Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

in London, told of going to the music hall with him: You'd wait in a long queue and pay your two bob and then you'd run like hell up these stairs to get a good position. He (Williams) used to go for the front of the gods, so that he'd get a good position for seeing the stage. He just went there ... with his sketchpad and pen ... it's surprising but there was sufficient light to see ... they were just notes really — notes which he would work from ... and that were just to prompt his memory .7 These graphic notes, usually made with charcoal, red chalk or crayon on paper, formed the basis of the music hall prints, one of the two series that Williams made during his years in London.8Some of the still extant drawings often reveal a strong connection with the resulting prints, in which the intricacies of etching, drypoint, aquatint and other intaglio methods still reflect the immediacy ofWilliams's vision and communicate his enjoyment of the experience to the viewer. On occasion Williams would draw directly onto a prepared copper etching plate with an etching needle while watching the performance. This was the case with the first etching that Williams ever made, Tumblers 1954-55.9A simple line etching depicting a pair of acrobats somersaulting across the stage of the Chelsea Palace, Tumblers is a direct translation of Williams's drawing into a print medium. Little man juggling 1954-55 is more characteristic of most of the music hall prints, owing to its technical complexity and the considered nature of its development. In the first state of this print, Williams etched the figure and through rough biting the plate created a tonal effect across the surface of the resulting print.10Proofs were then taken from the plate in order for Williams to assess the image and decide how to proceed. At some stage Williams tore these in half, apparently dissatisfied with their appearance — they have since been repaired.1 In the next state, Williams added a layer of aquatint to the background so that the figure was convincingly situated in a three-dimensional space on the stage. The juggling man's hair and feet are also painted with ink, revealing Williams's thought process as he experimented and determined how to proceed; in a future state, he used aquatint and an engraved outline in order to darken these areas. Further work was then done on the plate until, in the sixth and final state, Williams was satisfied with the result. Fred Williams Tumblers 1954-55 Etching on paper 10.5x12.4cm Purchased 1994 Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant Celebrating the Queensland Art Gallery's Centenary 1895-1995 The experimentation and exhaustively worked variations, so characteristic of Williams's printed oeuvre, also incorporated the occasional production of counterproofs. In the final state of Little man juggling, Williams made a single counterproof by passing the freshly printed and still wet impression back through the press with another sheet of paper, thus transferring a mirror image to the new sheet. Although unique within Williams's oeuvre in that, in its initial conception, Little man 1955-56 involved an element of collaboration, the works depicting this dwarf-like performer are characteristic of the artist's working method. Williams and Selwyn Tebbutt, an Australian friend who also lived at the Sumner Place boarding house, visited the music hall together, where Tebbutt made a brown chalk drawing of the little man. Williams then translated this image into a linocut, having first been introduced to, and experimented with, the relief medium in 195212Crudely carved and printed, this image offers little information other than the squat shape and outline of the performer who wears a suit, bowler hat and white cravat. It is in the etching of this subject that Williams resolves some of the formal difficulties of the image, placing the little man on a stage and adding detail to his face, hands and costume. The angularity of the etched figure owes much to the awkward style of Tebbutt's drawing, and the addition of the letters AT, for 'after Tebbutt', at both sides of the stage, acknowledges Tebbutt's role in its production. During the same period, Williams repeated this subject in a gouache drawing and large oil painting. Ten years later, following his return to Melbourne, he repeated it again in a small oil on canvas.13Spanning more than a decade, this group of images exemplifies Williams's working method of constant review and renewal, which was established during the five years he spent in London. Encompassing repetition of a subject and experimentation with media and scale, as well as the development of pictorial detail, it describes the gradual process through which Williams refined his visual language and by which his stated goal of making 'good pictures' was attained. The intaglio prints that Williams made in London were produced at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in Southampton Row, where he used the printmaking facilities from 1954. Anecdotal stories, such as the one about Williams's landlady reprimanding the young artist for dissolving the base of his new saucepan with etching acid, tell us that Williams also worked on his plates at home.14 Partly due to Williams's limited financial means during his years in London, where he could barely afford to buy paper for printing, many impressions of the London etchings were actually printed at the Melbourne Technical College (now the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology), following his return to Australia in 1956. As he was compelled to pawn his surplus clothes in order to pay for the return freight of his luggage, much of the work Williams produced in London was left behind. Along with about two hundred drawings, some landscapes painted in gouache and a small group of oil paintings, the etching plates were brought home. From 1957 until 1976 Williams continued to work on the music hall plates, developing them into further states or experimenting with prints on different textured and coloured papers. The open- ended nature of this practice was also a consequence of both Williams's insistent belief that there was always the possibility of improvement, and his willingness, and at times, stubborn commitment, to continue working with a subject until its full pictorial potential had been reached. 242 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965