143 General Art Auction Part I

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Toss Woollaston - 'White Stephen', Oil on Board (1991)

Current Bid $960 (69 bids, reserve not met)

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Lot Details

Sir Mountford Tosswill Woollaston (1910-1998) White Stephen Oil on Board Signed & Dated 1991 Lower Right 1215 x 905mm Private Collection, Wellington A tremendous example of Toss Woollaston's late career output - the artists' hand immediately recognisable through gestural brushstrokes and earthy palette. This work exemplifies an ‘intense phase of engagement with people as subjects for his painting’, seemingly catalysed by the passing of his wife, Edith Woollaston in 1987" (Stead, 26). The sitter, Stephen Lockett was the artists' live-in secretary, later becoming a business partner and ultimately his carer. The two became so close that Woollaston wrote of Lockett in 1993 "He is my other self...A necessity" (in Trevelyan, 467). Outside of the emotional attachment between artist and sitter - Woollaston felt compelled to paint Lockett, writing about his candid posture in letters on more than one occasion - “One reason… is to have a head I can use on his body, when he poses unconsciously with all his limbs in a hieroglyph" (in Trevelyan, 466). This work sits amongst some of the largest portrait works Woollaston produced, a companion work Blue Stephen (1990) is held in the Arts House Trust Collection. Ref: Oliver Stead, Woollaston: THE WALLACE ARTS TRUST COLLECTION 1931 - 1996. Wallace Arts House Trust, 2015 Jill Trevelyan (Editor): Toss Woollaston: A Life in Letters. Te Papa Press, 2004