Margaret Preston Recent Paintings 1929

The most sought after of all Margaret Preston books, with a magnificent signed colour woodcut.

Sydney : Art in Australia, 1929. Quarto, folding white buckram clamshell box with gilt-lettered title label (edges and joints restored), original ribbon ties, containing the following elements:

1. A black card folio, inside which is a copy of the publication ‘Margaret Preston Recent Paintings 1929’, quarto, illustrated wrappers, pp. [42]; printed in red and black, nine black and white plates numbered 1 to 9, foreword by Leon Gellert and Sydney Ure Smith, text titled 92 aphorisms by Margaret Preston and others; limited to 250 numbered copies (this is copy 70), printed by Percy Green at the Green Press, Sydney; very fine.

2. An original colour woodcut Mosman Bridge 1927 measuring 250 x 185 mm, signed by the artist  in pencil lower right (the prints were not numbered), tipped on to a backing card at the upper margin, with the original glassine sheet; very fine.

3. Thirteen folded cards numbered plates 10 to 23, each with a colour reproduction of Margaret Preston paintings, captioned with the names of their owners.

4. An additional folding card portfolio titled ‘Margaret Preston Recent Paintings Duplicate set of Colour Plates’ housing fourteen colour reproductions.

This rare and exquisite deluxe folio, produced at the height of Preston’s popularity, was issued with one of two woodcuts, either Mosman Bridge (Butler, p. 113), or Flowers in Jug (ibid., p. 137). It is assumed that each was printed in an edition of 125, but ‘it is not known if the full edition was completed’ (ibid.). Of the copies which were completed, many have now been split for the original woodcut and colour plates. The present copy is complete with all elements as published.

‘Mosman Bridge, built up of a mosaic of clear, bright colour with a daring use of ngative space, creates intriguing ambiguities of perspective. The delicate calligraphy which describes the bridge and the expressive, undulating curves of the foliage in the foreground, show Preston’s unerring sense of design at its best.‘ (Butel, p. 29)

This woodcut is a fine view of one of the most picturesque inlets on the northern side of Sydney Harbour, created by Margaret Preston while living in Mosman Bay following her marriage to William Preston in late 1919. The Prestons would live in Mosman for over forty years, and the urban natural environment by the water would form the subject of a number of her important works.

‘The Prestons’ move to Mosman in 1920 would prove a dominant influence on Margaret Preston’s artistic development, and it was certainly while living in Mosman that her reputation became firmly established as the most prominent Australian woman artist of the 1920s and 1930s. Mosman’s natural environs, proximity to the harbour and the city provided her with creative stimuli, the locale featuring in many prints during the 1920s. Preston’s vigorous, graphic and colourful representations of the suburb caused the art critic for ‘The Sun’ to comment in 1929 that ‘she has two or three landscapes of Mosman which it is certain would stagger the Mayor and Aldermen of that suburb’ (Cashman).

 

Collections (other examples of the woodcut):

National Gallery of Australia

Art Gallery of New South Wales

National Gallery of Victoria

Mosman Art Gallery

 

Selected literature (other examples illustrated):

Brackenreg, John. The Alan Renshaw Bequest. Sydney : S. H. Ervin Museum and Art Gallery, 1979, catalogue 47 (illustrated on the front cover)

Butel, Elizabeth. Margaret Preston. Sydney : Imprint, 1995, p. 29

Butler, Roger. The prints of Margaret Preston: a catalogue raisonne. Canberra : Australian National Gallery and Melbourne : Oxford University Press, 1987, catalogue no. 113, p. 127 (illustrated)

Butler, Roger. The Prints of Margaret Preston: a catalogue raisonne. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2005, catalogue no. 113, p. 137 (illustrated).

Cashman, Katrina. Margaret Preston in Mosman. Mosman Art Gallery, 2002, exhibition catalogue, unpaginated, (illustrated).

Deutscher, Chris and Butler, Roger. A survey of Australian relief prints, 1900/1950. Melbourne : Deutscher Galleries, 1978, catalogue 28, p. 21 (illustrated)

Draffin, Nicholas. Australian woodcuts and linocuts of the 1920s and 1930s. Melbourne : Sun Books, 1976, p. 35 (illustrated)

Edwards, Deborah et al. Margaret Preston. Sydney : Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2005, pp. 82 (illustrated), 286.

Edwards, Deborah et al. Margaret Preston. Sydney : Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2016, pp. 82 (illustrated), 286.

Harkness, Andree et al. Modern Australian women artists : paintings, prints and potters, the Andrae Harkness collection. Melbourne : Museum Victoria, 2020 (illustrated on the front cover)

Mosman Art Gallery : the creative circle. Gallery brochure (illustrated on the front cover)

North, Ian. The art of Margaret Preston. Adelaide : Art Gallery Board of South Australia, 1980, plate 13, p. 53 (illustrated)