Ambrose Patterson : his life & art (signed copy)

[Mount Martha, VIC] : Alexander Calder Visual Arts, 2026. First edition. Quarto (325 x 255 mm), illustrated boards, pp. [x]; 252, fully illustrated in colour. New copy, personally signed by the author on the title page.

The first authoritative monograph on the significant Australian-American modernist — from bohemian Paris at the fin de siècle to the Pacific Northwest, tracing a life lived entirely in paint.

A magnificent illustrated monograph on this Australian painter, available in limited distribution. 

‘A handsome, meticulously researched, scholarly tome, Ambrose Patterson: His Life & Art is a must have for collectors, researchers, art historians and critics. Hard-cover, on a coffee-table scale, its 240 pages are richly illustrated with more than one hundred photographs, paintings and prints including double page spreads of several major paintings by the artist. Comprising more than 100,000 words presented chronologically in eighteen chapters and detailed appendices, it draws extensively upon myriad primary sources and family and institutional archives. A ripping good read, this important publication spotlights not only Patterson’s immersion in key artistic coteries in Paris, Brussels, Melbourne and Seattle but also seminal epochs in modern art history in the early and mid-twentieth century.

Jane Alexander grew up surrounded by paintings by her great-great uncle Ambrose Patterson. He was a younger brother of her great-grandmother Louisa Braithwaite, who with her husband William, acquired a large collection of works by Patterson. By descent, many of these remain in her extended family’s collections.

A writer, researcher and curator, Jane worked in the public galleries sector of Victoria for more than thirty years, holding directorships of the McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park and the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery. Her interest in Patterson initially resulted in a minor thesis towards a Master of Arts, followed closely by a touring exhibition of his works in 1992–1993.

In the past five years she has undertaken extensive research and written this illuminating monograph — the first authoritative and comprehensive reference on this significant Australian-American artist.’ – the publisher