Reynder's Wikepedia entry on the artist is a scholarly triumph revealing an extensive long term knowledge of the artist’s life and oeuvre.
He has had access to and been helping translate the 800 or more pages of Scheltema letters which have already been separately deposited in the State Library of Victoria’s collection to the great benefit of further research and authentication of Scheltema’s works…and perhaps other artists and dealers.
The are being donated by Mr Gerrit tan Beek an artist of Assen in the Netherlands.
The donor, with whom Reynders had made contact in his research "was immediately positive about the idea of the family collection going to Australia", Reynders added.
”Gerrit tan Beek had to clean out his mum's house hundreds of kilometres away from Assen and wondered what to do with these boxes of letters and paintings. If somebody came along with a suggestion... he would probably go for it, was perhaps his mindset. He had sold his own paintings during his lifetime, now he was old, he was not going to sell someone else's.”
Although several Victorian regional galleries and the National Gallery of Victoria have works by the artist best known in the saleroom for his cattle paintings, the donation marks a subtle change in the recent curatorial response to his work.
Scheltema who died at the age of 80 in 1941 in Brisbane has been considered of late as a leader of the traditional school which has fallen away with the rise of interest in contemporaries.
It could probably be argued he was one of the best artists of the second tier of the traditional market. He arrived in Melbourne from the Netherlands in the middle of the 1880s art boom with a background in portrait and genre painting but soon became immensely popular with his foreground paintings of cattle.
In the second great art boom of the 1980s Scheltema was a favourite of dealers and collectors such as Dana Rogowski, Tom Silver and Vernon Yip during the lead up to, and conclusion of the art boom of the of the 1980s. Col Fullager also could not resist one of the best of his offerings.
Although no de-accession of Scheltemas from regional galleries spring to mind the market was flooded by public gallery sales of works of the traditional or old school from those institutions.
Public galleries were able to raise funds by their for works which they considered surplus to collections because they were over-stocked with gifts and acquisitions of works by those masters and wanted to head off into what they considered the more exciting directions of moderns and contemporaries - with only very selective buying of what came before them.
The large expansion of activity in the contemporary market subsequently had many curators transfixed and hard pressed to cover the widening contemporary production activity with their limited resources and the very best of the old stuff became highly elusive.
The Gippsland Art Gallery, by contrast, has a very limited coverage of Victorian period art as it is one of the newest of the regional galleries..
Simon Gregg, the director of the “GAG” gallery, told Australian Art Sales Digest the gift was accepted with enthusiasm by the gallerybecause of this big gap in its holdings.
Gippsland has had a rich history of farming but Mr Gregg says that only three of the works are paintings of cattle.
Scheltema was also commissioned to add cattle into paintings by Charles Rolando because Rolando was not adept at painting them himself.
The acquisition of a painting by Scheltema, Early Morning Start, Gippsland, a geographically obvious work for a gallery at Sale, through a private deal via Sotheby’s Australia early this year appears to have helped the gallery secure the collection.
The artist was very industrious and his works have been offered frequently at auction. But that does not mean quality was lacking. He could be intense and very meticulous. He made an overseas trip in the early 1900s and upon his return to Australia in September 1911 showed 88 of his paintings in Tuckett’s Chambers in Collins Street, Melbourne from which 71 were sold.
Newspapers covered the exhibition intensely. The National Gallery of Victoria had already bought a work in 1901 as did many other galleries.
The bequest which is now being processed is not believed to be costly to taxpayers. The Cultural Gifts Program is unlikely to be invoked as there is no local income to attract tax relief for the donations in kind, which the program makes possible. However, funds have to be found for the collection’s transport to Australia.
While Scheltema’s reputation has suffered with the rest of the traditional art market his record auction price was set late - in 2002 - at Goodman’s in Double Bay, Sydney. Morleys Track Fernshaw (Hauling Logs) was sold for $138,000 to a member of a group of keen bidders at the front of the room.
According to the Saleroom column in the Australian Financial Review at the time, the vendor was the former property developer Vernon Yip who reportedly paid $205,000 for the work to Sydney dealer Tom Silver in the late 1980s. Silver had acquired the work from Leonard Joel for $75,000, where it had been offered but unsold in 1999.
New interest from entrepreneurs and then still existent old-country money was sending prices soaring.
This year, only two works by Scheltema, have been listed as sold by the Australian Art Sales Digest. They made $6091 and $4629.
In the 40+ years records of the Australian Art Sales Digest, 892 works by Scheltema have been offered. During the “great art boom” five made around $50,000.
The gallery plans to exhibit the paintings from February 15 to April 19 next year.
