museums and institutions:
Attributed works:
I. Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, later Grand Duke Ferdinando I of Tuscany, by Scipione Pulzone, called il Gaetano (1544-98). 1580. 185 by 119.3 cm. Mrs Mary Overton Gift Fund 1998. Famous since its execution, this important portrait of the great patron of the arts was mentioned by the connoisseur Rafaello Borghini in 1584 as one of the artist's best works. By that time it had been copied by the Swiss engraver Melchior Meier (active in Tuscany c. 1572-82). A number of painted copies are known. The inclusion of trompe l'œil details, in this case the tacking edge of a fictive unframed canvas (left edge), is a favourite device of the artist; this particular element recurs a decade later in his 1890 marriage portraits of Ferdinando (now Grand Duke of Tuscany) and Christine de Lorraine in the Uffizi, Florence.
Attributed works:
II. Virgin and Child, by Giuliano Bugiardini (1475-1554). c. 1530. Panel, 87.5 by 65 cm. Mrs Mary Overton Gift Fund 2000. The influence of Raphael is readily discernible in this exquisite Madonna and Child, the unusual pose of the Christ child, clutching the hem of his mother's robe, appearing to derive from Raphael's Large Cowper Madonna of 1508 (National Gallery of Art, Washington). The wall itself is a compositional motif much favoured by Fra Bartolommeo and occasionally by Raphael.
Attributed works:
III. Madonna and Child, by Benvenuto Tisi, called il Garofalo (c. 1481-1519). c. 1505-10. Panel, 27.5 by 23.7 cm. Gift of William Bowmore, AO OBE, through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 1999. During his trips to Rome, Garofalo must surely have studied the works of Raphael whose influence can be clearly seen in the serene and harmonious combination of figures, architecture and landscape.
Attributed works:
IV. The Holy Family with St Catherine of Alexandria, St Margaret of Antioch and St Francis of Assisi, by Orazio Samacchini (1534-77). Early 1570s. Panel, 102 by 86.5 cm. Mrs Mary Overton Gift Fund 1999. This panel displays the exaggerated complexity which informed the artist's compositions after working in the Vatican a decade earlier. Built on a series of careful dualities, a web of interlocking hands and paired faces surrounds the Christ child, which appears to be indebted to a prototype by Prospero Fontana. This panel was once in the collection of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Attributed works:
IX. Adoration of the shepherds, by Jean Tassel (1608-67). c. 1650. 96.3 by 75 cm. Gift of Miss Dorothy Spry 2000. The prominence given to the dirty feet of the shepherd and the accompanying wealth of everyday observation reveal the influence of Caravaggio, and that of the Bamboccianti, whom the artist would have encountered in Rome in the 1630s. The religious subject accords with the artist's increasing ecclesiastical patronage after his return to Langres in 1647. This is one of the few works by Tassel held outside France.
Attributed works:
V. The Coronation of the Virgin with Sts Luke, Dominic, and John the Evangelist, by Bartolomeo Passerotti (1529-92). c. 1580. 302.9 by 193.7 cm. Mrs Mary Overton Bequest Fund 2003. The latest acquisition to the Gallery's collection of sixteenth-century works, this imposing, large altar-piece possesses a dazzling chromatic intensity shared by a small group of Dominican altar-pieces produced by the artist in the late 1570s and early 1580s. Exemplifying Counter Reformation religious decorum and clarity, the attention to botanical and animal detail reveals the artist's long-standing interest in natural history and anatomy.
Attributed works:
VI. Bacchus and Ariadne, by Ignaz Stern (1679-1748). c. 1710. 196 by 143.7 cm. Gift of John & Christina Litt through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 2000. This splendid picture, originally purchased in Venice in 1901, has resided for a century in Adelaide private collections before arriving at the Gallery. The handling of the vine leaves, putti and grotesques is in common with the two surviving panels dating from the early 1720s and depicting the four seasons (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Kassel).
Attributed works:
VII. The Crucifixion of St Andrew, by Mattia Preti (1613-99). c. 1651. 133 by 97 cm. Mrs Mary Overton Gift Fund 1998. The main bozzetto for the central panel of the famous fresco on the altar wall of S. Andrea della Valle in Rome. The painting was commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Peretti-Montalto in 1650. The arresting composition is dominated by the crux decussata and displays the artist's interest in vivid Venetian colourism.
Attributed works:
VIII. The riches of the sea with Neptune, tritons and two nereids, by Luca Giordano (1634-1705) and Giuseppe Recco (1634-95). c. 1684. 234.5 by 296 cm. Mrs Mary Overton Gift Fund 1997. One of a series of large collaborative works conceived by Luca Giordano for the inaugural Festa dei Quattro Altari, which in 1684 was arranged by the newly appointed Spanish viceroy, the Marqués del Carpio. This enormous painting was in the palace of Buen Retiro, Madrid, by 1700 and remained in the Spanish royal collection until 1813, when the fleeing Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain, took two large marine still-life pictures with him to the United States. Its pendant, Gatatea with fish, appears lost but the present painting remained in various east coast private collections until acquired by the Gallery.
Attributed works:
X. Frances, Lady Reynell of West Ogwell, Devon, by Robert Peake (c. 1551-1619). c. 1597. Panel, 113.5 by 88.5 cm. Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 1998. The sitter in this three-quarter-length portrait is Frances (d. 1605), the first wife of Sir Thomas Reynell (1555-1621), the senior member of a distinguished family of Devon gentry, a branch which eventually (after nine generations) settled in South Australia and in the late 1830s established the Reynella winery, Australia's first commercial wine-making venture.
Attributed works:
XI. Portrait of a seated couple, by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641). c. 1621. 120 by 154 cm. Gift of James Fairfax, assisted by the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 1993. This tender, animated betrothal portrait has been variously dated between 1619 and 1621. Recent scholarship has suggested that it could be one of the few surviving works that Van Dyck painted in Britain on his first, brief visit to England in 1620-21 and that it may depict Flemish émigrés in England.
Attributed works:
XII. Portrait of a lady with a dog, by Arthur Devis (1712-87). c. 1755. 61.2 by 41.3 cm. Gift of Miss Dorothy Spry 2002. The addition of this charming portrait particularly complements the fine examples of English eighteenth-century formal portraiture which are already in the Gallery. The identity of the sitter is unknown. The picture shares numerous features with other paintings by Devis bearing the date 1755.
Attributed works:
XIII. The artist's wife Susanna, daughter Susanna and son Anthony, by Joseph Highmore (1692-1780). c. 1727. 126 by 101.7 cm. Gift of the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 1994. The artist has touchingly portrayed his daughter Susanna as Flora and son Anthony as a miniature version of his painter father. Anthony later became a semi-professional artist. This painting has been in Australia since the mid-nineteenth century when it was brought to Victoria by Joseph Highmore's great-great grandson, Frederick Morgan-Paylor.
Attributed works:
XIV. Frances Woollascot, an Augustinian nun, by Nicolas de Largillière (1656-1746). 1729. 80.6 by 65.4 cm. Gift of William Bowmore, AO OBE, through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 1993. The subject of this unusually austere example of Largillière's portraiture is Frances Woollascot (1708-51), an English Catholic gentlewoman who entered the Augustinian convent in Paris in 1727. The Augustinians sheltered many English-born nuns during this period, including Frances Woollascot's aunt (the Abbess) and cousin Elizabeth Throckmorton, whom Largillière was also commissioned to paint (National Gallery of Art, Washington).
Attributed works:
XIX. An architectural capriccio, by Francesco Guardi (1712-93). Eighteenth century. Panel, 19 by 15.2 cm. Gift of William Bowmore, AO OBE, through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 1999. Guardi's charming and lively capricci infuse observed topography with poetic sentiment and provide a visual record of the last decades before the fall of the thousand-year-old Venetian Republic. A French label on the reverse of the panel suggests that this panel was one of a pair.
Attributed works:
XV. Head of a youth, by Théodore Géricault (1791-1824). c. 1821-24. 46 by 38 cm. Gift of William Bowmore, AO OBE, through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 1993. The stark lighting and intense gaze of Géricault's painting are typically Romantic, even though the emphatic profile recalls classical Greek and Roman relief sculpture, particularly as it was revived in France under Napoleon. It is the only painting by Géricault in Australia.
Attributed works:
XVI. Lucy Sarah Sotheron, by Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830). c. 1825. 126.7 by 101.1 cm. Gift of William Bowmore, AO OBE, through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 1998. The subject of this portrait is the only daughter and heiress of Admiral Frank Southern of Kirklington, Nottinghamshire, and Darrington Hall, Yorkshire. In 1830 Lucy married a promising member of Parliament at Westminster, Thomas Bucknall Estcourt (1801-76), but this portrait was painted considerably earlier.
Attributed works:
XVII. The four times of day: evening, by Joseph Vernet (1714-89). 1757. Silvered copper, 29.5 by 43.5 cm. Gift of James Fairfax through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 1998. Illustrated here is one exquisite panel (Evening) of the four times of day painted on silvered-copper panels and now in the Gallery's collection. They were commissioned from Vernet in 1757 for the very substantial sum of 2,000 livres by Charles, marquis de Villette, minister of war to Louis XV. The young women bathe in a gorge near a fantasy view of the famous hill-town of Tivoli near Rome.
Attributed works:
XVIII. The landing of the Sailor Prince at Spithead, by Francis Swaine (1720-82). 1765. 106.6 by 167.5 cm. Gift of James and Ann Douglas in memory of Sholto and Alison Douglas 2002. This grand painting bears the inscription 'This picture gain'd a premium of 20 guineas / 1765', which refers to the 1765 exhibition for which Swaine won the Society of Arts's medal. The depiction of the Royal Sovereign (built in 1701 and broken up in 1768) is indebted to the 1726 ship portrait of his teacher and father-in-law, Peter Monamy, itself a copy of the famous Royal Sovereign by Willem van de Velde the Younger (1703; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich). It still retains its mid-eighteenth-century frame.
Attributed works:
XX. St Paul before Felix and Drusilla, by William Blake (1757-1827). c. 1803. Water-colour on paper, 37.6 by 35.4 cm. Gift of William Bowmore, AO OBE, through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 1995. This remarkable and austere water-colour illustrates a passage in the Acts of Apostles (24:24-25) in which St Paul, having been imprisoned by Felix, the governor of Caesarea, confronts and evangelises the Roman proconsul and his wife Drusilla. This heroic subject-matter was particularly attractive to Blake and can be associated with his own brand of non-conformist Christianity.
Non-western art unattributed:
XXI. Siva Nataraja (Dancing Siva), India. Vijayanagar period, sixteenth century. Bronze, 75.5 cm. high. Gift of Diana Ramsay AO and the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation in celebration of the Foundation's 20th Anniversary 2001. This particularly fine Nataraja is unusual in that the halo flames form an oval and the hair falls down the back rather than wavering out horizontally at either side. The delicate modelling of the face, limbs, costume and jewellery reveals bronze casting of the highest order. A diminutive figure of the goddess Ganga, the personification of the great river Ganges, rests amid the tresses on his right shoulder.
Non-western art unattributed:
XXII. Celestial warrior, India. Tenth to eleventh centuries. Red sandstone, 45 by 49 cm. James and Diana Ramsay Fund 2000. Wielding a sword and shield, this sky-guardian is poised to hurl himself into space. Several kinds of protective deities feature in Hindu temples and this example would have most likely been placed over a doorway. Although it would have been viewed from a considerable distance, the details of the beard, hair and jewellery are finely rendered.
Non-western art unattributed:
XXIII. White Tara, Tibet-China. c. 1750. Lacquer, gold leaf on wood, semi-precious stones, 88.9 cm. high. Purchased with funds from an anonymous donor 1995. The Hindu-Buddhist deity Tara (one who saves) sits in a dhyanasana position on a lotus throne, with lotus flowers at her shoulders and her hands gesturing to grant wishes and refuge. Tibetan sculptural canons were transmitted from northern India through China and Chinese influence can be seen in the expression, hair and style of the goddess.
Non-western art unattributed:
XXIV. Male and female Shinto deities (shinzo), Japan, Kamakura period, thirteenth century. Camphor wood, male figure 79 cm. high, female figure 48.5 cm. high. Mrs Mary Overton Gift Fund 1998. The only example in Australia, this highly important pair of shinzo (wooden sculptures of kami or spirits) has been carved using the 'one-cut' or 'itto-bori' technique, which accentuates the stark simplicity. The figures follow the early tradition of shinzo and wear costumes based on court garments worn during the Heian period (794-1192).
Non-western art unattributed:
XXV. Legendary landscape with Chinese-style temples and shrines; detail of a pair of six-fold screens, Japan, Edo period, c. 1630. Colour and gold leaf on paper, 153.5 by 378 cm. (each screen). Gift of Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett 1998. The screens depict a fantastic landscape with mountains, waterfalls, an inland sea or lake, boats, a treasure ship, temples, shrines and many figures including foreigners, peasants, priests and nobility. Elements of the landscape are painted in Chinese style and most of the temples and shrines have Chinese features. The general style of the temples relates closely to early mausoleums built by the Tokugawa nobility at Tokyo and Nikko.
