PROVENANCE Private Collection, Bay of Plenty

EXHIBITED Portrait in the Looking Glass: The World of Jacqueline Fahey. A survey of paintings 1957- 1995, curated by Tim Renner for the Fisher Gallery, Pakuranga, 26 April - 26 May 1996

ILLUSTRATED Elizabeth Eastmond, Jacqueline Fahey: Artist and Self-Image, Art New Zealand, 42

Showing Fahey in dark glasses and wearing a straw sun hat tied on with a maroon scarf, this expressionist self- portrait is unique in her oeuvre. It is based on a photograph of the artist sitting on the grass in the garden of her home at Porirua flanked by her two young daughters Augusta (born 1959) and Alexandra (born 1961). The painting shows the artist looking (in her own words) a bit inscrutable. She had just returned to Wellington with her family after living in Australia for a year or so, and Fahey's husband, Fraser McDonald, would spend three years at Porirua Mental Hospital before moving to Kingseat in Auckland.

Its loose gestural brushwork and abbreviated landscape background shows the influence of Australian painters such as Arthur Boyd and Sidney Nolan whose works she had encountered in Melbourne. She showed her Australian paintings at the Centre Gallery, Wellington in 1963, before curating a group exhibition with Rita Angus which included equal numbers of male and female artists. The exhibition, which included Fahey's own work, toured to Auckland in 1965.

Linda Tyler

WORKS FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION BAY OF PLENTY LOTS 35 - 43