Lot 46

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The National Australia Bank Art Collection

Over the course of his painting career, Hugh Sawrey produced numerous works representing the Australian outback. Many reflected his own experiences as a labourer on sheep and cattle properties throughout western Queensland up until the late 1950s when he became a full time artist. By that time he was in his early 40s, a very late start in an industry which often favours its creative talent young and freshly minted from art school. But what Sawrey lacked in academic youthfulness, he made up for in direct experience of some of his most recognisable subject matter; the isolated lives of mid 20th century rural communities.

The NAB Art Collection features several of these classic Hugh Sawrey paintings including;
Getting the Sale Sheep Ready, Tilbooroo Station, West Queensland (lot 44), Along the Paroo River, West Queensland (lot 45) and A Confidential Moment in the Bar of the Cattle Camp Hotel, Charleville, Queensland (lot 46). The first two depict aspects of the sheep industry and are superb examples of Hugh Sawrey landscapes, displaying his mastery of the essential elements of his oeuvre; including station horses, river gums, out-buildings and mobs of sheep among the dust and atmosphere of working toil. Produced in the early 1980s, these large works demonstrate the refinement of an artist at the height of his career with a sharp attention to detail that states emphatically: 'I saw this.'

By comparison, A Confidential Moment in the Bar of the Cattle Camp Hotel stands in stark contrast. Not just because it is an interior setting but also due to the rough painterly treatment he has employed across the entire surface. Pub scenes were yet another facet of his depiction of rural life and he painted them regularly. In many cases his pub pictures were as intricate as his droving scenes, filled with subtle details from pictures hanging on the walls to objects behind the bar or the particular tilt of a patrons hat: something imitators would invariably miss or interpret incorrectly.

At 32 x 56 inches (82.5 x 143cm), A Confidential Moment is a large work executed on board. But in this instance, when presented with such a broad expanse of 'acreage' Sawrey eschewed detail for gesture. Part of the reason may have been his mood at the time, but then, painting on board, with none of the give of canvas, always gave him an opportunity to work in a far more aggressive manner. It is an approach recalling the earliest days of his professional career and influence of expressionist painter Jon Molvig. Interestingly enough, however, the equine study in the background (a Sawrey within a Sawrey) is well defined. It clearly brackets the two central characters in the narrative and from this interaction we can guess the nature of 'a confidential moment' referred to in his enigmatic title.

When Sawrey was still droving and shearing on stations around Charleville as a young man, pubs such as the Cattle Camp Hotel were often one of only a few places to go after knock off. Like Sawrey himself at the time, many of the clientele were itinerant workers and the local watering hole, a fixed abode in their transient existence, was also able to facilitate one of their favourite recreational activities - gambling. While we can never know for sure, there is a very high probability that the publican here is letting his listeners in on a hot horse racing tip.

Every person in the room is linked to this single conversation, including the hookey players, indicated by the pair of beer glasses reserving the stool in the centre of the composition. Each facial expression, signified with a few quick dabs of raw umber, brings us back to the intrigue beneath the enamel light shade: a key prop in every Hugh Sawrey pub scene. Around this cluster, expressionistic marks are given free rein. The foreground is a jagged tangle of shadows, ceiling beams are little more than wipes with a dry brush, free-floating red and blue slashes of paint hold the roof on. Bracketing figures left and right are sketched in, transparent and ghost like.

It is a rough painting, featuring rough characters in a rough isolated environment. Sawrey could do sentimental or precise when the situation called for it. But he could be equally coarse and unflinching. In fact his ability to dispense with painterly niceties at will is precisely what prevents a traditional pub painting such as this from falling into cliché and parody. As our eyes circumnavigate the work, leaping from one brush stroke to another, we forget matters concerning correct anatomy, perspective or delicate modelling. Instead, we find ourselves drawn into the atmosphere of a long ago day, the smell of tinned tobacco and hops, and the whiff of intrigue surrounding a confidential moment in the bar of the Cattle Camp Hotel.

Anthony Sawrey