THE GUST OF WIND, 1930 – 31

Important Australian + International Fine Art
Sydney
28 August 2019
17

ETHEL SPOWERS

(1890 – 1947)
THE GUST OF WIND, 1930 – 31

colour linocut

22.0 x 16.5 cm

edition: 16/50

signed, dated, numbered and inscribed with title below image

Estimate: 
$30,000 – 40,000
Sold for $36,600 (inc. BP) in Auction 58 - 28 August 2019, Sydney
Provenance

Joshua McClelland Print Room, Melbourne
Ken and Joan Plomley Collection of Modernist Art, Melbourne, acquired from the above in May 1982

Exhibited

The Artists’ Society of Canberra, Third Annual Exhibition, Sydney Buildings, Canberra, 14 – 28 March 1930, cat. 87 (another example, as ‘The Newsboy’)
Exhibition of Linocuts, Everyman’s Lending Library, Melbourne, 10 – 24 December 1930, cat. 25 (another example, as ‘The Newsboy’)
Third Exhibition of British Lino-Cuts, Redfern Galleries, London, August 1931, cat. 2 (another example)
Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 1932, cat. 41
Exhibition of Linocuts, Everyman’s Lending Library, Melbourne, 5 – 16 April 1932, cat. 17 (another example) Gladys Owen and Ethel Spowers. Lino-cuts, Wood-cuts and Watercolours, Grosvenor Galleries, Sydney, 1932, cat. 3 (another example)
Exhibition of Colour Prints and Water Colours by Ethel Spowers, Grosvenor Galleries, Sydney, 10 – 25 July 1936, cat. 3 (another example)
BA, Melbourne, 1937, cat. 70
Melbourne Woodcuts and Linocuts of the 1920’s and 1930’s, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Victoria, 1981, and travelling (illus. in exhibition catalogue)
Elyse Lord, Thea Proctor, Ethel Spowers, Margaret Preston, Joshua McClelland Print Room, Melbourne, 20 – 30 April 1982, cat. 4
Out of the Book and On to the Wall: The Relief Print, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 20 February – October 1984 (another example)
The Grosvenor School. British Linocuts Between the Wars, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 22 January – 20 March 1988; Cleveland Museum of Art, 9 August – 2 October 1988; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 22 October – 18 December 1988, cat. 46 (illus. in exhibition catalogue, p. 67 another example)
Claude Flight and His Followers: The Linocut Movement between the Wars, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 18 April – 12 July 1992, and touring, cat. 78 (another example)
The work of art: Australian women writers and artists, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, 14 August 1995 – 11 February 1996 (another example)
Modern Australian Women: Paintings and Prints 1925 – 1945, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 24 November 2000 – 25 February 2001, and touring (another example)
Sydney Moderns: Art for a New World, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 6 July – 7 October 2013, (another example)

Literature

Streeton, Argus, Melbourne, 9 December 1930, p. 5 (as ‘The Newsboy’) Times, London, 13 July 1931
Streeton, Argus, Melbourne, 5 April 1932 ‘Gladys Owen and Ethel Spowers. Lino-cuts, Wood-cuts and Watercolours’, Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 6 December 1932, p. 4
Butler, R., and Deutscher, C., A Survey of Australian Relief Prints 1900/1950, Deutscher Galleries, Melbourne, 1978, cat. 161, pp. 72, 84 (illus., another example)
Coppel, S., Linocuts of the Machine Age: Claude Flight and the Grosvenor School, Scolar Press, Aldershot, England, in association with the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1995, pl. 35, cat. ES15, pp. 37, 66, 67, 170, 171 (illus., another example)
Mendelssohn, J., ‘Women’s Work’, The Australian, 25 August 1995, p. 15 (illus., another example)
Hylton, J., Modern Australian Women: Paintings and Prints 1925 – 1945, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2000, pp. 56, 58 (illus., another example), 126
Edwards, D., and Mimmocchi, D. (eds.), Sydney Moderns: Art for a New World, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2013, pp. 178 (illus., another example), 316