Fred Williams OBE (1927-1982), painter and etcher, grew up in Melbourne, leaving school at fourteen to commence an apprenticeship and study at the National Gallery School. His unique landscape vision emerged in the late 1950s, after his return to Melbourne from a period of study and work in London. In 1963, he signed with the Sydney dealer Rudy Komon, who paid him a retainer of £80 per month, enabling him to stop working at a framing shop and buy a house on two acres of land at Upwey in the Dandenong ranges. There, he would paint out of doors, bring his canvases home and hang them in the house, to consider and refine them over time. Over the 1960s his paintings were to become increasingly minimal, reaching their austere extreme at the end of the decade. Easily mistaken for the side of a tent, the canvas in this picture is Sapling forest 1962, one of a series of ravishing landscapes Williams made at Sherbrooke Forest in the Dandenongs, habitat of the tall mountain ash. The work is now in the Huntington collection at the University of Texas, Austin.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2001. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
The series 'David Moore: From Face to Face' was acquired as a gift of the artist and with financial assistance from Timothy Fairfax AC and L Gordon Darling AC CMG 2001.
© Lisa, Michael, Matthew and Joshua Moore
http://davidmoorephotography.com.au/
David Moore (79 portraits)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
1 May 2014
In Persuasion (1818), a long walk on a fine autumn day affords Anne Elliot an opportunity to ruminate wistfully and at great length upon declining happiness, youth and hope.
Michael Desmond discusses Fred Williams' portraits of friends, artist Clifton Pugh, David Aspden and writer Stephen Murray-Smith, and the stylistic connections between his portraits and landscapes.
