Indigenous Australian Portrait Panels by Robert Prenzel (1921)

A pair of carved mountain ash portrait panels of an Indigenous…
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A pair of carved mountain ash portrait panels of an Indigenous Australian man and woman by Robert Prenzel, both signed and dated 1921, both bust-length, carved in very high relief, the bare-chested man in a laughing expression, the woman wearing a scarf and shawl and with a pipe from the side of her mouth, stained dark brown except her clothing with the eyes of both and the man's teeth painted white, the pine ground panel of each with a fine cross-hatched texture and also stained, each with its original fiddleback blackwood frame applied to the edges of the panel, both with incised signature and date 'R. Prenzel. 1921' lower right, each 69.5 cm high, 54 cm wide, approximately 11.5 cm deep. Provenance: acquired directly from Robert Prenzel in the 1920s by Gordon Gidney, Melbourne, thence by descent to the late John Gidney Pennell

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  • Fiddleback - A name given to the pattern of the grain in some timbers, where the lines of the grain are compressed and at the same time wavy. Fiddleback grain is prized as a timber for furniture and musical instruments, and is expensive becasue of its scarcity.

    In Australia fiddleback graining is found in blackwood. Other non-native timbers that are sometimes found with a fiddleback grain are mahogany and maple.
  • Incised - A record of a name, date or inscription, or a decoration scratched into a surface, usually of a glass or ceramic item with a blunt instrument to make a coarse indentation. Compare with engraving where the surface is cut with a sharp instrument such as a metal needle or rotating tool to achieve a fine indentation.
  • Blackwood - One of the best known and most widely used Australian timbers, blackwood (acacia melanoxylon), is a member of the Acacia (wattle) family and grows in eastern Australia from about Adelaide in South Australia, as far north as Cairns in Queensland.

    The largest, straightest and tallest trees come from the wet forest and swamps of north-west Tasmania where it is grown commercially.

    Blackwood timber colours range across a wide spectrum, from a very pale honey colour through to a dark chocolate with streaks of red tinge.

    The hardwood timber has been commonly used in the production of furniture, flooring, and musical instruments in Australia from the late 19th century. However, the straight grain timber is not the most prized or valuable, that honour falls to blackwood with a wavy, fiddleback pattern, which is used both in the solid and as a veneer. Fiddleback was only used on the finest examples of furniture.

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