Lot 42

Rosalind Humphries Galleries, Melbourne 1971 (label verso)
Private collection, Melbourne

Homage to Clarice Beckett - Idylls of Melbourne and Beaumaris, Rosalind Humphries Galleries, Melbourne, 30 October - 20 November 1971, cat. no. 7 as 'Collins Street'
On the Road: the Car in Australian Art, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne 1999; titled 'Lansdowne Street', c.1926-27

Time has been Clarice Beckett's friend both in terms of her art and her reputation. Largely overlooked during her lifetime, her posthumous recognition as one of Australia's leading modernists has now far surpassed her initial cool reception at the hands of critics. Beckett's interest in the everyday features of modern life were long captured through the poetic and ephemeral half-light of dusk and dawn or the soft darkness of the evening light.
To great effect, Beckett employs a rose-gold ambient light in City Street, Melbourne c.1925 to reveal the dual realities of her hometown where cars share the road with a horse-led delivery cart and a pedestrian in transit - not an uncommon sight, but perhaps also the artist's subtle signifier of transition as Melbourne transforms itself into the metropolis we know it as today.