Margaret Olley’s Still Life with Pink Paper and Plums 1948 is a rare and significant work dating from the most formative stage of her career. In June 1948, Olley held her first solo exhibition at Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, having recently graduated with honours from East Sydney Technical College (later the National Art School). The exhibition was opened by Russell Drysdale to critical and popular acclaim, with three works acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Still Life with Pink Fish; see Figure 1) and the National Gallery of Victoria (Hill End Ruins and Kilmorey Terrace).1 Olley held a second solo exhibition with Brisbane’s Moreton Galleries in October of that year, prompting one reviewer to remark upon her ‘warm vital colour … strength in interpretation and the ability to convey atmosphere and feeling.’2
Less than five years after her arrival from Brisbane in 1943, Olley had become a fixture of Sydney’s artistic scene. Her youthful ingenuity and humour quickly endeared her to leading artists of the day, with Russell Drysdale, Justin O’Brien, William Dobell, Donald Friend, David Strachan, and Jean Bellette all becoming close friends. Within these circles Olley also became a favoured subject of portraiture, the most celebrated example being William Dobell’s Archibald Prize winner from 1948 (Art Gallery of New South Wales collection, Sydney).3
Resulting from a private commission, Still Life with Pink Paper and Plums is closely affiliated with two other major works of the era: Still Life with Pink Fish 1948 and Pink Paper and Kippers 1947 (private collection). In these works, Olley shows a precocious confidence and sensitivity in her handling of paint; there is already a compelling tangibility in her approach to still-life. In both the present work and Pink Paper and Kippers, Olley contrasts the delicate translucency of tissue paper with the robust drapery of a white cloth in which fruit, crockery and conical shells are elaborately nestled. As Christine France writes of Pink Paper and Kippers, ‘There is a strong feeling for volume, but the softness of the colour and mood also give this work a feeling of fragility and tenderness.’4
Still Life with Pink Paper and Plums is one of perhaps half a dozen major still-life paintings which remain from this period of Olley’s oeuvre. The rarity of these pictures, many of which are now held in public collections, is partly owing to a disastrous house fire in 1979 which consumed Olley’s childhood home in Brisbane and many of her earliest works.5Still Life with Pink Paper and Plums serves as a vital prelude to Olley’s mature style, revealing a sense of colour, composition and ambience that was already well attuned.
Footnotes
1. Miller, T., ‘Galleries Buy from Olley’s Exhibition,’ The Sun, Sydney, 5 July 1948, p.8
2. ‘Hotels Art Subjects,’ Brisbane Telegraph, Brisbane, 18 October 1948, p.4
3. France, C., Margaret Olley, Craftsman House, Sydney, 2002, p.23
4. Ibid., p.23
5. Pearce, B., Margaret Olley, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1996, p.17
Catherine Baxendale
