Rare Prestons top Sydney Ure Smith's collection
Jane O'Sullivan, Rare Prestons top Sydney Ure Smith's collection, The Australian Financial Review, Thursday 15 October 2015.
Modernists D&H to auction work from the influential publisher.
The collection of art publisher Sydney Ure Smith, who played an influential role in promoting the Australian modernists of his day, will be put up for auction with Deutscher and Hackett in Sydney on December 2. Ure Smith edited Art in Australia magazine for several decades before selling it to Fairfax in 1938 and continuing to publish monographs and books. Most of his collection was sold or donated following his death in 1949, but the family retained signiifcant works, including some given to Ure Smith by artists. His son, Sam, the founder of Art and Australia journal, also added to the collection and now 19 works are set to go under the hammer, including rarely seen stencils by Margaret Preston. Few of the stencils are in private hands today. The nature of the medium meant Preston could make them in only very small editions and they have been collected by institutions like the National Gallery of Victoria and Art Gallery of NSW.
...The collection also includes Preston's painting Still life, Apples, Lemons and Plate from 1929, which carries a $50,000 - $ 70,000 estimate, alongside pieces by Lloyd Rees, Sali Herman, Adrian Feint and several pieces by Ure Smith himself. The Deutscher and Hackett sale also includes modernist pieces by Grace Cossington Smith and Hilda Rix Nicholas, which have been put forward by another vendor, as well as a group of around 20 works from the late Sydney collector Nancy Mellick, OAM.
image MARGARET PRESTON, A Mile Out of Alice