Auction Highlight Spring 2015 William Boissevain

Since arriving in Australia William Boissevain has established a reputation as a leading painter of still life, landscape and figurative works. He has ranked in the top 25 traded Australian artists at auction for the past 15 years and is one of the few Australian painters that sells his artwork into every state in Australia.

Lot 10 William Boissevain - Northern Landscape
Lot 10 William Boissevain – Northern Landscape

The son of a career diplomat, Boissevain visited his mother in Perth in 1947 and decided to stay. The gentle and uncomplicated lifestyle that Western Australia offered compared most favourably to the frantic post war years of France and Greece, where he had spent the post war years broadening his experiences. The war years had been spent in England studying at Bedales School in Hampshire.

 

Lot 25 William Boissevain - Seated Nude
Lot 25 William Boissevain – Seated Nude

Boissevain was one of the first Western Australian painters to be able to live from the sales of his paintings, his style struck a chord with the art buying public that has remained just as strong today some six decades later.

 

Portraits, landscape, still life and wildlife, he is at ease with any of those subjects. His draughtsmanship is the envy of many and his sense of design is impeccable. Boissevain’s audience spans two generations and is marching steadfastly into the third.

 

His works are represented in, the Art Gallery of Western Australia; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; HRH Prince of Wales Collection; the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; the University of Western Australia; Murdoch University; Curtin University and numerous other institutional and corporate collections.

Auction Highlight Spring 2015 Nola Farman

Lot 5 Nola Farman - Mainly Forwards 1985
Lot 5 Nola Farman – Mainly Forwards 1985

Though she lives and works in Sydney, Nola Farman has strong ties to Western Australia. She was born in Subiaco and studied at Perth Technical College before travelling overseas where she studied at Canada’s OCAD University. She became an OACA (Associate of the Ontario College of the Arts) before returning to Australia to complete her doctorate at the University of Western Sydney.

As an interdisciplinary artist Farman works across a variety of different media from painting, drawing and sculpture to both static and sound installations. She is also involved in book making and publishing and is one of those devoted individuals more interested in making art in all its’ different forms than applying herself to commercial popularity.
Her work is represented in the collections of the Art Gallery of WA, the Art Gallery of NSW, the National Gallery of Australia (library), the University of Western Australia, Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, MOMA (library) New York, Yale University (library), the Tate Gallery (library), Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris and numerous collections both public and private across the world.

Some of the major projects she has completed include The Life of Claisebrook in East Perth, The Subterranean Listening Device in Mundaring, The Tidal Indicator in Brisbane, The Wind Tree at Griffith University Queensland, The Ice Tower at Flinder’s University and The Cascade in Singapore.

During a brief communication with the artist (to determine the authenticity of this work) she admitted to being rather careless about signing her works and failing to keep accurate records.

Nola Farman is another of those important Western Australian artists that has not required a high profile. Her works are rare.