Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Collection of the artist, until 1988
Mrs Shirley Wagner Collection, Sydney
Bonhams, Melbourne, 20 August 2013, Lot 140
Private collection, Melbourne

EXHIBITED
John Perceval, Wagner Art Gallery, Sydney, July 1987, cat. 3
John Perceval: A Retrospective Exhibition, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 30 April - 12 July 1992; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 6 August - 20 September 1992 (label attached verso)
Perceval: The Last of The Angry Penguins - A Tribute - Early Important Paintings from 1935 - 1995, Wagner Art Gallery, Sydney, 18 April - 17 May 2001, cat. 8 (illus.)

LITERATURE
Traudi Allen, John Perceval, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1992, pp. 111 - 112 (illus.), 156


After a five year hiatus between 1949 and 1954, John Perceval seemed to emerge from a dry spell having produced very little. In contrast to the dark ages of the 1940s his newfound enthusiasm produced a fresh, jovial style and exuberant colour palette.

'Percevals interest from the 1950s in working on location, and consequently at speed, appears to have contributed to the contention that his method was akin to that of an action painter. This assessment does not take account of the process involved in the successful works. In these the original layer was worked tonally with back, middle and foreground spaces, over which was placed the abstract expressionist layer of patterned impasto.'1

In 1956 he was awarded his first solo show, the exhibition also earmarked the opening of Australian Galleries by Tom and Anne Purves in Collingwood. At the time, Perceval was painting his urban landscapes, he began to paint the moored tug boats around Williamstown harbour, now considered his most important series and significant periods of creativity. The inaugural exhibition favoured his seaside subjects, the tradition of maritime painting still considered the more commercial option.

Painted just prior to Perceval's celebrated Williamstown series, his urban subjects act as direct precursor to this critically acclaimed series. They share the same spontaneous, vigorous brushstokes, a fluidity and distortion of line. In the present work, Pedestrian Crossing, 1955, the urgent and disjointed handling of the medium causes a sense of chaos to the surrounding inner city traffic jam. As abstract expressionism was sweeping the globe, Perceval's unique expression of movement and disregard for spatial concerns threaten to engulf the cyclists, pedestrians and Volkswagen beetles that travel across the painting.

Alex Clark

1. Traudi Allen, John Perceval, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1992, p. 139