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Rupert Bunny
(Australia, France 29 Sep 1864–25 May 1947)
- Title
- A summer morning
- Other titles:
- Matinée d'été, Aprés la sieste
- Place of origin
-
Paris,
France
- Year
- (circa 1908)
- Media
- Painting
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 222.0 x 181.5cm stretcher; 246.3 x 205.7 x 13.0cm frame
- Signature & date
- Signed l.r. corner, brown oil "Rupert C W Bunny". Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased 1911
- Accession number
- 666
- Location
- 19th c Australian art
- Further information
Salon painting as a precept and as a practice had no more loyal adherent than Rupert Bunny. Born and educated in Melbourne, Bunny began a lifetime of European travel and residence in 1884. The success of his academic and essentially escapist project in Paris and London was real, complicit though it proved to be with the self-delusion of an age on the edge of war. Bunny's dedication to the good life resulted in some of the most sumptuous paintings in Australian art history, and the most admired. The artist's wife, kittenish herself, plays with a lapful of cats. Her companion accepts a basin of milk from a meaningfully shadowed maid. As upholstered in privilege as they are in their lacy day-gowns, Bunny's women are the late-picked fruit of a century whose heyday had passed. Despite his stylistic conservatism, the painter kept a finger on the pulse of taste. He responded to post-impressionism and fauvism, albeit belatedly, in a series of brilliantly coloured compositions on classical themes in the 1920s. During that decade, Bunny returned twice to Australia, settling permanently in 1933. Music, in which he had always had a parallel interest, became increasingly important to him: even so palpable a painting as A summer morning, with its plump depictions of fabric and flesh, has a musical ethereality.
Art Gallery Handbook 1999
- Bibliography (14)
-
The Weekend Australian Review (12 Dec 2009-13 Dec 2009), Michael Stutchbury (Australia, active post 2001) (Editor), News Limited (Australia), Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
Look (Nov 2009), Jill Sykes (Australia) (Editor), 10pm [print management] (Australia), Newtown, New South Wales, Australia.
The Australian art market report [first quarter] (2009), Fox Harper (Australia), Fox Harper (Australia), Paddington, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Rupert Bunny: artist in Paris (2009), Deborah Edwards (Australia) (Author), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874), Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Art Gallery of New South Wales: highlights from the collection (2008), Edmund Capon (England; Australia, b.1940) (Author), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874), Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Singing in the heart: Music and the art of Rupert Bunny (2007), Desmond Macaulay (Author), Bettina Macaulay (Author), Rockhampton Art Gallery (Australia), Queensland, Australia.
Look (Dec 2006-Jan 2007), Jill Sykes (Australia) (Editor), 10pm [print management] (Australia), Newtown, New South Wales, Australia.
Les Peintres Australiens Dans Les Salons Parisiens de 1886 a 1914 (Jun 2006), Anne Gerard-Austin (Australia) (Author), Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Parallel visions: works from the Australian collection (2002), Barry Pearce (Australia) (Author), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874), Domain, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Australian art: in the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2000), Barry Pearce (Australia) (Author), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874), Domain, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Peintres Australiens à Etaples (2000), Jean-Claude Lesage (France) (Author), Amis du Musée de la Marine (France), Etaples-sur-Mer, France.
Art Gallery of New South Wales handbook (1999), Bruce James (Australia) (Author), Edmund Capon (England; Australia, b.1940) (Director), Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia), Domain, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Rupert Bunny: An Australian in Paris (1991), Mary Eagle (Australia, b.1944) (Author), National Gallery of Australia (Australia, estab. 1982), Parkes, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
A retrospective exhibition of Australian painting (1953), Hal Missingham (Australia, b.1906, d.1994) (Author), National Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874), Domain, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
- Exhibition history (5)
-
Rupert Bunny: An Australian in Paris (1991-92), (05 Mar 1992–26 Apr 1992), at Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874), Art Gallery Rd Domain, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 2000.
Rupert Bunny: An Australian in Paris (1991-92), (09 Nov 1991–02 Feb 1992), at National Gallery of Australia (Australia, estab. 1982), Parkes Place Parkes, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia 2600.
Parallel Visions: Twenty-two artists from the Australian collection, (22 Feb 2002–May 2003), at Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874), Art Gallery Rd Domain, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 2000.
Rupert Bunny: An Australian in Paris (1991-92), (24 Jul 1991–17 Oct 1991), at National Gallery of Victoria [St Kilda Road] (Australia, estab. 1968, closed 1999), 180 St Kilda Road Melbourne Victoria Australia 3000.
A retrospective exhibition of Australian painting, (25 Sep 1953–25 Oct 1953), at Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874), Art Gallery Rd Domain, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 2000.