This stamp issue draws together two of Australia’s leading mid–late 20th-century visual artists – Margaret Olley AC (1923–2011) and John Perceval AO (1923–2000) – representing them through still-life paintings. The stamp issue commemorates the centenary of their births and recognises the significant artistic legacy each has gifted to Australia’s cultural heritage.

Still lifes and interior scenes were centre stage in the work of Margaret Olley, who had a career of more than 60 years. Floral bouquets, precisely arranged fruit and ceramic objects, and evocative domestic settings all capture the intimate texture of her everyday life, recorded brilliantly in oils and acrylics. A consummate portraitist, the artist herself can be seen in several of her paintings, perhaps reflected in a mirror or otherwise positioned unobtrusively. Olley’s carefully composed scenes – strikingly coloured and yet calm in their considered expression – have always made her works popular with critics and the public alike. Olley was also the subject of two Archibald Prize winning portraits.

While Olley was primarily a painter of still lifes, John Perceval has greater renown for his landscapes and ceramics, including an intriguing series of ceramic angels, than for his still lifes. In an homage to Van Gogh, however, he painted several iterations of sunflowers, experimenting with colour variation. Recovering from polio as a teenager, Perceval followed his passion for painting by learning from the great European masters through studying their published works in books. Perceval and his likeminded Melbourne contemporaries, including Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker and Clifton Pugh, rebelled against the traditionalists and were members of the counter-establishment Contemporary Art Society. A leading Australian painter of landscapes during the 1950s and 1960s, Perceval produced his critically acclaimed Williamstown Series and Gaffney Creek Landscapes in the 1950s. In 1960, he was joint winner of the prestigious Wynne Prize for landscape art, with the painting titled Dairy Farm.