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

ii roe 24 NOW sitY141 Heysen in Sydney. Hans Heysen is probably best known to the public by paint- ings in the style of "Woodside Pastoral" at his current show at David Jones's, Sydney. There are cows in it, there is hay- stack, there is the afternoon light glowing through the foliage of gum -trees, and in the distance the ranges lie warm and asleep in the sun. It is a watercolor that has many times been reproduced ; or at any rate one very like it has ; the N. S. Wales National Gallery sells a print of a similar paint- ing, with willows instead of gums. So you think, maybe, here is Heysen again ; admirable, of course, but familiar. And you may think, too, that gum -trees, cows, haystacks and afternoon light are suspicious phenomena to encounter in a painting, being the conventional symbols of rustic poetry, the sort of things that in the hands of the sxond- rate daubers of the populr.r art - shops become harrowingly sentimental. Then you look at "Woodside Pastoral" again and suddenly, because here it has been done by a master of watercolor and an artist with a profoundly sensitive and personal response !ia nature, the picture becomes superb. The light floods magnificently through the trees ; the whole painting glows with heat and rejoices with the rich- ness of the earth ; it becomes the very embodiment of the poetry of afternoon in the country ; peace and warmth and fertility. So then you may reflect that, after all, it takes a certain bold- ness and sturdiness of mind to tackle the obviously romantic aspects of nature instead of run- ning into a corner to try some wild experiment so as to be sure of being "different" ; and that this painting is indeed different from either facile romanticism or facile experiment because of its technical mastery and because it is a perfect expression of the artist's inner vision as well as of the countryside it depicts. The lavishness and warmth of this picture, which you get again in "Woodside Country," are probably the strongest character- istics of Heysen's art. But many other aspects reveal themselves in the exhibition. The large pencil-drawings show his staunch qualities as a draftsman. "Spring Skies, Balhannah" and "The Green Valley" as well as "Wood- side Country" show the force and freshness of his skies, always alive with light and astonishingly crisp with movement. The jagged masses of "In the Brachina Gorge," the red earth of "Foothills of the Arkabas" with the hot color caught up again in the pinks of the sky, the massive rock and blazing light of "Guardian of the Brachina Gorge" and the broad and lovely simplicity of "Sunrise, Aroona Valley" with its one red triangle of mountain rearing against the soft undulations of the ranges, remind us that Heysen was the first to discover the delight of painting The Centre with its clarity of atmosphere and sharp- ness of outline, and that nobody has ever painted it so well. Above all the exhibition as a whole displays Heysen as a harmonist in color. "Frosty Morning, Oakbank" in its cool and subtle purples, "The Green Valley" rolling in emerald to the mauve of the distance, and "The Drinking Pool, Ambleside" with its colonnade of gum -tree boles in green and silver-these three OYAulletra large watercolors are of quite exceptional beauty. Heysen is, of course, one of the great figures in Australian art ; there is no reason why we should value his work less than that of Cotman or Peter de Wint, the masters of English water- color in its best period. It is a privilege to see his exhibition in New South Wales. It consists partly of recent work for sale, partly of water- colors from his earli:r periods loaned from various collections, covering a total of 50 years. While a much larger exhibition would be needed to show his full range and variety, we have here a rich and invigorating summary of his achievement: a repre- sentative of Australian art in its most robust and truly national expression, still painting with undiminished vitality and con- tinually exploring the resources of his medium and the Austra- lian earth be loves so deeply for new expressions of his vision.