David Strachan, painter and printmaker, studied art at the Slade School in London and the Académie de la Grand Chaumière in Paris. After returning to Australia, he enrolled at George Bell’s school in Melbourne before moving to Sydney in 1941. He exhibited landscapes, figurative works and still lifes and became one of the group of artists who travelled regularly to the abandoned NSW mining town of Hill End. His first solo exhibition, held at the Macquarie Galleries in 1944, included this self portrait. During the war he worked as a camouflage painter at Bankstown aerodrome and performed minor roles with Hélène Kirsova’s ballet company. In the 1960s, following another stint living in Paris and London, he started teaching at East Sydney Technical College and exhibited regularly, winning the Wynne Prize in 1961 and 1964. In 1966 he featured alongside Jeffrey Smart, Donald Friend and Justin O’Brien in the National Gallery of Victoria’s exhibition Four Sydney Painters. But in late 1970, just as he was beginning to feel ‘contemporary’, Strachan died as the result of a car accident. The Art Gallery of NSW presented a retrospective exhibition of his work in 1973.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2017
© Estate of David Strachan
David Strachan (age 25 in 1944)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
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Drawn from the National Portrait Gallery collection, this salon-style hang references the lavish 18th- and 19th-century European salons where paintings were hung floor-to-ceiling.
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