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Stella Bowen (1893-1947) Jardin Exotique, c.1938 image 1

Lot 3

Stella Bowen
(1893-1947)
Jardin Exotique, c.1938

Important Australian Art

17 November 2021, 18:00 AEDT

Melbourne, Armadale

Sold for AU$123,000 inc. premium

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Merryn Schriever

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Alex Clark

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Stella Bowen (1893-1947)

Jardin Exotique, c.1938
signed lower right: 'STELLA / BOWEN'
titled and inscribed with artist's name to label verso
oil on board
53.5 x 44.0cm (21 1/16 x 17 5/16in).

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Collection of Lady Chorley, London, a gift from the artist following a holiday together in Provence in 1938
Thence by descent
Private collection, London

EXHIBITED
The Rowley Gallery, London (label attached verso)

Whilst a gifted portraitist and in enough demand to support herself and her daughter Julia, Stella Bowen found the impact of her commercial work draining. Whilst the exact location of the subject of this work is unknown, its title suggests it may be from the courtyard of the studio in Cagnes where Bowen spent time with friend Ruth Harris. As noted by Lola Wilkins in her exhibition text for the Australian War Memorial's retrospective, for Bowen the studio was a 'perfect subject', evocative of the life and light of the Provençal she so loved. In her autobiography 'Drawn from Life: A Memoir', Bowen writes of the studio, 'Sunlight reflected from red tiled floors on to whitewashed walls, closed shutters and open windows and an air so soft that you live equally in and out of doors, suggest an existence so sweet and simple that you wonder that life ever appeared the tangled, hustling and distracting piece of nonsense you once thought it.' Her work, White Steps, now in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, dates to this period, and like Jardin Exotique is infused with the languid heat of the French summer.

Throughout her career, Bowen would often find respite in these gentle landscapes and still life subjects. One wonders if her early education under the tutelage of Margaret Preston (then MacPherson) not only inspired her but also instilled in her this love of the natural world.

Merryn Schriever

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