Painting of the Month: Shead's Monarchy at Sunset

Monarchy at Sunset 1995
Oil on canvas
122 x 155 cm
Signed 'Garry Shead 95' lower left
no.1606

Illustrated: Grishin., S, Garry Shead: Encounters with Royalty,
Craftsman House 1998, plate 3, page 37.

Exhibited: Lyall Burton Gallery, Melbourne
Touring Exhibition, Brisbane City Gallery, 1998

Provenance: Lyall Burton Gallery, Melbourne

Monarchy at Sunset 1995 is one of the largest major paintings from the early period of the important ‘Royal Suite’ series. The painting is illustrated in the definitive text on the series and is one of the largest paintings from the beginning of this body of work in 1995. The composition is a complex one involving multiple large figures including both the Queen and the Consort. The painting also includes the other essential images from the series: the harbour bridge, the silhouetted kangaroo, the Koala and the sprig of golden wattle. Please contact the gallery for more information or to arrange a viewing.

Garry Shead, winner of the 1993 Archibald Prize, is a noted painter and printmaker whose works highlight a distinctive love of the Australian landscape. He brings romantic and heroic elements to Australian scenes. His Stockman series of paintings of the late 1980s, were followed respectively in the 1990s by the D.H. Lawrence series based on the Lawrence's book "Kangaroo" and the gently satirical "Monarchy" suite of paintings. Represented by the National Gallery of Australia and numerous state and regional galleries, Shead also won the Power studio grant, Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris in 1973.