Chronicler of Sydney Harbour, artist Peter Kingston, dies age 79
Peter Kingston, an artist who chased the changing moods and comings and goings of Sydney Harbour, has died at age 79.
Peter Kingston, an artist who chased the changing moods and comings and goings of Sydney Harbour, has died at age 79.
Kingston, who had lung cancer, died in his sleep on Thursday at his Lavender Bay home, said his Sydney gallerist, Stuart Purves.
Over the decades, Kingston painted the harbour as a recurring motif, summoning in oils the blue-black of the water, the shells of the Opera House rising like ancient mountains, and the Lady-class ferries with their distinctive green and gold livery.
Purves said Kingston was essentially a protest artist – a “pointer-outer” – who depicted in paint the things he didn’t want to see destroyed by carelessness or unthinking development.
“He was born with one foot in the Harbour and one foot on the sand,” said Australian Galleries director Purves. “It just got under his skin. He grew up with it. He saw all the goodness about it, and rather hated its modernising.”
Michael Brand, director of the Art Gallery of NSW, said “Kingo” was one of Sydney’s best-loved artists. “Peter made the subject of Sydney’s working, beautiful, haunted harbour his own, and when we look towards it from our beautiful galleries, we will remember Kingo’s compulsion to record it, to save it, and to celebrate it,” he said.
Early in his career Kingston was a cartoonist for Oz magazine, and became friendly with fellow artists such as Martin Sharp, Brett Whiteley and Garry Shead. As well as working in oils, he made sculptures, prints and books. “He had to earn his respect,” Purves said. “He started off as a cartoonist, he wasn’t taken seriously enough. But finally he got through to people.”
Kingston was part of campaigns to protect natural and man-made places including Sydney’s Luna Park, May Gibbs’s house, Nutcote, and islands in the Great Barrier Reef. His work is held in major collections including the AGNSW and the National Gallery of Australia.
He was working towards a show at Australian Galleries in December, and Purves said it would go ahead as a memorial.
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