Oct 18, 2013 - Sale 2326

Sale 2326 - Lot 59

Price Realized: $ 2,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
SIR JOHN WILLIAM (WILL) ASHTON (1881-1963) SYDNEY HARBOUR / AUSTRALIA. Circa 1934.
20x25 inches, 51x63 1/2 cm. W.T. Baker & Co., Ltd.
Condition B+ / B: restoration, abrasions and overpainting in image.
Ashton was born in Britain but moved with his family to Australia at an early age. A prodigious painter, he became the director of The National Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1937. In 1932, upon returning from a year's soujourn abroad and speaking of the hoardings in England, Ashton said "big posters of Sydney Harbour, the Harbour Bridge . . . would do much more to help Australia than bus-stop printed entreaties to eat Australian raisins. This is an age of colorful advertising, and it is a great mistake not to recognize the fact" (The Sydney Morning Herald, January 8, 1932, p. 8).