Art Gallery of SA now home to rare $2m Jeffrey Smart painting

A painting worth a staggering $2m has found a home at the Art Gallery of SA, thanks to a generous bequest.

The Art Gallery of South Australia’s latest acquisition – Jeffrey Smart’s The Argument, Prenestina – was made possible thanks to a gift that keeps on giving.

Namely, the late James and Diana Ramsay’s $38m bequest to the cultural institution.

Announced in 2019 it remains a record-breaker – the biggest donation in Australian art history.

And now the gallery has unveiled The Argument, Prenestina – the major new painting it was able to secure thanks to the James and Diana Ramsay Fund.

A viewer admires the Jeffrey Smart painting, The Argument, Prenestina. Picture: Saul Steed

Detail of the painting. Picture: Saul Steed

The late SA painter Jeffrey Smart is one of Australia’s most celebrated and internationally renowned 20th-century artists. He is famous for his urban landscapes with their private jokes and humanity.

The 1982 painting, The Argument, Prenestina, acquired in memory of Mr Ramsay, is a fine example of his mature work, which the gallery says shows “his unique understanding of colour, geometry, composition and scale”.

Artworks of Smart’s from this era are rarely available for acquisition and, since his death in 2013 in Italy, can fetch up to $2m on the open market.

The late SA painter Jeffrey Smart is one of Australia’s most celebrated and internationally renowned 20th-century artists.

The late James and Diana Ramsay. Picture: Supplied

Every piece of art added to the Art Gallery of SA’s collection arrives as a gift, or is acquired through the generosity of philanthropy or fundraising.

SA Weekend’s Roy Eccleston wrote about the James and Diana Ramsay Fund in 2019: The bequest by James, an accountant who died in 1996, and Diana, who died in 2017, is structured to be a perpetual “magic pudding” for the gallery.

It protects the capital, which is to be invested, while allowing the gallery to spend a portion of the interest to buy great works of art. The more it grows, the bigger the dividend for art – indefinitely.