Every year, modernist Eric Thake would send his friends a hand-made Christmas card. Original linocut prints, these cards have since become canonical, each observing a changing nation through one its most distinct voices. There are notes of humour, critique and poeticism.

‘Sunshine and Rain, Lygon Street’ is among Thake’s best known linocuts. It is an exemplar of his interest in shadows, silhouettes and windows – devices that connect and trouble reality. In it, Thake pictures himself gazing into a shop window on Carlton’s Lygon Street. The fantasy it holds is cast against reality, embodied by a hunched woman plodding from the store. In the shop window perfection is possible; on the street shoppers dodge a downfall.

Represented across numerous public collections, including at the National Gallery of Victoria, ‘Sunshine and Rain, Lygon Street’ is a museum-quality work. It speaks to Thake’s remarkable wit and ingenuity, a prize for collectors of modernist, surrealist and Australian art.

Eric THAKE (1904 - 1982)
'Sunshine and Rain, Lygon Street' 1964
linocut on paper
Edition of 40
Image Size: 20 x 14 cm
Dimensions: 31 x 23 cm
Signed: Signed, dated, titled, and numbered in pencil in margin below image: Sunshine and Rain, Lygon Street. 10/40 Eric Thake 1964
Comes with Letter of Provenance

EXHIBITIONS:
Acquisitions 1967, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 6 March - 1 April 1968 (another impression)

RELATED WORKS:
National Portrait Gallery, accession number: 2011.40
Gallery of New South Wales, accession number: DA38. 1967
National Gallery of Victoria, accession number: P134-1974
Castlemaine Art Museum, accession number: G519
National Gallery of Australia, accession number: 72.211O

Condition: Excellent

(c) The Artist or Assignee

Please note, this work of art is printed on a delicate, near-translucent piece of paper.