The Night Cobb – SOLD

Artist Patrick Kilvington is known for his action-packed paintings, mostly featuring outback life, bush characters, and horses at work. Kilvington remains a firm favourite with many art collectors. His oils made with skilful and sparing brush strokes create a fabulous sense of movement and are an apt portrayal of horses, often captured during exciting moments of movement.

Surprisingly, given his very Australian subject matter, Kilvington was born in the UK in 1922, immigrating to Australia in 1951. In the UK he attended art school in Kent before joining the army in 1939, at the outbreak of World War II. In the army Kilvington attained the rank of Major. One incredible story about Kilvington’s time in the British army was at the end of the war he was detailed to lead a section of men to to Flensberg headquarters of what remained of the German government to arrest Admiral Doenitz, who’d been nominated by Hitler as his successor!

Once in Australia, Kilvngton developed a fondness for rural Australia and the people and way of life of families, farmers, stockmen, and workers on inland properties.

One of Kilvington’s well-known subjects are Cobb and Co coaches, such as this fabulous oil, “The Night Cobb”. Full of intensity and movement, and with a touch of msytery becasue of the nighttime setting, this painting portrays a coach team’s power and strength, as the horses thunder off to their next stop on the night mail run.

Carrying passengers and delivering mail, Cobb & Co coaches serviced parts of northern and central Queensland up until 1924. From the coach days came many colloquialisms, including: “in the box seat”, which meant to sit up front.

Kilvington found Cobb and Co coaches fascinating to paint, particularly the Queensland-made ones known as the “Ships of Charleville”, named so because of their narrow & disproportionately tall appearance, with the top of the load about four and a half metres above ground, travelling at great speed as they rolled over inland coach routes.

Never a dull moment for Kilvington during his life and in his choice of painting subjects!