on canvas, 31.5 x 35.5cm, Nic Jools Collection, Sydney
The Dome, 1977, oil on canvas, 74.5 x 74.5 cm, Gift of Marc Besen AO and Eva Besen AO, Tarrawarra Museum Collection, Victoria
The Dome, coloured aquatint, edition100, 50.0 x 45.0 cm

Estimate: $120000 - 150000

Result Hammer: $120000

The student must learn the difference between what he thinks he sees and what he actually sees. He has to question himself, doubt his judgements. It requires scrupulous self-honesty.1

It was the belief of Jeffrey Smart that to be a great painter, one must also be a great draughtsman. He felt strongly about the importance of sound academic studio training and believed that this was the foundation one must build upon in order to truly master the art of painting. Throughout his career, Smart would fastidiously study, sketch and draw the scenes which were to become his finished oil paintings. Many of the artist’s paintings had their origins in a passing glance, therefore Smart would record the moment in a sketchbook, and develop the work through a series of studies. 

The painting, The Dome 1977, was one composition which Smart laboured over for many months before achieving the brilliant final result. The subject of the work owes its genesis to the artist coming upon surveyors working in a field with a remarkable vista of St Peter’s in the background. Smart originally recorded the scene with photographs capturing the vital elements of the painting, however the final unique composition was not finalised until many drawings, sketches and studies had crystallised Smart’s vision.

The fine architectural detail and receding lines of perspective within the work were cause for Smart to experiment with different techniques and processes. In this work First Study for The Dome 1977, the artist details the majestic cupola beyond the field, juxtaposed by the off-centre red and white surveyor’s pole. Finalising the composition proved a challenge for the artist however the numerous studies are testament to his determination to perfect the work. Smart reveals in his own words, ‘almost more than any other painting, the theme would not resolve itself without a great number of studies…the last three were exhibited, but all the first ‘try-outs’ have been destroyed.’2

Jeffrey Smart was one of Australia’s most celebrated expatriate painters; born in Adelaide in 1921, the artist travelled extensively around Australia and overseas before moving to Italy in 1963 where he lived until his death in 2013. Smart’s paintings contrast the conventionally beautiful, historical landscape of Italy against the interventions of modern industry and it is this distinction which at once both exhilarates and unsettles. The artist embraced his adopted country’s post-war industrial push which produced the brightly coloured factories and beautifully curved autostrada featuring in so many of Smart’s compositions. Smart’s Italy ‘is an imaginary homeland which furnishes a resting place for our imaginations and for his, it also transfigures cities, motorways and landscapes…it is not on any map, true places never are’.3

Footnotes

1. Jeffrey Smart, quoted in Smart Capon, E., Greer, E.,  Jeffrey Smart, Drawings and Studies 1942-2001, Australian Galleries and Australian Art Publishing, Melbourne, 2001, p.12

2.Jeffrey Smart, quoted in Quartermaine, P., Jeffrey Smart, Gryphon Books, Melbourne, 1982, p.84

3.Capon, E., Quartermaine, P., Jeffrey Smart retrospective, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 1999, p.39

Caroline Jones