Provenance :

Private Collection, Victoria

Exhibited :

Felix Kelly: Recent Paintings of Thailand, 1-19 October 1974 Arthur Tooth & Sons Ltd, 31 Bruton Street, London, label affixed verso

Illustrated :

Front cover: Felix Kelly: Recent Paintings of Thailand, 1-19 October 1974 with essay Traveller in an Antique Land by Robert Harling

Reference :

p. 279 Fix - The Art and Life of Felix Kelly, Donald Bassett Darrow Press 2006 The life of expatriate artist Felix Kelly is as intriguing as his work. Born in Epsom, Auckland he attended Kings College but left New Zealand aged twenty one years for the bright lights of London. Befriended and patronised by many leading society figures of the day, Kelly exhibited alongside Lucien Freud, Julian Trevelyan and on one occasion Frances Hodgkins. A life of glamour and creativity ensued. Kelly painted the famous Garden Room Murals at Castle Howard, where the ITV series Brideshead Revisited was filmed, designed theatre sets for Sir John Gielgud and Dame Sybil Thorndike and illustrated magazines such as Harper's Bazaar. Kelly's distinctive work, rarely seen at auction, is held in British and American collections, Te Papa and Hawke's Bay Museum and Art Gallery. A major retrospective was held in 2010 at Hawke's Bay Museum and Art Gallery, curated by Douglas Lloyd Jenkins. The exhibition was later shown in Auckland's Gus Fisher Gallery. Temple on the Island was chosen as the front cover piece for the 1974 Arthur Tooth & Sons exhibition, Felix Kelly: Recent Paintings of Thailand