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Lot 78

Rupert Bunny
(1864-1947)
The Wrath of Apollo, c.1918

22 September 2019, 13:00 AEST

Sydney, Woollahra

Sold for AU$24,400 inc. premium

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Rupert Bunny (1864-1947)

The Wrath of Apollo, c.1918
oil on linen
51.0 x 73.0cm (20 1/16 x 28 3/4in).
linen stamped verso with artist supplier Lucien Lefebvre-Foinet, Paris

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Mrs Montague Grover, Melbourne
K. Grover Esq., Melbourne
Collection of the late Sir Warwick and Lady Fairfax, Sydney

EXHIBITED
Exhibition of Paintings by Rupert Bunny, Georges Gallery, Melbourne, 9 - 19 September 1947, cat. 26 (label attached verso)

LITERATURE
Clive Turnbull and Tristan Buesst, The Art of Rupert Bunny, Ure Smith, Sydney 1948, p. 75
David Thomas, Rupert Bunny 1864-1947, Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, 1970, cat. O208
David Thomas, The Life and Art of Rupert Bunny: A Catalogue Raisonné, Thames and Hudson, Melbourne, 2017, O501

Exhibited in late 1947, just a few months after Rupert Bunny's death, The Wrath of Apollo belongs to a group of paintings from the latter part of his career which Bunny called 'mythological decorations.' Filled with vibrancy and brilliance, they are his most individual contributions to art. The exhibition was reviewed by The Age art critic who wrote 'When Bunny died some months ago a chapter in Australia's early art history was closed. He was one of several distinguished artists who contributed to the foundation of a national culture.

A cosmopolitan in outlook and habit, with a cosmopolitan's receptivity to movements in taste, Bunny's versatile ability was admirably qualified to respond to and record the diversity in art movements that arose during his long lifetime.

His fastidious taste in colour and design is reflected in a number of mythological compositions of which At the Well (I) is a conspicuous example. It is in these pictures that the artist reveals his literary-musical sensibilities, and it is to the musician with an unerring sense of harmony no less than to the artist that we owe a debt of gratitude for his elegant unity of colour relationship and intricacies of design.

Bunny's art had limitations, a lack of depth due to his response to the vagaries of the moment. Nevertheless, within these limits his work neared perfection of its kind, and that is all we may demand from any artist.'

We gratefully acknowledge the kind assistance of David Thomas in cataloguing this work.

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