Terms and conditions of use
Destiny
1916
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Measurements
- 51.0 × 61.1 cm
- Place/s of Execution
- Melbourne, Victoria
- Inscription
- inscribed in brown paint l.r.: Christian Yandell 1916
inscribed in charcoal on reverse c.: Destiny / £ 32 10 5 / Christian Yandell - Accession Number
- 2011.438
- Department
- Australian Painting
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated from the Estate of Ouida Marston, 2011
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of The Vizard Foundation - Gallery location
- Not on display
- About this work
-
Destiny depicts a female figure as the personification of fate, blowing gently into a large bowl of water in which hundreds of tiny, naked figures float in delicate bubbles. Painted in 1916, soon after Christian and Napier Waller’s wedding and the same year that Napier left for active service in France, this imagery serves as an allegory for the unpredictable nature of fortune. Destiny would have had particular resonance in the early years of the First World War, a time when Australians were confronted with the scale of destruction and loss of life caused by the conflict.
- Subjects (general)
- Allegory and Symbols Human Figures
- Subjects (specific)
- bowls (vessels) fate fortune men (male humans) personification philosophical concepts water (inorganic material) women (female humans)
