TRINDALL, GORDON LYALL (1886-1965)

"Icarus" (c.1940)
oil on board
62 x 67cm
signed lower left
*private collection, Sydney
 
Trindall was a leading, forgotten, influential Australian Genre Painter & Portraitist.
He studied at the J.S Watkins School in Sydney, and won the one and only Fairfax Prize in 1914. By the 1940s he was widely known for his portraits and nudes, which commanded extraordinarily high prices. In 1943 he set a price of 800 guineas for his life-sized nude representation of Dawn; this was a record high asked by an Australian artist in a local exhibition. Trindall stated that while modern art may be good, he himself could not make a living at it. Instead, his aim was to paint what the public wanted; 'sincerity', he said, 'is my guiding principle'. He was a member of the Manly Art Society and a stalwart of the Royal Art Society. From 1923 to 1955, Trindall had 47 works hung in the Archibald Prize, including six portraits of his second wife Florence McDonald. His painting Aphrodite was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1928. This dynamic oil painting, inspired by Greek mythology, is a theme Trindall returned to regularly throughout the 1930s. At the Royal Art Society Annual Exhibition in 1937, he exhibited the similar "Eros" (image 3), which sold for an astounding 750 guineas (today $80k), far more than any other work at the exhibition, to the shock of nationwide media!!