Focus on Bush Idyll and discuss the Provenance.
McCubbin gifted the painting to a friend, painter and art patron Louis Abrahams. In 1919, years after Abrahams' death, much of his art collection, including Bush Idyll, was put up for auction in Melbourne. Bush Idyll was purchased by howbusiness promoter Hugh D. McIntosh, who took the painting to England. The location of the work was then unknown for 50 years until in 1979 an English pig farmer asked a gallery owner in Cambridge to appraise a work he was gifted many years before by a wealthy friend.In 1984, the work was acquired for £150,000 by bookmaker David Waterhouse who brought it back to Australia. Waterhouse sold the work by auction in 1998 for the then-record price of AUD2.31 million. In 2013, the work failed to sell at auction though was sold after auction to a private collector. Between 2017 and 2020 the work was on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. In late 2021 and early 2022 the painting was a part of the "Frederick McCubbin - Whisperings in wattle boughs" exhibition at the Geelong Gallery, Geelong.
Geelong Gallery National Gallery of Australia Melbourne Frederick McCubbin David Waterhouse Louis Abrahams Geelong Cambridge Hugh D. McIntosh Canberra