BUMPER BOOK , ART AND ANTIQUE FAIR

 One of the many items  of interest  for  sale at  the Australian  Antique and Art Dealers  Association  Fair   in  the Malvern Town Hll , Melbourne , May 1 to 4 , will  be the above  rare  book of  portraits  by  colour- blind  Charles  Nuttall , sketched  for  his  "Magnum opus " oil painting ,The Opening Commonwealth Parliament, which included 344 identifiable faces in the  Royal Exhibition Building , Melbourne, 1901.

Subjects include Earl Hopetoun,Governor-General, Prime Minister Sir Edmund Barton,various premiers, Attorneys-General, government ministers, parliamentarians, as well as artistic figures such as painter John Longstaff, and Marshall-Hall, Director of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.

In 1905 Nuttall went to America  , became a staff artist on the New York Herald and contributed to  several  popular  magazines.  

Priced  at $880 , the book  is in the Douglas Stewart Fine Books  list which includes a complete set of Gould's Birds of Australia,$750,000 ; a 17th century French terrestrial globe, $45,000; a circa l938  Norman Lindsay oil on canvas ,Joy of Summer , $55,000.

Also  on offer  will be more than  1000 high  quality, hardcover monographs on Australian and International art , design, architecture, antiques and historical reference which  have  been acquired from several collections over the past  year.

While many of these reference books are collectable in their own right,  the bookshop says it simply doesn't  have  the  space to store  them: all  will be  marked at  $10  for the  duration  of  the  fair. 

(Rare. Books. Fair.)