PASSMORE, JOHN (1904-1984)

Name: PASSMORE, JOHN (1904-1984)
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**ON HOLD - EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST**

"Self Portrait" (1951)

oil on board

45.5 x 35.5cm

*John Passmore Retrospective, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, National Gallery of Victoria, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, 1984-85

*John Passmore Trust

*Wrobel Collection

Passmore was an influential Australian Post-War Painter. He studied with Julian Ashton in Sydney between the ages of fourteen & twenty-nine, & took some instruction from George Lambert. Between 1933 and 1950 he eked out an existence overseas. In London he was a short-term roommate & muse of Sir William Dobell. On his return to Australia he continued to seek his personal idiom, evolving from Cezanne-like forms & use of colour to his own palette, characteristic motifs, & interpretation of his Sydney surroundings. He won the Helena Rubinstein Travelling Scholarship in 1959. Alongside his 'difficult' paintings, over the course of his career Passmore produced a series of drawings that critic Alan McCulloch describes as 'among the most remarkable series of graphic documents produced by any of his generation of Australian painters.' John McDonald claims Passmore is an artist as much identified with Sydney as Brett Whiteley. A model for the artist protagonist in Patrick White's The Vivisector, Passmore spent his last weeks in a Redfern home for destitute old men. A major retrospective of his work was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1984, and he was one of the twenty artists - including Dobell, Drysdale, Nolan - featured in the Gallery's 2000 exhibition Australian Icons. The John Passmore Museum, with a rotating display of the 270 works the artist bequeathed to his friend, art collector Elinor Wrobel, opened in a heritage-listed building in Woolloomooloo in 2003.

This impressive self portrait was completely shortly after Passmore's return to Australia in 1951, when he began teaching at the Julian Ashton Art School. The work reflects the influence of Van Gogh's Nuenen period work, in particular "Woman Sewing" (1885). It was exhibited at the AGNSW as part of the "John Passmore Retrospective", touring to the Tasmanian Museum, NGV & Newcastle Art Gallery. It comes from the esteemed Wrobel Collection via the Passmore Trust!!