"A history based on the ... ICI Australia collection" -- Back cover.
"The story that emerges is tantalising, beginning with the popular drawings of natural science by John Lewin, the first free artist to come to the colony, and continuing via the great landscape painters, the Heidleberg artists, the expatriates of the early twentieth century, to the cosmopolitan modernists of later decades - Fairweather, Cossington Smith, Purves Smith, Drysdale and finishing with bold works from Brack, Williams, Whiteley and Olsen. It tells the story of the famous - four works from Tom Roberts, two striking works from Arthur Streeton and also tells of the lives of the not-so-famous, but before-their-time and the little seen: from the simple, understated work arising out of Iso Rae, landscapes by Rupert Bunny. From the post-cubist nudes of Dorrit Black and flower paintings of Margaret Preston to the chaotic immediacy of the thirties' and forties' social realists, Vassilieff, Bergner and Tucker."--BOOK COVER.
(In 1971 Imperial Chemical industry of Australia and New Zealand changed its name, becoming ICI Australia Ltd. The chemical manufacturing company produced products such as paints, explosives and fertilisers. In 1998 ICI Australia changed its name to Orica Limited. The original aim was to compile significant works from each period of Australian art. Late in 2001, the big auction houses submitted tenders for the sale but Kerry Stokes stepped in and bought the lot for $13.2 million. Although Stokes said the works would join the 1800 paintings held by his Australian Capital Equity group, he later decided to keep 115 of the most expensive and sell the rest.)