John Olsen AO OBE (1928–2023), painter, was one of the major figures in 20th-century Australian art. Born in Newcastle, he studied art in Sydney with Antonio Dattilo Rubbo and at the Julian Ashton Art School and held his first exhibition in 1955. At this time, he and his friend Robert Klippel were trying to 'paint of the bloodstream' – to commit to the act of painting as a total experience, a totality of random sensations. The pair's 1956 exhibition launched abstract expressionism on the Sydney art scene. Olsen was hailed as a master immediately, and in 1957 a Sydney businessman paid him to go to Majorca to paint. Returning to Sydney in 1960, he cemented his reputation with a series of views of Sydney Harbour and the You Beaut Country series. Over the 1980s and 1990s Olsen's work became increasingly meditative, as he explored ways to express 'a certain mystical throbbing throughout nature'. He won the Archibald Prize with the scratchy, abstract Self-portrait, Janus-faced in 2005.
Fred Williams OBE, painter and etcher, was one of the most important Australian artists of the twentieth century. His unique landscape vision emerged in the late 1950s, after his return from a period of study and work in London. The 1960s saw an increasing minimalism in his paintings, which reached its most extreme point at the end of the decade. In his monumental works of 1969, he attempted to evoke the vast scale of the Australian land through canvases of a single colour dotted with tiny flecks of paint. Although Williams later turned to representation of denser, more colourful terrain, his bare, uncompromising pictures of the 1960s contributed profoundly to subsequent interpretation of the Australian landscape. Williams made a number of portraits of friends and family members, particularly during the 1970s. He completed his first portrait commission, of Sir Louis Matheson, first Vice Chancellor of Monash University, in 1976; portraits of University of Melbourne figures followed. The National Portrait Gallery has his self portrait at the easel, and his portrait of Murray Bail, with whom he served on the Council of the National Gallery of Australia. Subjects of his other masterly portraits include Rudy Komon and John Brack.
Gift of the artist 2001
© Murray Walker
Murray Walker (1 portrait)
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.
