COUTTS, Gordon (1875-1937)
'Aunt Agatha,' 1897.
Provenance: Estate late Ivy Shore; thence by descent.
Oil on Canvas
75x55cm

OTHER NOTES:
This portrait, purchased in 1950, is from the collection of Portia-Geach Award-winning Sydney artist Ivy Shore. It was known as 'Aunt Agatha' when Ivy bought it, and has never had another name attached to it. However, Ivy Shore did a great deal of research on the work, and had a suspicion that it might be the only known portrait of Gordon Coutts' Australian artist wife Alice Gray COUTTS (1879-1973), whom he met in Paris. The Coutts spent several years in Melbourne, and then in Sydney in the 1890s, where Gordon became the senior instructor at the Art Society of New South Wales, before leaving Australia with Alice for the USA in the early 1900s, never to return. This portrait was painted in 1897, at the height of Coutts' style.


Estimate $3,000-5,000