Heide curator tracks down Charles Blackman’s Sleeping Schoolgirl for exhibition
A WORLD-FAMOUS painting worth at least $US500,000 is set to be shipped to the Heide Museum after its curator solved the decade-old mystery of its whereabouts.
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A WORLD-FAMOUS painting is set to be shipped to Bulleen after organisers of a local exhibition solved the decade-old mystery of its whereabouts.
The Sleeping Schoolgirl will headline the show of Charles Blackman’s Schoolgirl series at the Heide Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition later this year.
Negotiations about the terms of the loan and how to transport a painting worth at least $US500,000 from Perth — where it forms the beloved centrepiece of business conglomerate Wesfarmers’ corporate collection — are ongoing.
Art lovers regard the piece as the high point of Blackman’s 1952-55 series, but finding the original to complete the collection saw Heide curator Kendrah Morgan turn sleuth, with calls and emails heading as far afield as London before the painting was found.
Google played its part in helping Ms Morgan find an old listing for the artwork on London auction house Christie’s website.
“So that’s how I knew it had been for sale in London in 2007, and so I made some inquiries with art dealers around Melbourne who sometimes buy from overseas auctions,” she said.
“One of them told me they were pretty sure the painting had been bought by an Australian collector.”
Inquiries were also made with Christie’s representatives in London and Melbourne, with Ms Morgan eventually being put in touch with an agent who bid for the painting on behalf of a private collector.
“But at that point the trail went dead because the agent wasn’t in touch with the collector anymore,” Ms Morgan said.
Ms Morgan asked around auction houses but couldn’t get any leads so put a call out on social media.
“Someone came back to us and said they’d seen it on Instagram and believed it was part of the Wesfarmers collection,” she said.
The show will run at the Bulleen gallery from March 4 until June 18.
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