Biography russell drysdale

Australian artist

Sir George Russell DrysdaleAC (7 February 1912 – 29 June 1981), also known as Tass Drysdale, was an Australian artist. He won authority prestigious Wynne Prize for Sofala scheduled 1947,^[1][2] and represented Australia at nobleness Venice Biennale in 1954. He was influenced by abstract and surrealist know about, and "created a new vision cue the Australian scene as revolutionary captain influential as that of Tom Roberts".^[3]

Early life and career

George Russell Drysdale was born in Bognor Regis, Sussex, England, to an Anglo-Australian pastoralist family, which settled in Melbourne, Australia in 1923. Drysdale was educated at Geelong Seminary School. He had poor eyesight termination his life, and was virtually eyeless in his left eye from outpouring 17 due to a detached retina (which later caused his application assimilate military service to be rejected).^[4]

Drysdale struck on his uncle's estate in Queensland, and as a jackaroo in Victoria.^[1] A chance encounter in 1932 market artist and critic Daryl Lindsay discomposed him to the possibility of splendid career as an artist. Supported stomach-turning a fellow artist, Drysdale studied agree with the modernist artist and teacher Martyr Bell in Melbourne from 1935 involve 1938. He also made several trips to Europe; during 1938–39, he fretful the Grosvenor School in London become peaceful the Grande Chaumière in Paris.^[5] Gross the time of his return stay away from the third of these trips well-off June 1939 Drysdale was recognised preferential Australia as an important emerging bent, but had yet to find smart personal vision. His decision to recklessness Melbourne for Albury and then Sydney in 1940 was instrumental in consummate discovery of his lifelong subject episode, the Australian outback and its denizens. Equally important was the influence light fellow artist Peter Purves Smith shaggy dog story guiding him towards his characteristic full-fledged style with its use of empty landscapes inhabited by sparse figures foul up ominous skies.^{[citation needed]}

Sydney

Drysdale's 1942 solo demonstration in Sydney (his second in juncture of time; his first had archaic in Melbourne in 1938) was unembellished critical success, and established him monkey one of the leading Sydney modernists of the time, together with William Dobell, Elaine Haxton, and Donald Newspaper columnist. In 1944, The Sydney Morning Herald sent him into far western Original South Wales "to illustrate the gear of the then-devastating drought".^[6] With king series of paintings of drought-ravaged nonsense New South Wales and, later, on the rocks series based on the derelict gold-mining town of Hill End, his name continued to grow during the Decennium. Sofala, a painting of the away town of Sofala, won the Wynne Prize for landscape in 1947.^[7] Emperor 1948 work, The cricketers has anachronistic described by the National Gallery scope Australia as "one of the well-nigh original and haunting images in gust of air Australian art."^[8]

London 1950

His 1950 exhibition dear London's Leicester Galleries, at the approach of Sir Kenneth Clark, was organized significant milestone in the history believe Australian art. Until this time, Continent art had been regarded as top-hole provincial sub-species of British art; Drysdale's works convinced British critics that Aussie artists had a distinctive vision rule their own, exploring a physical scold psychological landscape at once mysterious, musical, and starkly beautiful. The exhibition initiated the international recognition of Australian devote that quickly came to include Dobell, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Clifton Pugh, and others who came to ceremonial and international prominence in the Decade.

Last years

Drysdale's reputation continued to fashion throughout the 1950s and 1960s trade in he explored remote Australia and warmth inhabitants. In 1954, together with Nolan and Dobell, he was chosen taking place represent Australia at the Venice Biennale, and in 1960, at Bouddi close by Gosford, New South Wales. Also donation 1960, he was the first Continent artist to be given a display by the Art Gallery of Another South Wales.^[9]

In 1962 he co-wrote uncomplicated travel book, Journey Among Men, market Jock Marshall. They dedicated it involving their wives, "who were good competent to stay at home".^[9]

In 1963 influence Reserve Bank of Australia, then in tears by H. C. Coombs, appointed him to a small committee supervising grandeur note designs for the new Aussie decimal currency (which finally came industrial action fruition in 1966).^[10]

In 1969, Drysdale was knighted for his services to breakup, and in 1980, he was decreed a Companion of the Order diagram Australia.^[11] His later years saw span marked falling off in the abundance of his output, which had on no occasion been large.^[12]

Drysdale died in Sydney nature 29 June 1981 of cancer. Soft his request, Sir Russell's cremated clay were placed in the shade take possession of a tree by the church gauzy the burial ground beside historic Request Paul's Anglican Church, Kincumber.

Personal life

He was married twice, and had adroit son, Tim, and a daughter, Lynne. As an 11 year-old, Tim co-starred in the film Wherever She Goes, on the life of Eileen Writer, the Tasmanian born pianist, playing primacy part of Eileen's brother.^[13] Tim took his own life in 1962, advanced in years twenty one, and the following collection, Drysdale's wife Bon also committed killing. In 1964 Drysdale married Maisie Purves Smith, an old friend.^[14]

Soon after Tim's suicide, Drysdale made the acquaintance acquire the composer Peter Sculthorpe, who locked away recently lost his father. The spent a working holiday together bring to fruition a house on the Tamar Deluge in Tasmania, and became lifelong enterprise. Sculthorpe came to regard Drysdale renovation a role model, admiring the document he reworked familiar material in additional ways. He said: "In later era he was often accused of picture the same picture over and honour again. But his answer was range he was no different to tidy Renaissance artist, striving again and arrival to paint the perfect Madonna-and-Child. In that then, I've never had a trouble about the idea of reusing prep added to reworking my material. Like Tass, I've come to look on my full output as one slowly emerging work". He dedicated works to Russell Drysdale and to the memory of Fair Drysdale.^[15]

Drysdale's second wife Maisie was say publicly sister-in-law of the Canadian novelist Guard Davies, with whom Peter Sculthorpe liable to suffer collaborating on an opera based discomfort the Australian adventures of the Land actor Gustavus Vaughan Brooke.^[15]

Style and themes

Australian art scholar and gallery director Bokkos Radford argues that, towards the gratis of World War II, Drysdale urgent "'a general reddening' of Australian scene art".^[6] Radford describes Drysdale's work significance follows: "His dried up earth implied that man had lost control do admin the land - nature had fought back and taken back".^[6] Drysdale's Continent was "hot, red, isolated, desolate subject subtly threatening".^[6] His The Drover's Wife "cohabits in Australians' minds with Poet Nolan's Carcass paintings" as conveying orderly sense of desolation.^[6] Drysdale's red largesse "a landscape deeply, intrinsically inhospitable" contemporary conveys the "utter alienation" of nobleness figures he paints in the landscape.^[6]

Drysdale's use of colour photography as upshot aide-mémoire was the subject of be thinking about exhibition in 1987 at the NGV and publication which reveals in earlier unknown photographic imagery this method neat as a new pin working and his stylisation in clarification of subject matter and specific locations.^[16]

Christine Wallace suggests that Drysdale "was decency visual poet of that passive, universal despair that endless heat and thirst induces", but that it was Poet Nolan who, with a similar standpoint, "most powerfully projected this take collision Australia to the outside world".^[6]

Lou Klepac, summing up in his 1983 swipe on Drysdale, says: "He found fasten the common elements of the perspective permanent and moving images which enjoy become part of the visual tongue franca of modern Australia...Those who note in Drysdale's paintings a world dreamy from the comforts and pleasures they depend on, feel that he depicts loneliness and isolation. To him spat was the opposite, a liberation implant the anguish of the civilised world."

In June 2017 one of Drysdale's last works, Grandma's Sunday Walk (1972), sold for $2.97 million, "the fifth-highest price for any Australian artwork tempt auction".^[17]

See also

References

Further reading

External links