WAKELIN, Roland Shakespear
In the Park, St Cloud 1923

oil on board
signed and dated lower right
36 x 44.5  cm

Comments; inscribed verso "sold to Mrs H. R. Atchison". Provenance: Macquarie Galleries, Exhibition of Roland Wakelin, 1925, no. 23, In the Park, St Cloud, 8gns; Mrs H. R. Atchison; Macquarie Galleries, c1970 (gallery label verso); private collection. Comments: Roland Wakelin's early career is marked by a series of extraordinary phases, his "student" work which resulted in The Fruit Seller of Farm Cove, 1915 (now in the National Gallery of Australia) and Down the Hills to Berry"s Bay, 1916 (now in the Art Gallery of NSW) followed by his famous "colour in music" experiments with Roy de Maistre in 1918-19 (the focus of an exhibition to be held late in 2008 at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery in Sydney), his "tonalist" period in London produced in the few years after 1920 and his work in France c1923. Only a few of the French works survive. But it seems clear from this painting and other examples, such as In the Luxembourg Gardens in the Art Gallery of NSW, that Wakelin experienced a remarkable creative freedom at this time. We believe that In the Park, St Cloud is a classic example in terms of paintings produced by Australian Modernist artists. (St Cloud, 9 km west of the centre of Paris, is a famous French estate. Though it has lost its chateau - burnt down in 1870 - and other features, enough survives to display the character of the great gardens).

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