On the block: the painting that set Brett Whiteley on his way

In 1959, an energetic young painter decided it was time to make a change. Brett Whiteley quit his job to focus on his own work.

Sotheby’s Australia chairman Geoffrey Smith with Brett Whiteley’s Around Bathurst. Picture: James Croucher.

In 1959, an energetic young painter decided it was time to make a change. Brett Whiteley hated “art being governed by the logic of businessmen”, so he quit his job at a Sydney advertising company to focus on his own work.

Whiteley set his sights on an Italian government prize, a scholarship that came with an overseas travel ticket attached. After scrambling to make the deadline, he ­entered four paintings, enough to change his world forever.

Whiteley was 20 when he was named the winner of his first major art prize. Now, six decades on, one of those paintings — a bold ­abstraction that hints at landscape, reminiscent of British artist William Scott and a long way from those famous Lavender Bay works — has come up for auction after years out of the public eye.

Around Bathurst is one of six Whiteleys being offered by Sotheby’s Australia in Sydney next week, a spread that covers his idealistic early years to his evolution as a seasoned professional. “It’s like a mini retrospective,” ­Sotheby’s Australia chairman Geoffrey Smith said.

Artist Brett Whiteley at his exhibition in the Bonython Gallery in Paddington, Sydney in 1970.

Around Bathurst is being sold as part of the JGL Collection, with the private Melbourne company also selling pictures by mid-­century Australian artists such as Sidney Nolan and Albert Tucker.

The auction house has listed Around Bathurst with an estimate of between $150,000 and $250,000.

The three other paintings entered into the 1959 Italian government travelling art scholarship are owned by the Art Gallery of NSW and Whiteley studio.

The JGL auction includes a second seldom-seen Whiteley. Called Requite, it is a socially charged anti-war picture from 1967, and dedicated to Francis Bacon. The two were friends, and shared a dealer, so Bacon may have owned it for a time. “It really is not for the faint-hearted,” Smith said. “It’s a chastising picture.”

Elsewhere in the sale is a picture from yet another turning point in Whiteley’s career. Bathroom and Figure hails from the artist’s 1963 bathroom series, featuring his wife Wendy during a time when he was moving from abstraction to figuration. The buyer’s guide is $350,000 to $450,000. The other Whiteleys in the May 16 sale are The Meeting, a striking 1981 landscape that comes with an upper estimate of $1.4 million, a Moreton Bay Fig from 1984 and an elegant ink drawing of a bird from 1979. The six have a combined estimate of $2.9m to $3.6m.