Leonard Joel auctioneer will sell the private collection of pro Hart on Tuesday the 22nd July at 6:30pm.
"T"Debate on the merits of one of Australia's most commercially
successful and prolific artists continued yesterday as news of his
death emerged.
"I think for a few years there he was an extraordinarily good
painter," said Stuart Purves, owner of Australian Galleries in
Melbourne and Sydney. The first painting he sold 40 years ago was
by Hart "and one of the problems with all sorts of people is that
fame doesn't necessarily favour them.
"Although I wouldn't want to say he wasn't a good painter, I
think somehow or other, through the attention that was given to him
and perhaps the demands that followed, that attention somehow or
other encroached upon that lovely innocence."
Age critic Robert Nelson writes today: "I can understand
why people like his work (because it's warm and friendly and
approachable) but ultimately, Hart's pictures lack credibility.
They aren't really celebrations of the Australian bush so much as a
triumph of corn, a festival of brown effects, produced by a brush
in imitation of a sponge."
Hart worked in the lead and zinc mines of Broken Hill for years
before he was discovered in the early 1960s by a city gallery
looking for outback images.
Professor Smith describes him as "a naive painter … who did
it on his own. That is to say he found it out of himself." "
Pro Hart: loved by the people, not 'art mafia
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