Wieneke Archive Book 4d : Artists - Australian & Other Presscuttings

FAtURES, PERSONALITIES, BOOK REVIEWS, ARTS AND OTHER GOOD READING alks about his $1,200 book rysdale's eople Drysdale may earn the future historian's title of the linter of the true Australia. His harsh colours, ye distances and strong individuals hang on walls the world. When they change hands, which isn't iey sell for many thousands of dollars. .1 painter who found his work a struggle, Drysdale a slim output for more than a decade since his work Jch an enormous impact on postwar Australia. Now prepared a collection of drawings for publication as a collector's item of 500 numbered and signed copies. re of these will be fully bound in leather and contain the originals; they will cost $1,200 each. The 1g 455, quarter bound in leather, will cost $375 each. ill be published at the end of the year by the Id Hill Press, of Melbourne. JILL SYKES was granted terview. `low they came to mind. Stock- reakers. family groups, children, . . you know, all those kinds of a grocer's shop which I remember ?as young. It was north-east of Al- e I used to take the stock horses to ore is still there, run as a museum. cedar drawers labelled with play- as run by a German and I always r opening the drawers to serve out spices. The kids would come in hat ..." >lit a sketch of a young girl who f the figures in a drawing he has book collection, of this shop, tas stayed with him for nearly 50 ear from his pen in 1979. >uld never have pictured himself those days. Though born in Eng- tors were pioneers in Australia's agar industries, and he came to as a child. He studied ,at Geelong temen his working life on the land. 24 when 1 started painting seri- :, en a jackcroo and a station neen bossing men around - and a school and I was a student. seriously what my masters said. )Ider, you feel you have a lot of p. There is no fooling about." ? as luckier than most ma- n the Depression of the 30s: he I the backing of a private income. ntemporaries who emildn't keep and others who managed it only :ial assistance. "And then there :ivd, surrounded by a family of aid never have let him do anything had enough to paint without at other jobs at the same time - >mmons, mind you. I remember or 16 years after I had really g. my accountant rang to eon- ' le said, 'You are now earning asic wage.' " tar, materials were as much a ri,oney. Drysdale recalls that .'rtists were generous with paint - )1r equipment and, when Donald war artist, that helped toy. Sketch of a young girl at the grocery shop "1 came across a lot of old drawings the other day, some of them from that time," he said, going over to a bulging folder. "It is odd. You come across these things. I had forgotten I even had them here. The War Memorial wrote to me and asked if I had any drawings from Sir Russell Drysdale ... "Something suddenly sets you off and you come up and start scribbling." books I had illustrated during the war. I dug these up and gave them 15 or lb." For me, it was a treasure chest. On scrappy, often grubby bits of paper were the beginnings of familiar paintings I knew only from repro- ductions or as hallowed exhibits untouchable on gallery walls. In pencil, pen and occasionally watercolours were all these first, swift studies. Landscape with Figures. The Cricketers. A por- trait of a very young and beautiful Donald Friend in Army gear. How did he select the medium for his draw- ings - this one in pen, for example? "Probably because I didn't have anything but a pen to do it with. " I kept trying to slow him down as he riffled through two decades of his career, long- ing to wonder over them and fix them in my mina. But he only stopped once, at a pencilled group: "Never did that painting. It was a country funeral . . ." Drysdale's paintings have sometimes at- tracted as much publicity for their notoriety as for their artistic value. i Ic shrugs his shoulders and says it didn't matter to him. one way or another. But at least he got a laugh out of the furore aroused in Adelaide when Woman in a Landscape won the Melrose Prize in 1949 and was bought by the National Gallery of South Australia. "Louis McCubbin, who was director of the gallery at the time, came out and had a feed one day when I had just finished it. He wanted to put it in the Melrose Prize, but I told him it had to go into a show here first. It didn't arouse any particular comment in Sydney, but apparently people were very upset about it in Adelaide." fle referred to Geoffrey Dutton's in- troduction to a book about his work published by Thames and Hudson. from which I cannot resist quoting a letter to one of the Adelaide papers. "A lady visiting Adelaide from a station in the Northern Territory wrote that: 'No out- back Australian woman of white blood would be found, except perhaps in the most remote areas of our country, with such hideous prop- ortions and apparel as the artist portrays. Hav- ing lived and imbued myself in the outback life of Central Australian pastoral activity for 17 years, I can honestly say that I have never seen a white woman constructed and clad in the man- ner Russell Drysdale has shown.' " 'The artist's reaction, then as now, was amused puzzlement: "She was Big Edna, after all. And a fine woman she was." A Sydney Morning Herald columnist com- mented a year later that the London exhibition by Russell Drysdale would not do much good to the reputation of our scenery and climate: "Those hideous tin -roof townships which he depicts; the empty, eroded wastelands; the bush children playing among bits of old corrugated iron; the Greek cafe proprietor staring dully into the sunburnt street - they are crlough it, make any prospective English tourist cancel his passage to Australia immediately." This comment is valuable for setting the con- text in which Drysdale was working in the 1940s and even into the 1950s: so few people, in Australia as well as beyond it. had the sligh- test idea of life outside the cities. By distilling the experience of his own travels, he presented a new view of this continent. But even when his name had become legend- ary, he couldn't escape public displeasure for his work. As recently as 1969, his portrait of Sir John Gorton aroused heated discussion and never did find its way into Federal Parlia- continued on following page POTTS POINT IDEAL NEAR CITY HOMES SPACIOUS 2 BEDROOM UNITS AMAZING VALUE wow+ 4§. AM. DARLINGHURST GRAND OPENING SMART STUDIOS OR 1