KANE, ALESSIE GRAHAM (1892-1981)

“Still Life With Peaches” (1926)
Oil on composition board
39.5 x 43.5cm
Signed lower right
*exhibited at Royal Art Society Exhibition, Sydney, 1926
*special mention in The Daily Telegraph, Nov 1926
*private collection, Sydney
 
Kane is a forgotten Australian Modernist. Raised in Tenterfield on the NSW border to Irish parents, Kane exhibited regularly and to great acclaim at the Royal Art Society from the early 1920s to the late 1940s, exhibiting alongside the likes of Sydney Long, Albert Henry Fullwood, Hans Heysen & Arthur Streeton to name a few. She mainly specialised in still lifes, and this wonderful piece was exhibited at the 47th annual Royal Art Society exhibition in Sydney in 1926 (No.15). James MacNally of the Daily Telegraph described this work as "one of the most delightful still life studies I have seen for a long time" (23rd Nov. 1926). Kane's obituary reads as 'spinster', meaning she never married. Her work was admired particularly by renown collector, Howard Hinton, who donated several similar still lifes to the New England Regional Art Museum.