Every year, modernist Eric Thake would send his friends a hand-made Christmas card. Original lino-cut prints, these cards have since become canonical, each observing a changing nation through one its most distinct voices.

Thake often personalised these cards, at times addressing his friend the revered curator and writer Ursula Hoff. Thake writes "Wheres all your 30,000? Well, you remember those chops we had last night!", in an exchange between two farmers, suggesting that the 30,000 were lamb, gobbled up in a particularly moreish dinner. To imagine the receiver as a straw-stewing farmer, joking about the fate of their flock, is a delightful absurdity. 

Represented across numerous public collections, including at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (addressed in that collection to Hal Missingham), this graphic is a museum-quality work. It speaks to Thakes remarkable vision, Australian modernism and the friendships between the artist had with notable scholars. With strikingly excellent provenance, it is a prize for collectors of modernist art. 

Eric THAKE (1904 - 1982)
'Wheres all your 30,000? Well, you remember those chops we had for tea last night!' 1968
linocut on paper
Image Size: 21 x 15 cm
Dimensions: 21 x 30 cm
Signed: Signed and dated lower right: Eric Thake 1968; titled lower centre

Comes with Letter of Provenance

Impressions of this work are at the: National Gallery of Australia, accession number: 73.257.29. Art Gallery of New South Wales, accession number: DA2.1969. National Gallery of Victoria accession number: P138-1974. Overall sheet size, scored to fold

Condition: Very Good: Describes a work of art's image as Excellent, but may show some small signs of surrounding wear to paper or frame. There are no tears to paper margin or disruption to the paint surface.

(c) The Artist or Assignee