Title
Things on an iron tray on the floor
(circa 1928)
Artist
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Details
- Other Title
- Things on an Iron Tray
- Place where the work was made
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Turramurra
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Sydney
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New South Wales
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Australia
- Date
- (circa 1928)
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- oil on plywood
- Dimensions
- 54.0 x 69.5 cm board; 72.1 x 87.6 x 3.5 cm frame
- Signature & date
Signed l.l. corner, black ink "G Cossington Smith". Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased 1967
- Location
- South Building, ground level, 20th-century galleries
- Accession number
- OA9.1967
- Copyright
- © Estate of Grace Cossington Smith
- Artist information
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Grace Cossington Smith
Works in the collection
- Share
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About
The years from 1926 until the mid 1930s were the most important in Grace Cossington Smith's artistic life. She progressed beyond her early art training with Dattilo-Rubbo, and realised her potential as a painter of colour and light, structure and rhythmic pattern. As Thea Proctor wrote, Cossington Smith's 'lovely and individual colour sense' was achieved with paint 'applied once and not touched again … [with] a mat-dry surface, freshness and vitality'.
While this work represents domestic items in a still-life arrangement, the true subject of the painting is the interplay between colour, form and light. It presents radiating, concentric forms in luminous colour.
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Places
Where the work was made
Turramurra
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Exhibition history
Shown in 10 exhibitions
Grace Cossington Smith (1928), Grosvenor Galleries, Sydney, 23 Jul 1928–04 Aug 1928
Eighteenth annual exhibition of the Contemporary Group (1943), Blaxland Gallery, Sydney, 06 Jul 1943–16 Jul 1943
Acquisitions 1967, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 06 Mar 1968–01 Apr 1968
Australian women artists: one hundred years, 1840-1940, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 10 Oct 1975–02 Nov 1975
Favourites: Margaret Olley and Barry Humphries choose from Australian collections (2000), S.H. Ervin Gallery, The Rocks, 15 Jan 2000–27 Feb 2000
Australian icons: twenty artists from the collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 04 Aug 2000–03 Dec 2000
Grace Cossington Smith: a retrospective exhibition (2005), National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 04 Mar 2005–13 Jun 2005
Grace Cossington Smith: a retrospective exhibition (2005), Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 29 Jul 2005–09 Oct 2005
Grace Cossington Smith: a retrospective exhibition (2005), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 29 Oct 2005–15 Jan 2006
Grace Cossington Smith: a retrospective exhibition (2005), Queensland Art Gallery, South Brisbane, 11 Feb 2006–30 Apr 2006
Sydney Moderns, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 06 Jul 2013–07 Oct 2013
O'Keeffe, Preston, Cossington Smith: Making Modernism, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 12 Oct 2016–19 Feb 2017
O'Keeffe, Preston, Cossington Smith: Making Modernism, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 11 Mar 2017–11 Jun 2017
O'Keeffe, Preston, Cossington Smith: Making Modernism, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 01 Jul 2017–02 Oct 2017
20th-Century galleries, ground level (rehang), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 20 Aug 2022–2023
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Bibliography
Referenced in 12 publications
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Deborah Hart, Look, 'Grace Cossington Smith: looking bakc at a life of colour and light', pg. 28-31, Sydney, Nov 2005, 29 (colour illus.).
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Deborah Hart, Grace Cossington Smith, 'A distinctive vision', pg. 26-55, Canberra, 2005, 32, 35, 36 (colour illus.), 90.
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Bruce James, Australian painters of the twentieth century, 'Grace Cossington Smith', pg. 40-51, Sydney, 2000, 47 (colour illus.).
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Bruce James, Grace Cossington Smith, 'The new science of colour', pg. 61-77, Sydney, 1990, 72 (illus.), 75, 77. figure no. 32
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Rosemary Lloyd, Shimmering in a transformed light: writing the still life, 'Cataloguing the world', pg. 27-52, Ithaca, 2005, 30, 31 (illus.), 126. figure no. 4
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Denise Mimmocchi, Sydney moderns: art for a new world, 'Still-life as laboratory table', pg. 198-213, Sydney, 2013, 196 (colour illus., detail),198 (colour illus.), 199, 203, 315, 324.
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Margaret Olley and Barry Humphries, Favourites: Margaret Olley and Barry Humphries choose from public and private collections, Sydney, 2000. Catalogue entry appears in inserted list to printed catalogue
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Virginia Spate, Art Monthly Australia, 'Amazing Grace: Thoughts inspired by the Grace Cossington Smith exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra', pg. 22-30, Canberra, Aug 2005, 26.
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Daniel Thomas, Art Gallery of New South Wales Quarterly, 'Grace Cossington Smith', pg. 510-521, Sydney, Jan 1970, 505 (cover illus.), 506, 519.
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Daniel Thomas., Art and Australia, 'Grace Cossington Smith', Sydney, Mar 1967, 305, 308 (illus.).
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Sydney Ure Smith and Leon Gellert (Editors), Art in Australia [series 3, no. 26], Sydney, 1928, (illus.). plate no. 15; 'The Art of the Year' issue
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1967 Acquisitions, Sydney, 1967, 21. cat.no. 26
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