Signed 'Brett Whiteley 1970' lower right 
Provenance: Private collection Sydney
Eva Breuer Art Dealer, Sydney
Literature: S. McGrath, Brett Whiteley, Bay Books, Sydney, 1979, poster illustrated
B. Pearce, Brett Whiteley: Art and Life, Thames and Hudson, Sydney, 1995, refer plate 52 for the poster
no. 4174a

Platypus, 1970 is a rare original mixed-media drawing of a favourite animal subject of Brett Whiteley. His 1965 London Zoo exhibition had featured a platypus sculpture amongst a menagerie of creatures, and the motif is found in a number of Whiteley’s major landscapes and large collaged paintings of the early 1970s. 

In Platypus, the intriguing mixed-media elements are revealed in the baby platypus in the left corner – yellow webbed feet fashioned from a children’s comic book illustration adorned with a single white feather, accompanied by an amusing amalgam of animals drawn. The drawing was later the basis for a silkscreen exhibition poster (illustration of silkscreen based on the above. S. McGrath, Brett Whiteley, Bay Books, Sydney, 1979, p. 226).