(Girl Reading at a Table)
Margaret Olley
Details
- Artist
- Margaret Olley
- Title
- (Girl Reading at a Table)
- Year
- 1963
- Medium
- oil on composition board
- Size
- 74 x 60.5 cm
- Details
signed lower right: Olley 63
© Courtesy the Estate of Margaret Olley
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Provenance
Brian Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane, c.1963
by descent
private collection, Brisbane
Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, 2002
private collection, Moe
Further Information
In the early sixties, Olley focussed on painting the human figure and often posed the Aboriginal girls from the Joyce Wilding Opal Hostel in Sydney, preferring to work direct from models, finding it more stimulating to have actual people in front of her. This work shows one of the girls in a peaceful pose, resting her head on her hands, absorbed in reading the newspaper on the table in front of her. Olley has used colour with striking effect - the green of the girls’ skirt leading into the bright blue of the chair, contrasted against an orange background and the white folds of the shirt highlighted against the girl’s dark skin. Olley’s expressive brushstrokes imbue the work with an aura of calm and serenity.