Margaret Preston (1875 - 1963)

Aboriginal bark ornament, 1940

hand-coloured woodblock print on tapa cloth

35.5 x 34.5 cm (image)

signed with initials and dated in image lower left: MP / 1940
signed and inscribed below image: Tapa Cut Aboriginal Hunt Margaret Preston 

Private collection
Christie’s, Melbourne, 21 May 1990, lot 144
Private collection, Sydney, acquired from the above
Estate of the above

Society of Artists Annual Exhibition, Education Department’s Art Gallery, Sydney, 6 – 25 September 1940, cat. 62 (another example, as ‘drawing’ [sic])
The Art of Margaret Preston, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 23 May – 22 July 1980, and touring to the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, cat. 28 (another example)

Christesen, C. B. (ed.), Meanjin Papers 2, The Meanjin Press, Brisbane, vol. 2, no. 2, Winter 1943, p. 3 (illus. as ‘Aboriginal Hunt Design’, another example)
Draffin, N., Australian Woodcuts and Linocuts of the 1920s and 1930s, Sun Books, South Melbourne, 1976, p. 54 (illus., another example)
North, I., The Art of Margaret Preston, Art Gallery Board of South Australia, Adelaide, 1980, P.28, p. 56 (illus., another example)
Butler, R., The Prints of Margaret Preston, A Catalogue Raisonné, Australian National Gallery, Canberra and Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1987, cat. 228, pp. 196, (illus., another example), 197

Other examples of this work are in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (as ‘Aboriginal design – The hunt’)