Beschreibung:

WILLIAM DELAFIELD COOK (1936-2015) A Hedge 1974 synthetic polymer paint on canvas signed, dated and inscribed verso: W Delafield Cook/ Berlin 1974 82.5 x 199.5cm PROVENANCE: The National Australia Bank Art Collection EXHIBITIONS: The Seventies: Australian Paintings and Tapestries From the Collection of National Australia Bank, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 15 October - 28 November 1982 The Seventies: A Selection of Australian Paintings and Tapestries From the Collection of National Australia Bank, Waverly City Gallery, Melbourne, 21 February - 13 March 1986, cat. no. 12 LITERATURE: Lindsay, R. (ed.), The Seventies: Australian Paintings and Tapestries From the Collection of National Australia Bank, The National Bank of Australasia, Melbourne, 1982, p. 38 (illus.) Hart, D. William Delafield Cook Craftsman House in association with G+B Arts International, 1998, p. 105 (illus.) "This painting contrasts with his earlier images of hedges and topiaries in formal garden settings. It reveals the shift...in the close-up concentration on a particular aspect of nature, removed from the surrounding context, and in the intricate handling of multiple, densely interwoven components - in this case of the coppery-coloured leaves" (excerpt, p.105) OTHER NOTES: For most Australians, William Delafield Cook seemed to materialise fully-formed onto the local art scene - from nothing to the top of the tree overnight. The reasons for this were understandable, for his first exhibitions were held at the Redfern Gallery in London, a privilege earned after a decade teaching in English art schools and spending many hours contemplating the works in the great galleries of Europe. Born in the Melbourne suburb of Caulfield, he trained at the nearby Caulfield Technical College and then at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He left Australia in 1958 at the age of just 22, like many of his peers going 'OS' to broaden his horizons but, unlike most, he stayed on, making London his home base for the next 50 years. Like Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd before him, he spent the greater part of his working life resident in the United Kingdom, and like them he is always considered an 'Australian artist'. After working through various forms of abstraction, Delafield Cook moved to a form of realism based wholly on photography. Australian art lovers had been shocked into the present, or at least the immediate past, when the NGV mounted the massive exhibition Two Decades of American Painting in 1967, which featured amongst the dominant abstract expressionists the huge photorealist paintings of James Rosenquist creations based on the illustrations from popular magazines. While accurate realism had long been an aspiration among conservative artists, the idea of 'painting a photograph' was something entirely different. While many artists had freely incorporated photographic reference, it was only ever intended as a means to an end, not an end in itself. What William Delafield Cook took from the American pop artists was not the subject matter, but the obvious reliance on the photographic image and the cinematic scale. That he would rely on photographs was a given - he was after all painting the Australian landscape in the confines of his studio in Putney, half a world away. When his works did arrive in Australia, collectors and galleries alike were mesmerised by his strangely still and meticulously rendered paintings of haystacks and roadside vistas. We are all used to holding a postcard sized photograph and taking in the captured moments of family and friends, holiday snaps and foreign parts. What we see in that concentrated moment takes on a wholly different meaning when rendered on a huge scale, but with the same detail. Delafield Cook's paintings, when seen from a distance, appear as huge 'enlargements', like projections from a cinema or a photographic installation. But when approached, the details remain, rather than blurring out as would happen with a