Self-portrait

Ivor Hele’s dynamic renderings of the human body are among his best-known works and have positioned him as one of Australia’s finest figurative painters. Born in South Australia, the artist received early encouragement from his tutor, the Parisian-trained painter, Marie Tuck, before furthering his studies in Europe at the age of fifteen. From 1941, Hele became Australia’s longest serving official war artist, recording scenes in North Africa, New Guinea and Korea. In addition to producing war subjects and landscapes, the artist was in high demand as an official portrait painter and won the Archibald Prize five times between 1951 and 1957.

Self-portrait, c.1935, is a rare early example of Hele’s more personal painting practice, executed outside his commissioned work. The self-portrait depicts the artist intensely engaged in the act of painting in his repurposed studio in Aldinga, a small town forty-five kilometres south of Adelaide. Standing with rag in hand and bare-chested, his focused gaze is absorbed in studying his own mirror image, bringing to mind the artist’s own words when describing his painting process: ‘while I’m [painting a portrait] I’m obsessed with that one thing’. Embodying a sense of youthful, daring energy, this early self-portrait captures the artist in his early twenties, on the cusp of his high-profile and active artistic career.

Elle Freak, Associate Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculpture

Tracey Lock, Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculpture