1920s Margaret Preston antique print, floral still life, framed artwork

Margaret Preston (1875–1963), Aboriginal (Indigenous) Flowers, 1928 — a genuine period colour-process reproduction after Preston’s 1928 oil painting, issued as a tipped-in plate in Art in Australia, and now presented within a double cream mount and substantial polished timber frame. The composition balances a brilliant bowl of fruit against a tightly patterned bouquet of black, white and orange feather flowers, using flattened planes, strong geometry and restrained colour to create one of Preston’s characteristically modern Australian still lifes. 

31cm x 26cm frame

13cm x 11cm artwork 

About the Artist: Margaret Preston was born in Adelaide in 1875 and became one of the central figures of Australian modernism. Following extensive artistic study and travel in Australia, Europe and Asia, she settled in Sydney and developed the bold, highly designed style for which she is now celebrated, particularly through her still lifes and pioneering woodblock prints. Preston was an energetic advocate for the creation of a distinctly Australian visual language, drawing upon modernism, Japanese printmaking and, increasingly from the 1920s, First Nations art and design—an engagement now examined both for its influence on Australian modernism and for the complex questions of cultural appropriation it raises. Aboriginal Flowers was painted in 1928 following Preston’s travels in Queensland, exhibited that year with the Society of Artists of New South Wales, and is now held by the Art Gallery of South Australia.