Lot 36

Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane (label verso)
Private collection, Melbourne

RELATED WORK:
Margaret Olley, The Lands Office (Cnr Bent and Loftus) 1967, ink and watercolour on paper, 60 x 42cm, the collection of the Tweed Regional Gallery, New South Wales, gift of the Margaret Olley Trust 2014.

Although Margaret Olley is best remembered for her still life paintings and interiors, landscapes and street scenes formed an important part of her earlier practice. She drew constantly, filling sketchbooks with observations of the world around her. 'The Lands Office, Sydney (Cnr Bent and Loftus)', painted in 1962, belongs to this lesser known but important aspect of her work.

Looking along Loftus Street towards Bent Street, the composition is dominated by the distinctive clock tower of Sydney's Lands Department building. From an elevated viewpoint, Olley captures the surrounding city in fine lines of ink and washes of watercolour. Buildings crowd the skyline, while palm trees and small figures animate the streets below. With only a few lines and passages of colour, Olley could capture the character and atmosphere of a place.

This work is also a fascinating record of Sydney in 1962. While the Lands Department building remains, much of the surrounding streetscape has since been transformed or lost to redevelopment. Olley's drawings preserve many such views of Sydney, recording streets, houses and buildings that have since disappeared. In doing so, they capture parts of the city as Olley knew them.

For Olley, 1962 was a particularly significant year. She won both the Helena Rubinstein Portrait Prize and the Redcliffe Art Prize, while her sales at her 1962 exhibition at the Johnstone Gallery reached £3,000 doubling the record set for an Australian woman artist. (1) Together, these achievements brought considerable attention and further established her reputation as an artist.

It was also around this time that Sydney began to take on greater importance in Olley's life. In 1962, her close friend and fellow artist David Strachan purchased a house in Paddington, where Olley often stayed. Paddington was becoming a centre for artists and writers, and while staying with Strachan, Olley made numerous drawings of the surrounding streets. She soon established a home of her own in Paddington, before purchasing 48 Duxford Street in 1964, the house and studio that would become so closely associated with her life and work.

Olley returned to the view of the Lands Department several years later, creating another version in 1967. The work remained in her collection and was later badly damaged by the devastating fire at the Olley family home, Farndon, in Brisbane in 1980. The fire destroyed many of Olley's paintings and drawings, together with photographs, family possessions and objects collected during her travels. Remarkably, the damaged 1967 'The Lands Office, Sydney (Cnr Bent and Loftus)' survived and was later gifted by the Margaret Olley Trust to the Tweed Regional Gallery in 2014.

Painted at an important moment in Olley's career, 'The Lands Office, Sydney (Cnr Bent and Loftus)' captures a Sydney that was already beginning to change. Created as Olley was increasingly making the city her home, it preserves in ink and watercolour a view that is now part of Sydney's history.

Hannah Ryan
Senior Art Specialist

(1) France, C., Margaret Olley, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1990, p. 43

© Courtesy of The Margaret Olley Art Trust & Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane, 2026