Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 1952 (label attached verso)
Mr Paul Haefliger, Sydney
Mr Robert Shaw, Sydney
Mr Bruce Reynolds, Melbourne, 1994
The Agapitos/Wilson Collection, Sydney, 2000
Rachael Ash & Andrew Turley, Sydney

EXHIBITED
Exhibition of Paintings: James Gleeson, Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 3 - 15 September 1952, cat. 35

RELATED WORK
Study for "The Entombment", c.1950, ink, pen and brush, gouache on paper, 21.5 x 12.8cm, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra


The Entombment comes directly from James Gleeson's body of work that occurred from about 1948 through to the late 1950's, after his extensive surrealist period, when he first travelled to Europe, spending 3 months in Italy. In Europe he discovered the art of the renaissance – especially the work of Michelangelo and Mathias Grunewald.1

Gleeson himself said 'I'd seen Greek and Roman sculpture and Classically inspired Renaissance works in the museums of London and Paris, but in Italy I was surrounded by it... In Italy I encountered a very different view. Man was centre stage – the measure of all things. In this classical or neo-platonic world view, man was created in the image of God, or the gods were conceived in the image of man and the notion of human perfectibility, in that sense that a human being can become god-like, is implicit'2.

In a separate interview he confirmed 'the most important and longest lasting influences (on my painting) were not from any one artist... it was a cumulative effect produced by repeated visits to galleries and museums in Europe'3. Christ's Entombment was painted repeatedly in Renaissance Europe, probably most notably by Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo (unfinished) and Caravaggio. However Gleeson greatly admired Mathias Grunewald (c.1475-1528) one of the most important painters of the German Renaissance and made several visits to see his Isenheim Altarpiece (1515), depicting both the crucifixion, and underneath on a panel, the entombment of Christ.4

The Entombment along with Gleeson's other paintings completed in 1951 and 1952 (Italy 1951, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney and The Crucifixion 1952, in the collection of the S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney) pay tribute to the Renaissance and contain many relics of that classical world. They also had a deliberate method of construction that was carefully considered from the start – very different to his earlier surrealist paintings. In Gleeson's Entombment individual elements such as Mount Calvary, Cyprus trees, a cloaked figure, the miniature figures around Christ's corpse, water (which Gleeson acknowledged he used as a metaphor for the subconscious mind and continuous transformation), the sepulcher and more, were all envisaged separately and brought together in the final work.

1. Hendrik Kolenberg & Anne Ryan, James Gleeson: Drawings for Paintings, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2003, p. 19
2. Renee Free, James Gleeson: Images from The Shadows, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1996 p. 42
3. Interview with James Gleeson in Lou Klepac, James Gleeson: Landscape Out of Nature, Sydney, Beagle Press, 1987 p. 13
4. Hendrik Kolenberg & Anne Ryan, op. cit., Note. 30, p. 28