Vic: Aussie painting sells for record at auction

AAP General News (Australia)
08-26-2008
Vic: Aussie painting sells for record at auction

MELBOURNE, Aug 26 AAP - A painting by iconic Australian artist Russell Drysdale has
sold for a record $1.89 million at auction.

The portrait of Rocky McCormack, a Riverina farmer, was part of the Important Australian
Art sale auctioned at Sotheby's last night.

The previous record for a Drysdale was set earlier this year at $1.68 million.

Titled Rocky McCormack, the portrait was painted between 1962 and 1963.

A Sotheby's spokeswoman said it was one of a mere handful of paintings completed by
the artist in that period.

It is described in the auction catalogue as a "beautiful, harmonious arrangement in
opal red and blue, and one of the largest, most successful and most popular of the artist's
justly-celebrated bush portraits".

Rocky McCormack is pictured under a thatch of dark, unruly hair, wearing a hat and
smiling with amusement.

Drysdale has a distinguished place in 20th century Australian art as a pioneer modernist,
social documentarist and sympathetic recorder of Aboriginal traditions.

But he is most well known for his portraits of European bush battlers.

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