Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

Wilson had been exposed to in Europe. In these paintings, the second of two series, Wilson has used a tonal technique of cross-hatching with thick impasto.20 Buildings and streets are abstracted blocks of usually pale matter, their solid mass dissected by the trunks of trees and lampposts. Form and colour are simplified. Solitary and faceless figures inhabit wet and chilly streets and there is a disconcerting stillness, as if time itself — not simply the landscape — is frozen. In Snow on the Rue Poulettier, Paris c.1945 (QAG), people do not engage with one another but turn their backs in a human reflection of the icy landscape. There is something quite poignant in these paintings — scenes of the Seine, Pont Neuf, Dordrecht canals, London streets — almost as ifWilsons memory of these places was fading before his eyes. The paintings are peopled by ghosts, perhaps those of the old men that Wilson tended at the hospital, whose sad faces he depicted in several drawings and paintings from 1942 to 1944. Just before his death, at the age of 35, Wilson appears to have moved closer to a surrealistic approach, as his drawing The pool 1946 and a series of landscapes of Wantabadgery, the New South Wales rural property of Sir Keith Murdoch, would seem to indicate. In the former, the faintly sinister arrangement of dead fish, rope and surreal rock forms is heightened by the softly hatched crayon. The sensation is claustrophobic — of being on the bottom of the seabed rather than on its surface, trapped as surely as the fish in the net. Wilsons death ended a career that still had some way to travel. Seeing his work as a whole, it is clear that he moved between styles — from naturalism to abstraction and back again — as he felt the subject matter dictated, restricting his use of abstraction to still life (and other inanimate objects), and using a naturalistic representation for landscape or people. Each style had its strengths and weaknesses and was chosen by Wilson to draw attention to particular aspects of the subject, though it was what he termed 'the plastic values' that attracted him: In whatever idiom chosen for expression, plastic values are my main consideration. It is this emphasis on the architectural quality — the orchestration of the formal elements into a symphonic whole — that I find most sympathy with in the modern movement. I don't feel that the abstraction of form is in any way incompatible with a realistic approach to the subject, and the works of the Old Masters have been a great source of inspiration to me for this quality as well as for their craftsmanship.21 It is Wilson's ability to move so easily between the visual languages of realistic and abstracted representation that makes this body of work so interesting for a modern audience. His orchestral talent (to continue his metaphor) has endowed us with an impressive and poignant legacy. Dr Candice Bruce is the former Curator, Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery 1993-95 and is now an independent curator and consultant in Sydney. Eric Wilson Snow on the Rue Poulettier, Paris c.1945 Oil on canvas 131.4x98cm Gift of the Godfrey Rivers Trust 1946 Queensland Art Gallery Eric Wilson The pool 1946 Crayon on cardboard 62.5x83.5cm Purchased 1962 Queensland Art Gallery THE LANGUAGES OF MODERN ART 157