Six months ago, Ben Quilty tried to hang his Archibald Prize-winning portrait of Margaret Olley on his kitchen wall, but it was making for some awkward conversations.
“I wanted it back, just to feel her back in our house,” the painter said.
“But every time people walked in it was very awkward having to talk about the painting again.
“It felt very egotistical.”
The portrait won Australia’s most famous art prize in 2011 and was on long-term loan to the Art Gallery of New South Wales until Quilty had the idea to bring it to his house in the Southern Highlands, south of Sydney.
Margaret Olley as captured by Ben Quilty for his 2011 Archibald Prize-winning entry.
“Friends suggested I should sell it,” he said.
“It needs to be on a wall, you know. People want to see it.”
Now the famous artwork is destined to return to the area where Margaret Olley spent her formative years, in the lush Tweed Valley in northern New South Wales.
Tweed Regional Gallery has already raised two-thirds of the $600,000 asking price of the painting through philanthropic donations.
The picture will be hung in the gallery, which houses the Margaret Olley Art Centre — a re-creation of Olley’s Sydney home and studio up until her death in 2011 at the age of 88.
Gallery gets excited
Gallery director Ingrid Hedgcock said her team was excited to be launching its public acquisition appeal to cover the remaining $200,000.
“It’s such an iconic portrait and it really captures Margaret at the end of her enduring career and her remarkable life,” she said.
“Her skin in the painting is actually just the raw canvas, so you are getting the shadows and colouring with these beautiful, gestural swathes of paint in Quilty’s glorious style.
“I’ve always thought of the re-creation of Margaret Olley’s home studio as the ultimate portrait, the metaphorical portrait, and this is the ultimate [actual] portrait … so it’s a really lovely outcome.”
Ben Quilty and Margaret Olley fielding questions after the 2011 Archibald Prize announcement.
‘Awkward’ price tag
Quilty’s portrait was the second rendering of the art matriarch’s likeness for the Archibald Prize.
Olley was painted in 1948, when she was just 25, by William Dobell.
She was also painted throughout her life by other artist friends including Jeffrey Smart, Nicholas Harding, and Russell Drysdale.
Quilty said although he felt “awkward” about the price tag, he was happy the public would be invested in the painting’s return to the Tweed.
“It was a very personal painting and Margaret became such a huge supporter of mine and other artists,” he said.
“I will be coming up to do lots of public programs and get involved as well.”
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