Skip to main content

This auction has ended. View lot details

You may also be interested in

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

Lot 60

John Richard Passmore
(1904-1984)
Damson Summer, c.1951–54

26 August 2025, 18:00 AEST
Sydney

Sold for AU$17,220 inc. premium

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

How to sell

Looking for a similar item?

Our Australian Art specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.

Find your local specialist

Ask about this lot

John Richard Passmore (1904-1984)

Damson Summer, c.1951–54
oil on canvas
51.0 x 64.0cm (20 1/16 x 25 3/16in).

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
The Passmore Trust, Sydney
Collection of Elinor Wrobel, Sydney

EXHIBITED
John Passmore Retrospective, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 19 December 1984 – 10 February 1985, then touring; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, 27 February – 7 April 1985, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 23 April – 30 June 1985, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, New South Wales, 12 July – 18 August 1985, cat. 17 (label attached verso)

LITERATURE
Thomas Laurie, 200 Years of Australian Painting, Bay Books, Sydney, 1971, pp. 72, 73 (illus.)
Barry Pearce, John Passmore Retrospective, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1984, cat. 17, p. 44 (illus.)

'Life for me is during these days a delicious vacuum. It is a vacuum because whether one lies in the sun or on one's bunk or draws or makes a long comb over ideas, the days seem unreal and fantastic. They have the feeling of beating tom-toms, the beating away of time that is wound up with one's most primitive impulse — dreams have become realism at last and as much as I know it is all real. It is the beating of the dream that is what I know most. ... I hope for sun this afternoon. I will be in the grass; today I don't feel like work — too much revolves round and round in my head.'

John Passmore, in a letter to Reg Jenkins, Scotland, late 1945

Additional information

Bid now on these items

Thancoupie/Thanakupi(1937-2011)Moocheth the Ibis, Toogun the Fly Fish, Owellingan the Possum, Bêche-de-mer, c.1988 height: 15.0cm (5 7/8in).

Narritjin Maymuru(circa 1914-1982)Macassan Pipe and Spear pipe: 75.0cm length, spear: 208.0cm height

Margaret Price Petyarre(circa 1945)Aniljiy, c.1987

Margaret Price Petyarre(circa 1945)Aniljiy, c.1987