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Douglas Stewart Fine Books

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Studio portrait of Elizabeth Smith (Spicer)

Studio portrait of Elizabeth Smith (Spicer), wife of Sir Edwin Smith, businessman, mayor and politician. Adelaide, South Australia, circa 1883.

GEORGE & WALTON Albumen print photograph, cabinet card format, 166 x 113 mm (mount); recto of mount with gilt imprint of 'George & Walton, late Tuttle & Co., 65, Rundle Street, Adelaide'; verso with identifying caption in pencil in a later hand (copies from an album mount) 'Elizabeth Smith née Spicer'; a superb print in fine condition, as is the mount. Elizabeth Spicer (1846-1911) was born in Adelaide,the daughter ofEdward SpicerandElizabeth Hoskin. She married wealthy brewer and councillor Edwin Thomas Smith in Adelaide on 11 November 1869. (Smith received a knighthood in 1888, several years after this portrait of Elizabeth was taken at the newly established studio of George & Walton around 1883). The following obituary for Elizabeth was publishedin The Register (Adelaide), 7 June 1911: 'We regret to have to announce the death of Lady Smith, wife of Sir Edwin Smith, which occurred at The Acacias at 7 o'clock on Tuesday evening. The deceased was the second daughter of the late Mr. Edward Spicer, a well-known merchant, and was married to Mr. E. T. Smith, who was then a widower, in 1869. She took a prominent part in the public life of her husband, and was five times each Mayoress of Adelaide and of Kensington and Norwood. Lady Smith was an ideal hostess, and hundreds of citizens have enjoyed the hospitality of Sir Edwin and his wife in their charming home at Marryatville. In later times, with advancing years, they had lived a more retired life, especially since a carriage accident in King William street early In 1909, which caused such a shock to Lady Smith's system that she never completely recovered. She had one child, who died in infancy.'
  • $81
[ANGRY PENGUINS] Phoenix : 1935-1950 (complete set)

[ANGRY PENGUINS] Phoenix : 1935-1950 (complete set)

[D.B. KERR; MAX HARRIS; PAUL PFEIFFER; DORRIT BLACK, et al] [The annual literary journal of the University of Adelaide]. Adelaide : Adelaide University Union, 1935-1948 and Adelaide University Students' Representative Counci, 1949-1950. Octavo, illustrated card wrappers (a couple marked and edges chipped). A very good complete set of Phoenix including the five significant pre-war issues of this journal, the precursor to the Angry Penguins magazine. Scarce. The 1935 issue features illustrations by Rex Wood and John Dowie, and written works which are anonymous or only identified by the author's initials; the 1936 issue features illustrations by John Dowie and written works by Rex Ingamells, Margaret McKellar Stewart and Clement Semmler; the 1937 issue features illustrations by John Dowie, photographs by Alan Pilgrim, and written works by Rex Ingamells, Charles Jury, Clement Semmler and Margaret McKellar Stewart; the 1938 issue features written works by D.B. Kerr and Rex Ingamells; the 1939 issue was edited by D.B. Kerr and features a reproduced linocut by Dorrit Black and written works by Max Harris, Paul Pfeiffer, D.B. Kerr and Charles Jury. The stridently modernist and hugely influential Angry Penguins group emerged from the Adelaide literary scene of the late 1930s. Its key early figures were the poets Max Harris, D.B. Kerr, Paul Pfeiffer and Geoffrey Dutton. The editorship and contents of the journal Phoenix were dominated by these and numerous other like-minded anti-conservative writers and artists for five years up until 1939. The journal was the mouthpiece for a loosely knit group of radical, avant-garde and talented Adelaide students. These issues of Phoenix spanning the period 1935-39 are in a real sense the precursors of the Angry Penguins magazine, which was founded in Adelaide in 1940 as a reaction to the University of Adelaide's ruling to cease publication of Phoenix due to its subversive nature. The first joint editors of the Angry Penguins magazine were Max Harris and D.B. Kerr. (Both Kerr and fellow student Pfeiffer were precociously gifted poets who died tragically young in the Second World War). When the Angry Penguins magazine moved to Melbourne under Max Harris' editorship, the movement was to attract its four most celebrated artists: John Perceval, Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan and Albert Tucker. The five pre-war issues represent the germination of arguably the most fertile period in Australian literature and art, with the post-war issues completing the set.
  • $642
Printed: images in colonial Australia 1801 - 1901 [with] Printed: images by Australian artists 1885 - 1955 [and] Printed: images by Australian Artists 1942 - 2020

Printed: images in colonial Australia 1801 – 1901 [with] Printed: images by Australian artists 1885 – 1955 [and] Printed: images by Australian Artists 1942 – 2020

BUTLER, Roger Canberra : National Gallery of Australia, 2007 - 2021. Three volumes, quarto, pictorial boards in dustjackets, light handling wear to the dustjacket of the second volume, otherwise fine, pp. 294; 328; 416, extensively illustrated in colour, a very good set. The complete set of Roger Butler's comprehensive survey of printmaking in Australia. The first volume : 'This volume follows printmaking through a seventy-year period, from the latter part of the nineteenth century as the print, freed from its reproductive bonds, became a vehicle for pure artistic expression; through the great social and political traumas of the first half of the twentieth century, when the print was co-opted to carry a political message; and concludes in the immediate postwar years with prints that signal the artists' search for meaning and an awareness of self' - the publisher The second volume : ?This volume follows printmaking through a seventy-year period, from the latter part of the nineteenth century as the print, freed from its reproductive bonds, became a vehicle for pure artistic expression; through the great social and political traumas of the first half of the twentieth century, when the print was co-opted to carry a political message; and concludes in the immediate postwar years with prints that signal the artists? search for meaning and an awareness of self? ? the publisher The third volume : Printed: Images by Australian artists 1942 ? 2020 traces the history of printmaking by Australian artists during an era of dramatic changes in Australian society and the visual arts. Arranged in three sections, it begins with the innovative wartime policy initiatives of the Commonwealth. Reconstruction Scheme which laid the groundwork for crucial development in the arts. In this period emigre artists and Australian artists returning home helped established printmaking societies, art galleries and publishers ? which underpinned the growing popularity of this most democratic of art forms. The second section explores the rise of political and social posters, which became one of the most dynamic forms of print practice in the 1970s and 1980s, and prints by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists which have been at the forefront of Australian art since the 1970s. The book?s final section discusses the continuing responses by printmakers to key concerns of our time, focusing on the themes of land and identity.
  • $338