Lot 89

Private collection, Melbourne
Thence by descent

Project 39 - Women's Imprint 1982, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1 - 31 October 1982 (another example)
Spirit and Place: Art in Australia 1861-1996, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 21 November 1996 - 31 March 1997 (another example)
Australian Prints from the Gallery's Collection 1998-1999, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 6 November 1998 - 7 February 1999 (another example)

Deutscher, C., and Butler, R., A Survey of Australian Relief Prints 1900-1950, Deutscher Galleries, Melbourne,1978, cat. no. 38-39, pp. 24-25 (illus., another example)
Mellick, R., and Waterlow, N., Spirit and Place: Art in Australia 1861-1996, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 1996, pp. 132-133, 151 (illus., another example)
Grant, K., In Relief: Australian Wood Engravings, Woodcuts and Linocuts, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1997, p. 34 (illus., another example)
Kolenberg, H., and Ryan, A., Australian Prints from the Gallery's Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1998, cat. no. 63, pp. 74-75 (illus., another example)

Other examples of this portfolio are held in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Castlemaine Art Museum, Victoria; National Library of Australia, Canberra; and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

"The production of 'The Great Breath' was entirely undertaken by Waller; all aspects from the cutting and printing of the linoblocks to the manufacture of the distinctive gold-painted emerald green cover was done by hand. She printed the blocks on her 1849 hand-press in her studio at Ivanhoe, each book taking about four days to make, hand-bound with green cord. Although it was intended to produce an edition of 150, it seems only about 30 were made, with some unbound impressions extant, usually untrimmed. Each consisted of a title page, colophon, contents page and seven linocut designs. The images were printed in solid black on white translucent tracing paper, trimmed and tipped onto the cream pages. The books were not numbered sequentially, but rather in relation to the numerology of the buyer."
(Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney)