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Lot Essay
Related work: Urs Graf Entertains, circa 1945, pencil, 55.8 x 80.1 cm (see L Bloomfield, Impulse to Draw, Sydney, 1984, p. 202)
In the early 1930s when Norman Lindsay moved from his home at Springwood in the Blue Mountains to his studio at 12 Bridge Street, Sydney, he began painting in oils seriously. Even though he had worked in oils previously his earlier oils are more akin to his watercolours showing a lightness of both tone and brushwork. Usually, the compositions are single or only several figures.
By then in his early 50s Lindsay needed the artistic challenge of a new medium. Acknowledged as a superb etcher, pen and ink artist and watercolourist he was stimulated at the prospect of mastering yet another medium. And the city studio meant he had access to models. To Lindsay this was necessary as he grappled with painting realistic flesh tones. He also sketched, in pencil, hundreds of different poses, he would then use these to build up a composition. The pencil drawings for many of his large oils show that the tonal values of the finished paintings were mapped out using pencil.
At the outbreak of the Second World War Lindsay moved back to Springwood and writes "I had sufficiently mastered the impasto of oils as to arrive at making pictures in that medium. I needed the quiet of Springwood to concentrate on work"(Ed. Guy Howarth, Letters of Norman Lindsay, p?)
The oil painting Urs Graf Entertains was painted by Lindsay in 1945. Urs Graf. (Swiss 1485-1527) was the first artist to produce an etching (on an iron plate). Along with Durer he was also the first artist to use pen and ink for completed drawings. But it was probably the other aspects Graf's life which appealed to Lindsay. Graf was a mercenary who regularly abandoned his family for military campaigns and adventure. His work depicts the social and political condition, very often with bawdy themes. Philip Lindsay, Norman's son, had sent his father a book abut Graf which was probably the inspiration for the painting of Urs Graf Entertains. The scene of voluptuous carnality with carousing soldiers and licentious prostitutes is no doubt reflective of Graf's known behaviour and a subject which Lindsay would have enjoyed painting.
The painting was hung in the drawing room at Springwood. The room, furnished with deep sofas and gold wallpaper, had niches made in the walls to hang large and important paintings. With all the paintings framed with the same laurel-leaf design moulding the room would have looked very opulent. Urs Graf Entertains, with its brilliant, rich colours and lively subject was enjoyed by the artist and visitors to Springwood for many years before being sold at Bloomfield Galleries' Norman Lindsay Centenary Exhibition in 1979.
We are grateful to Helen Glad, grand-daughter of Norman Lindsay, for providing this catalogue entry
In the early 1930s when Norman Lindsay moved from his home at Springwood in the Blue Mountains to his studio at 12 Bridge Street, Sydney, he began painting in oils seriously. Even though he had worked in oils previously his earlier oils are more akin to his watercolours showing a lightness of both tone and brushwork. Usually, the compositions are single or only several figures.
By then in his early 50s Lindsay needed the artistic challenge of a new medium. Acknowledged as a superb etcher, pen and ink artist and watercolourist he was stimulated at the prospect of mastering yet another medium. And the city studio meant he had access to models. To Lindsay this was necessary as he grappled with painting realistic flesh tones. He also sketched, in pencil, hundreds of different poses, he would then use these to build up a composition. The pencil drawings for many of his large oils show that the tonal values of the finished paintings were mapped out using pencil.
At the outbreak of the Second World War Lindsay moved back to Springwood and writes "I had sufficiently mastered the impasto of oils as to arrive at making pictures in that medium. I needed the quiet of Springwood to concentrate on work"(Ed. Guy Howarth, Letters of Norman Lindsay, p?)
The oil painting Urs Graf Entertains was painted by Lindsay in 1945. Urs Graf. (Swiss 1485-1527) was the first artist to produce an etching (on an iron plate). Along with Durer he was also the first artist to use pen and ink for completed drawings. But it was probably the other aspects Graf's life which appealed to Lindsay. Graf was a mercenary who regularly abandoned his family for military campaigns and adventure. His work depicts the social and political condition, very often with bawdy themes. Philip Lindsay, Norman's son, had sent his father a book abut Graf which was probably the inspiration for the painting of Urs Graf Entertains. The scene of voluptuous carnality with carousing soldiers and licentious prostitutes is no doubt reflective of Graf's known behaviour and a subject which Lindsay would have enjoyed painting.
The painting was hung in the drawing room at Springwood. The room, furnished with deep sofas and gold wallpaper, had niches made in the walls to hang large and important paintings. With all the paintings framed with the same laurel-leaf design moulding the room would have looked very opulent. Urs Graf Entertains, with its brilliant, rich colours and lively subject was enjoyed by the artist and visitors to Springwood for many years before being sold at Bloomfield Galleries' Norman Lindsay Centenary Exhibition in 1979.
We are grateful to Helen Glad, grand-daughter of Norman Lindsay, for providing this catalogue entry