Adam and Eve and the Garlic Plant
John Perceval
Details
- Artist
- John Perceval
- Title
- Adam and Eve and the Garlic Plant
- Year
- 1955
- Medium
- tempera and resin on composite board
- Size
- 72.5 x 91 cm
- Details
signed lower left: Perceval 55
Provenance
the artist
private collection, Melbourne
Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, 1986
private collection, Melbourne
Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, 2016
private collection, Melbourne
Exhibited
Selected Australian Works of Art, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, June 1986, cat. no. 52
Annual Collectors' Exhibition 2001, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, 2001, cat. no.65
Australian Modern: Arte Australiana Moderna e Contemporanea e Arte Aborigena, Fondazione Mudima, Milan, 23 April - 24 May, 2002
Heavenly Creatures, Heide Museum of Modern Art, 4 Dec 2004 - 30 Jan 2005
Literature
Plant, M., ''John Perceval'', Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, 1971, p. 52, illus. 26
Allen, T., ''John Perceval'', Melbourne University Press, 1992, pp. 91, 112, 155, illus. p. 114
Annual Collectors' Exhibition 2001, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, 2001, illus. p. 49
Australian Modern: Arte Australiana Moderna e Contemporanea e Arte Aborigena, exhibition catalogue, Malakoff Fine Art Press, Melbourne, 2002, illus. p.12
Further Information
Adam and Eve with the Garlic Plant reveals Perceval’s early interest in naïve expression and can be seen as a “charming coda”[1] to the biblical depictions of the 1940s, which were anchored in an Australian idiom. The work shows Perceval’s shift to a more simplified format. “A high horizon line is the only concession to perspective, with details spread over the painting regardless of spatial consequences. The painting bears some relation to early Renaissance composition but deviates from it in that perspective involves no rationale; flowers are oversized and Adam takes a smaller, second place to Eve. Size is equated to importance rather than distance." [2] This is made especially clear by then large blond cherubic head appearing over the periphery of the painting, the shape of his wings echoed in the tendrils of the garlic plant whose function is perhaps to ward off evil in this heavenly garden, and inspired perhaps by Perceval’s own garden.[3] For Perceval, the angelic child suited his decision to work in a deliberately naïve style. He had ready models in his own fair-haired children.[4] In 1955, John and Mary (nee Boyd) Perceval's children were Matthew (b.1945); Tessa (b.1947) and Celia (Winkie, b. 1949). They appear in Perceval's works around this time, all wide-eyed innocence, as seen in Winkie and Tessa in Blackman's Chair (1952) and Matthew, Tessa and Winkie in Field of Flowers (1945-5). Adam and Eve with the Garlic Plant is delightfully typical of the best of Perceval’s whimsical, joy-inspiring paintings.
Christopher Heathcote, 2001