Title
Cultivation paddocks on Mt Emlyn
(circa 1953)
Artist
-
Details
- Date
- (circa 1953)
- Media category
- Watercolour
- Materials used
- pencil, watercolour on white watercolour paper
- Dimensions
- 31.3 x 40.6 cm sheet; 58.0 x 65.5 x 2.0 cm frame
- Signature & date
Signed l.r. corner, grey watercolour "KENNETH MACQUEEN". Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased 1953
- Location
- 20th-century galleries (ground floor)
- Accession number
- 8726
- Copyright
- © Estate of Kenneth Macqueen
- Artist information
-
Kenneth Macqueen
Works in the collection
- Share
-
-
About
'I try in my work to express the joy of living ... All my life I have experienced thrills of happiness on noting the sweep and colour of a hill, the curve of a wave, the dazzling whiteness of clouds ... the thousand and one arrangements and colour nuances which the eye registers as its surveys the daily scene.'
– Kenneth Macqueen, 1948Kenneth Macqueen’s work celebrates the undulations of the Darling Downs landscape and the coastal regions of Moreton Bay in south-eastern Queensland, where he settled to farm the land in 1922. A modernist in temperament and outlook, his simplified forms were rendered with an emphasis on design and rhythm, and were celebrated for their lyrical and decorative qualities. Exclusively a watercolourist, Macqueen applied the transparent pigments of his medium with great skill to emphasise sunlight and shadow in response to the underlying shapes and patterns of nature and the sunny Queensland climate.
-
Exhibition history
Shown in 5 exhibitions
Third Annual Australian Arts and crafts exhibition (1964), Glenbrook School of Arts, Glenbrook, 17 Apr 1964–18 Apr 1964
Two hundred years of Australian painting : Nature, people and art in the southern continent, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Japan, 28 Apr 1992–28 Jun 1992
Two hundred years of Australian painting : Nature, people and art in the southern continent, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Kyoto, 14 Jul 1992–06 Sep 1992
Australian watercolours 1880s to 1990s, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 18 Nov 1995–14 Jan 1996
Australian watercolours 1880s to 1990s, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat, 1996–1996
Australian watercolours 1880s to 1990s, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, 1996–1996
Kenneth Macqueen retrospective, Queensland Art Gallery, South Brisbane, 01 Nov 2007–05 May 2008
20th-Century galleries Rehang (Ground Level), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 20 Aug 2022–2023
-
Bibliography
Referenced in 5 publications
-
Glenbrook School of Arts, Third Annual Australian Arts and crafts exhibition (1964), Blue Mountains, 1964. no catalogue numbers
-
Hendrik Kolenberg, Australian watercolours 1880s to 1990s, 'Introduction: Painting in watercolour', pg. 8-16, Sydney, 1995, 12, 66 (colour illus.), 120-121. cat.no. 55
-
Hendrik Kolenberg, Twentieth century Australian watercolours from the collection, Sydney, 1989. cat.no. 52
-
Samantha Littley, Making it modern: the watercolours of Kenneth Macqueen, Brisbane, 2007, 148. List of works.
-
Barry Pearce and Haruo Arikawa, Two hundred years of Australian painting: nature, people and art in the southern continent, Tokyo, 1992, 162 (colour illus.). cat.no. 105
-
