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Margaret Olley / Australia 1923–2011 / Lemons and oranges 1964 / Oil on composition board / 76.6 x 102cm / Purchased 1964 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Estate of Margaret Olley
Margaret OlleyLemons and oranges 1964
Not Currently on Display
Still lifes have been a part of Margaret Olley’s output since her days as an art student, but as early as mid 1950s they became established as a major portion of her production. It was the appeal of her colourful floral studies that inspired local appreciation and which expanded to national view by the following decade.
Baskets of oranges, lemons and other citrus fruit were a consistent theme in Olley’s work through the early to mid 1960s. Ten paintings in the 1964 exhibition at Johnstone Gallery included lemons, oranges or mandarins in the titles. In these works branches were cut from the fruit trees in her own garden, placed in a cane basket or pannier and arranged on a white cloth with some simple bottles and jugs (branches of pomegranates were given a similar treatment). Because of the random placing of the fruit on the branches and their angularity, these works have an informal quality.
Margaret Olley was born in 1923 in Lismore, New South Wales. Her family moved to Tully in North Queensland and to Murwillumbah in northern New South Wales before she was sent to board at Somerville House, a prominent private girls’ school in South Brisbane. There, with the mentorship of art mistress Caroline Barker, she was inspired to consider a career in art.
She enrolled briefly at the Brisbane Technical College and completed her training in 1945 at the East Sydney Technical College. Her first solo exhibitions were held in 1948, at the Macquarie Galleries, Sydney and the Moreton Galleries, Brisbane. Olley’s growing popularity made her an attractive subject for artists, and William Dobell’s portrait of Olley in the 1948 Archibald Prize caused a sensation. In 1949 she travelled to England, studied at La Grande Chaumière in Paris in 1950 and she also travelled to Italy, Spain and Portugal. Olley held exhibitions at the Redfern Gallery, London and the Galerie Paul Morihien, Paris in 1952.
When she returned to Australia, Olley established herself in Brisbane, living at her mother’s home in Morry St, Hill End. In 1959 she opened an antique shop in the inner suburb of Buranda. She later purchased a terrace house and an adjacent former hat factory in Duxford St, Paddington in Sydney, which she renovated to use as her studio. This house became almost as famous as the artist herself, featuring richly coloured walls and packed with thousands of objects, many appearing in her still-life paintings. She retained the family home in Brisbane, although the house was sadly destroyed by fire in 1980, resulting in the loss of many of Olley’s early works, photographs, and objects from her travels.