Summer time

05/11/12 • 2 min

'Summer time' magnificently demonstrates Rupert Bunny’s skill as a draughtsman and his masterful handling of large-scale composition. Exhibited at the New Salon in 1907, the painting epitomises the leisured spirit of the ‘Belle Époque’, elegantly capturing seven voluptuous women lounging inside a bathhouse, sipping iced tea and inhaling the intoxicating scent of freshly plucked roses. Bunny modelled each of the figures on his wife Jeanne Morel, who sat for numerous paintings from this period.

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The Golden Fleece

Tom Roberts painted 'The Golden Fleece' while staying at Newstead Station in the New England tablelands of northern NSW. It is part of a series in which Roberts payed homage to rural life and pastoral industry, and captured vanishing traditions such as the use of manual shears. Originally called 'Shearing at Newstead', this painting was renamed to reference the Greek myth in which the Argonauts voyage to the end of the world in search of the Golden Fleece. The title reflects Roberts' creation of the rural worker as 'hero', and his evocation of Australia as an Arcadian land of pastoral plenty. The work's frame is attributed to John Thallon, the famous 19th-century Melbourne carver and gilder, and was restored in 2010.

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The expulsion

'The expulsion' completes Arthur Boyd’s cycle of biblical-themed paintings which he began in 1944. Based on the Old Testament story of Adam and Eve expelled by God from the Garden of Eden, the figures recall the work of 15th-century Florentine painter, Masaccio. Boyd transposes this early Renaissance pictorial idea into an Australian wilderness. The focus of 'The expulsion' is not so much the biblical narrative as a poignant depiction of Boyd’s concern for lovers denied privacy, which he had experienced when courting his future wife, Yvonne, after his conscription into the army. I see lovers as victims ...They suffer from being unprivate, watched. Love becomes guilt because it is frustrated. Pictures with animals or another human figure watching lovers are intended to give the idea of spying, a disturbance, a breaking into the moment of privacy. Arthur Boyd, 1981