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A rare opportunity to acquire one of Australia’s most iconic paintings – Ben Quilty’s Archibald Prize-winning portrait Margaret Olley 2011 – has prompted the Tweed Regional Gallery to reach out to supporters for help.
The Tweed Regional Gallery Foundation Ltd and Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre are today launching a public campaign to raise funds to support the acquisition of this acclaimed painting.
Tweed Regional Gallery Director Ingrid Hedgcock said this was an opportunity not to be missed.
“This is the first time this exquisite artwork by Ben Quilty has become available and as the home of the Margaret Olley Art Centre, we couldn’t let this opportunity pass,” Hedgcock said.
“The artwork has all the ingredients of an extraordinary acquisition – artistic merit, rarity, beloved subject and artist.
“We are so grateful for the incredible support we have already received from principal donors Tim Fairfax AC and Gina Fairfax AC as well as from the Margaret Olley Art Trust, Philip Bacon AO and Friends of the Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre Inc.
“With their very generous support we have almost achieved our goal to purchase this seminal work and are launching this appeal to raise the remaining funds needed to acquire this portrait.”
Celebrated as Australia’s most distinguished painter of still life, Margaret Olley was a generous philanthropist with an enormous capacity for friendship. She first met Ben Quilty in 2002 when she was the guest judge for the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship. Quilty’s entry, Elwood Park, was a modestly-sized landscape and attracted Olley’s attention for the quality of the paint and composition. Quilty was awarded the prestigious Scholarship that year and over time the pair developed a bond formed through their mutual respect for each other’s work and capabilities. Olley’s support for the fledgling artist played a significant role in the development of his artistic career.
In 1948, Margaret Olley was the subject of an Archibald Prize-winning portrait by artist William Dobell. Herself a fledgling artist, at the age of 25, Olley was not prepared for the media frenzy that ensued after Dobell was announced the winner of the prize. The shy, young Olley was fortuitously about to leave for Europe and therefore able to, for the most part, escape the attention of the media who had a field day critiquing the nature of the portrait and sitter.
When Quilty asked Olley to sit for a portrait 63 years later, the senior artist at first declined. “She dismissed me in her typical, resilient, forceful way,” said Quilty. “But I didn’t give in easily.”
The portrait went on to win the 2011 Archibald Prize just months before Olley’s death on 26 July 2011. Quilty had captured his friend, mentor and fellow artist at the close of her extraordinary life and her enduring career that was bookended by these two Archibald Prize-winning portraits.
Hedgcock said the Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre attracted thousands of visitors each year and this painting would add to its appeal.
“When Quilty entered the painting into the Archibald Prize it was still wet! Although it has been displayed in various public galleries since that time, it has remained in the artist’s personal collection ever since,” Hedgcock said.
“This is the first opportunity for this iconic portrait to be acquired and we are committed to bringing this painting to the Margaret Olley Art Centre, where it belongs, alongside the re-creation of her famous Duxford Street home studio.”
The acclaimed painting is part of Quilty’s exhibition ‘20 Years’ showing at Jan Murphy Gallery in Brisbane from 19 November – 7 December 2024.
Quilty agreed the Tweed Regional Gallery would be a fitting location for his much-loved portrait.
“The Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre is now home for Margaret's legacy. Her work lives on through that masterful re-creation and the thriving program around it,” Quilty said.
“My portrait of Olley fits neatly in. Although she was very reticent to sit for it, she loved the painting, and my Archibald win was an exclamation mark to her extraordinarily well-lived life.”
The Tweed Regional Gallery Foundation Ltd will run a national campaign to raise funds to acquire the work and gift it to the Tweed Regional Gallery collection.
“This is a bold and thrilling acquisition for a regional gallery to undertake and we are excited to become the custodians of this beloved portrait,” Hedgcock said.
Visit gallery.tweed.nsw.gov.au/acquisition-appeal or call 02 6670 2790 to donate to this campaign or find out more.
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