Girl Reading was exhibited as part of Josephine’s solo retrospective at the Athenaeum Gallery in 1943. It was then purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, for 50 guineas.
In the acquisition correspondence, then gallery director Sir Ernest Daryl Lindsay notes:
‘Mrs Muntz-Adams belongs to the most important period of Australian painting to date – that of Roberts, Streeton, Phillips Fox, McCubbin, and Longstaff, and deserves to be represented in our collection by more than one work.’
At the time, the NGV had only one of Josephine’s works in its collection: Italian Girl’s Head, purchased in 1936.
Despite the left arm being ‘a little weak’, Girl Reading was noted by Sir Lindsay as a first-class example of Josephine’s work: ‘beautiful colour harmonies, sound in craftmanship, and the work of a most accomplished artist.’
Read the story behind the acquisition of Girl Reading in ‘From rejection to renown at the NGV’.
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
