Fine Art Auctions

Roland Wakelin (1887-1971) Australia

Still Life with Blue Curtain
1948
Oil on board
41 x 54cm (sight) 57 x 70cm (fr)
Signed dated lower right
Provenance Private Collection, Hobart
Exhibited Salamanca Collection, Hobart 1998
POA

Catalogue Details

Lot #11 - Roland Wakelin – Still Life with Blue Curtain

Roland Shakespeare Wakelin was one of the most significant figures in Australian art. With Grace Cossington Smith and Roy de Maistre he was one of the leading pioneers of the modernist school around the period of the First World War. Looking back a few years later, Wakelin was heard to say “…colour is the thing – vibrating colour”

He experimented with abstract work in colour and in the 1920s became mainly a colour painter of landscapes, still life and interiors. Still Life with Blue Curtain, dating from 1948, is a good example of an interior work.

Wakelin was in fact a New Zealander, having been born in Graytown in 1887. He studied at the Wellington Technical School between 1904 and 1912, moving to Sydney later that year to continue his studies.

“For 1912 he earned a living as a ticketwriter in the Income Tax Department… “ – The Encyclopedia of Australian Art – (McCulloch, 1994)

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