The Noel & Margaret Dick Art Collection Wednesday, 12 June 2019 - 6:00 PM start

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Mountford Tosswill Woollaston - The dead Christ after Bellini

Realised: $95,000 plus premium

Lot Details

Mountford Tosswill (Toss) Woollaston (1910-98) The dead Christ after Bellini (set in Lyttelton Harbour) oil on board signed and dated 'Woollaston '58' (lower right); Webb's paper label to reverse 57.5 x 46cm Provenance Collection of M B O'Reilly ex CSA One Man Show, early 1960s Sale, Webb's, Auckland, 27 November 1986 (lot 181) Exhibited Toss Woollaston: A Retrospective, National Art Gallery Touring Exhibition 1991, cat no. 35. (original paper label to reverse) Literature Gerald Barnett, Toss Woollaston: An Illustrated Biography (National Art Gallery 1991) p. 66 (illus) The dead Christ after Bellini is perhaps the first 'copy' Woollaston painted from a reproduction. Based on Giovanni Bellini's The dead Christ raised from the tomb by two angels (date unknown) it is unique amongst his work in its religious subject matter, although Woollaston chose the image for painterly rather than iconographic reasons. Similarly, his placement of the figure in Lyttelton Harbour has no didactic intent, unlike McCahon's religious paintings of 1946-52'. Barnett p. 66.