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Stephen Bush 1955 VERT DE SEVRES, 2004 oil and enamel on linen SIGNED signed and dated three times verso:Stephen Bush 2004inscribed verso: Vert de sevres DIMENSIONS 183.0 x 183.0 cm PROVENANCE The John L. Stewart Collection, New York,purchased directly from the artist, c2004 EXHIBITED Stephen Bush: Gelderland, SITE Santa Fe,New Mexico, USA, 10 February - 13 May 2007 ESSAY The caretaker is perhaps the most powerful and encumbered characterin Bush's repertoire. His earliest appearance is in Bush's 1988/1989Caretaker series (lots 73 - 76) in which he dons a garishly gold full-bodysuit, a call-back to Elvis Presley's gold suit from his 1968 comebacktour.1 But the caretaker is rife with more symbolic significance than thisone peculiar cultural allusion. The same character reappears later inBush's 2004 works Swamp Gum and Vert de Sevres, this time subsumedwithin great swells of psychedelic colour. The caretaker's costume alsocalls to mind a beekeeper suit, and in this way the character evokesBush's earlier themes of conquest, capture and colonisation. Thebeekeeper-figure appears as a kind of colonising agent, master of histrade, tirelessly 'reigning in the bee'.2 Or is it more harmless than this? Swathed in his unwieldy suit, thecaretaker's identity remains out of reach, the character protectedfrom our curious gaze. Like so much in Bush's paintings, the suit isa kind of barrier preventing the viewer from perceiving what is reallygoing on in the narrative. We wonder who the caretaker is tending to;what he is responsible for. He appears time and time again in thesepaintings, patiently toiling away at his repetitive discipline beneath thephosphorescent sky. Perhaps the caretaker can be read as a moreaffirmative figure, a guardian of sorts. Maybe his secret business is theprotection of endangered civilisations - of the human world, and thefragile state it has found itself in post-colonisation. The caretaker may also be a substitute for the artist himself. Up to thispoint, Stephen Bush has appeared in the majority of his works as one ofhis characters; in drag, in uniform, in colonial outfits, driving tractors orchopping down trees. The Caretaker paintings are among the first imagesin which the artist as a character disappears. One has to assume that it isthe artist hidden within the caretaker's suit. The protective clothing maybe but a reminder of the potential peril of his chosen career, protectinghimself from the dangers and the terror of his work. It is also worth noting that although similar in content, the styles in whichthe four caretaker works are painted are quite different. In fact, thesefour painting were each depicted with their own deliberate referentialstyle. The Caretaker (lot 73) draws upon the Hudson River School, andin particular Frederick Church who was instrumental in defining theaesthetic romanticism of the American Landscape. A Caretaker (2) (lot74) alludes to the Rocky Mountain School, a group of artists in America'sWild West inspired to paint large scenes of the Rocky Mountains withan emphasis on dramatic effect. A Caretaker (3) (lot 75) is paintedin homage to the Pre-Raphaelites who painted with an accuracy thatmimicked photography. Finally, A Caretaker (4) (lot 76) recalls theNazarene movement adopted by German painters in the early 19thCentury who aimed to revive a more spiritual element in their work. TheCaretaker series pays very specific tribute to these movements whichBush saw as the predominant schools of landscape painting in the 19thCentury and who contributed significantly to the way the public viewedthe natural landscape. 1. Natasha Bullock, 'When I was here, I wanted to be there', Art and Australia, vol. 49,no. 2, Summer 2011 2. Ashley Crawford, 'Metaphor, Melancholia and Mayhem' in Stephen Bush: Gelderland,SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2007 exhibition catalogue LEAH CROSSMAN