Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Lawsons, Sydney, 29 August 2019, lot 594
Private collection, Melbourne

RELATED WORKS
The Young Mother, 1891, oil on canvas, 97.3 x 138.2cm, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne


Prue Joske, the author of Debonair Jack: A biography of Sir John Longstaff, discusses the narrative surrounding his masterpiece The Young Mother, in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne:

'The Longstaffs' first son Ralph was born with the assistance of a midwife in the winter of 1890. Various conflicting dates have been given for his birth; Ralph himself claimed to have been born in the celebrated hotel where Oscar Wilde lived after his release from jail in 1897. The little family was now installed in a ground floor studio in the Rue Constance near Montmarte, convenient to the Cormon school. One of John's fellow students, Miss Alison Rae, described this room in 1891:

'Here you find, beside the hearty welcome all Australians know how to give, a great fire blazing in one corner beside a table littered over with books, brushes, paints, sketches, ancient Japanese and other jars and an old spinning wheel etc. The walls are covered with sketches; and canvases, with their backs to the visitor, form a dado along three sides of the studio...'

John won a mention honorable in the Paris Salon with his portrait of Topsy and Ralph entitled The Young Mother in 1891. He was only the second Australian to be awarded this honour, the first being Rupert Bunny with The Tritons the previous year. Topsy, pale and slim after a long winter spent in a one-room flat divided simply by a curtain into eating and sleeping apartments, is seen in a close-fitting grey dress gently waving a palm fan over the outstretched arms of her baby son. It is a beautiful tender portrait, one of Longstaff's best, which again shows Whistler's influence in the choice of delicate colour and balanced composition'.