Title
Bay Road, smoke haze/Bay Road foggy morning
circa 1932
Artist
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Details
- Date
- circa 1932
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- oil on board
- Dimensions
- 29.0 x 37.0 cm; 43.5 x 51.5 x 5.0cm frame
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased with support of the Art Gallery Society of New South Wales through the Elizabeth Fyffe Bequest 2022
- Location
- South Building, ground level, 20th-century galleries
- Accession number
- 256.2022
- Copyright
- Artist information
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Clarice Beckett
Works in the collection
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About
'Bay Road, Smoke Haze/Bay Road Foggy Morning' reveals Clarice Beckett’s visual poetry of unregarded things; telegraph poles, a rickety, leaning fence, the bend of a suburban road. With her days spent caring for elderly parents, Beckett found artistic freedom in solitary moments of the early morning and evening. She sought Whistlerian atmopsherics of mists, dawns, rainfall and twilight to create soft and soulful portraits of her modern age.
Like Grace Cossington Smith (a modernist painter of a very different kind) the telegraph poles of Beckett’s paintings became a signature marker of her contemporary world. They have here a solitary, haunting presence, the rhythmic signifiers of energy that receed into mists. The most inventive of Melbourne’s tonalist painters, Beckett’s 'Bay Road, Smoke Haze/Bay Road Foggy Morning' demonstrates the power of her minimal palette and mark-making that she used to summon the sensory experiences of the outdoors.
Here, the expanse of grey palette cloaks the world in morning mists, or perhaps the hazed danger of nearby fire (the artist’s title for this work remains unresolved). It was in painting elusive forms of her everyday that Beckett sought meanings of greater, eternal truths.
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Exhibition history
Shown in 2 exhibitions
Clarice Beckett: Politically Incorrect, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Parkville, 05 Feb 1999–28 Mar 1999
Clarice Beckett: Politically Incorrect, S.H. Ervin Gallery, The Rocks, 24 Apr 1999–13 Jun 1999
Clarice Beckett: Politically Incorrect, Orange Regional Gallery, Orange, 19 Jun 1999–18 Jul 1999
Clarice Beckett: Politically Incorrect, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 08 Aug 1999–19 Sep 1999
Clarice Beckett: Politically Incorrect, Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria, 30 Sep 1999–31 Oct 1999
Clarice Beckett: Politically Incorrect, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat, 05 Nov 1999–16 Jan 2000
Clarice Beckett: Politically Incorrect, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, 03 Feb 2000–26 Mar 2000
Clarice Beckett: Politically Incorrect, Burnie Regional Art Gallery, Australia, 07 Apr 2000–22 May 2000
Clarice Beckett - Atmosphere, Geelong Gallery, Geelong, 01 Apr 2023–09 Jul 2023
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Bibliography
Referenced in 2 publications
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Rosalind Hollinrake, Clarice Beckett: Politically incorrect, 'Politically incorrect: Clarice Beckett', pg. 7-30, Melbourne, 1999, 26, 66 (colour illus.), 76. plate 36, cat.no. 62
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Denise Mimmocchi, Clarice Beckett - Atmosphere, 'Evening, St Kilda Road & Bay Road, smoke haze', pg. 45-49, Geelong, 2023, 45-49, 47 (colour illus.), 79 (colour illus.). cat.no. 55
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