MUNTZ ADAMS, Josephine (1862-1949).
Black and Gold. Portrait of a Woman Reading.
Melbourne, 1943.
Oil on canvas, 390 x 332 mm., signed, in original frame.
A very attractive painting by one of Australia's more mysterious painters. Although one of her close friends was Streeton, and she studied with the many gifted Heidelberg school artists, Muntz Adams "disdained the blue and gold of Heidelberg, and its copyists [and this] could partly account for her obscurity, despite her 'firm, free modelling and broad effect' being consistently acclaimed since 1896" (Juliet Peers, Heritage: The National Women's Art Book).
This atmospheric and charming work shows the artist's expressive freedom of brushstroke, with large slabs of colour in her usual sombre colour tones.
Muntz Adams studied under Folingsby at the National Gallery School, Melbourne then in Paris and England. In 1898 she was awarded a gold medal at the Greater Britain Exhibition in London.. Unusually for a woman artist, she earned several thousand pounds a year, and charged up to 150 pounds for a portrait. She exhibited with the Victorian Artists Society between 1896 and 1915.
Black and Gold was exhibited in the Exhibition of Paintings at the Athenaeum Gallery, Melbourne, 1943, no.75.
Australian: $15,500 (Approx. US $13,973, Euro €10,752) Quote ref.
