ADELAIDE.- After enchanting audiences in Sydney and Melbourne, the sumptuous exhibition Rupert Bunny: artist in Paris arrives at its final destination, the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. Around a hundred lavishly beautiful works of art are on show from 23 July until 4 October, in celebration of Rupert Bunny (1864-1947), Australia’s most successful expatriate artist.

Melbourne-born Rupert Bunny led a fascinating life and spent more than four decades living and working in France at the turn of last century.

Bunny painted imaginative tableaux which remain among the most loved pictures in Australian art galleries today. Included in this exhibition are his romantic mythological scenes, Impressionist visions of Parisian life and sensuous portrayals of beautiful women, as well as brightly-coloured 20th century works inspired by the Fauves and French and Australian landscape paintings.

Bunny moved smoothly in Parisian artistic circles and became associated with some of the most celebrated artists of the day: Auguste Rodin, Claude Debussy, Sarah Bernhardt and fellow Australians Percy Grainger and Nellie Melba whose portraits by Bunny are in the exhibition.

By the end of his career, Bunny could claim to have more paintings in France’s national collections than any other Australian artist. Some of these works are travelling from France to appear for the first time in Australia as part of this exhibition. They will be reunited with works from across Bunny’s long career loaned from public and private collections across Australia, including Bunny’s masterpieces from the Art Gallery of South Australia’s own collection.

Rupert Bunny will be the subject of a symposium on Saturday 24 July organised by the Art Gallery of South Australia, where Bunny’s fascinating life and art will be explored in depth by expert curators and writers: Rebecca Capes-Baldwin, Denise Mimmocchi, Anne Gerard and David Thomas.

Rupert Bunny: artist in Paris is a travelling exhibition organised by the Art Gallery of New South Wales and curated by that gallery’s Curator of Australian Art, Deborah Edwards, assisted by Assistant Curator, Denise Mimmocchi. It is coordinated at the Art Gallery of South Australia by Rebecca Capes-Baldwin, Associate Curator of Australian Art.

Rupert Bunny: artist in Paris opens to the public on Friday 23 July and will be on show daily 10am to 5pm until Monday 4 October.