A painting of a rural family heading off to a night at the movies has tied the record for the sale of a Russell Drysdale work with a hammer price of $2.4 million at auction in Melbourne – just as the city returns to cinemas after the pandemic lockdown.
Drysdale’s Going to the pictures, from 1941, had been tipped to set a new record for the influential Australian artist. But it fell just shy at the Deutscher and Hackett auction on Wednesday evening, matching the highest bid for the artist’s 1974 Grandma’s Sunday Walk which sold in 2017.
Russell Drysdale 1941’s Going to the Pictures (detail).Credit:Deutscher and Hackett
Pictures was painted as the artist developed a new visual language for his own – and Australian – art, breaking from the romantic pastoral tradition to depict the countryside with a dash of surrealism and expressionism. The work shows a rural family in a drought-stricken landscape about to leave for the cinema, and employs the artist’s typical humour and empathy.
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