Lot 16

Private collection, South Australia

Australian Prints from the Gallery's Collection (1998-1999), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 6 November 1998 - 7 February 1999 (another example)
Suburb, Museum of Sydney, Sydney, 15 April – 23 July 2000 (another example)

Makin, J., McGregor. K., John Olsen Teeming with Life, Macmillan Art Publishing, Victoria, 2005, p. 12 (illus., another example)
Kolenberg, H., Australian Prints, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998, cat. no. 93, p. 112 (illus., another example)

McElhone Steps was commissioned by the Art Gallery Society of Victoria, with work by Russell Drysdale, Fred Williams, Albert Tucker and Leonard French; half the prints in an edition of 50 were pre-sold in 25 folios of five prints each. It was the first lithograph made by John Olsen after he had been shown the process by Robert Grieve in 1955.

"The McElhone Steps is a stairway that joins Woolloomooloo to Kings X where I lived at the time. It was a boisterous place where sailors, soldiers & drunks made their way for the bright lights of the Cross. The print, I think, is primitive, brassy & very intoxicated."
(The Artist)

Other examples of this print are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

© John Olsen/Copyright Agency, 2023