Every year, modernist Eric Thake would send his friends a hand-made Christmas card. Original linocut prints, these cards have since become canonical, each observing a changing nation through one its most distinct voices. They also speak to Thake’s innerworld, with this particular work coming from the collection of his friend, revered writer and curator Ursula Hoff.

The punnily titled ‘Hippobottomi’ is a disarming portrait of three hippos. Thake captures them bottom-first, cocooned together like three pigs in a blanket. He was forever finding personalities in animals, capturing them with warmth and perceptiveness.

Represented across numerous public collections, including at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, ‘Hippobottomi’ is a museum-quality work. It speaks to Thake’s remarkable wit, Australian modernism and the friendship between an artist and scholar. With strikingly excellent provenance, it is a prize for collectors of modernist art.

Eric THAKE (1904 - 1982)
'Hippobottomi' 1974
linocut on paper
Image Size: 15 x 22 cm
Dimensions: 15 x 44 cm. Overall sheet size, scored to fold
Signed: Titled, signed, and dated lower right: Hippobottomi eric Thake 1974. 
Inscribed reverse sheet in ink "To Ursula / With Best Wishes for Xmas & 1975 / from / Eric & Grace"
Comes with Letter of Provenance

EXHIBITIONS:
Animals on Paper: From The Australian Collection of Prints, Drawings and Watercolours, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 5 September – 5 October 1992 (another impression)

LITERATURE:
Kolenberg, H., Animals on Paper: From The Australian Collection of Prints, Drawings and Watercolours, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1992 cat. no. 86 (another impression)

RELATED WORKS:
- Eric Thake, Hippobottomi 1974, pencil on paper, 28 x 37.7cm, The Collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Accession number 75.686 
- Art Gallery of New South Wales, accession number 279.1976

Condition: Excellent. There is a slight fold of the top right corner, which has no impact on the image and has been smoothed. 

(C) The Artist or Assignee