Frederick Ronald Williams
OBE (23 January 192722 April 1982) was an Australian
painter and
printmaker. He was one of Australia’s most important artists, and one of the twentieth century's major
landscapists. He had more than seventy solo exhibitions during his career in Australian galleries, as well as the exhibition ''Fred Williams - Landscapes of a Continent'' at the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in
New York in 1977.
Early life and education
Fred Williams was born on 23 January 1927 in
Richmond
Richmond most often refers to:
* Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States
* Richmond, London, a part of London
* Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England
* Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada
* Richmond, California, ...
, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia,
the son of an electrical engineer and a Richmond housewife.
Williams left school at 14 and was apprenticed to a firm of Melbourne shopfitters and box makers.
From 1943 to 1947 he studied at the
National Gallery School, Melbourne, at first part-time and then full-time from 1945 at the age of 18. The Gallery School was traditional and academic, with a long and prestigious history. He also began lessons under
George Bell George Bell may refer to:
Law and politics
* George Joseph Bell (1770–1843), Scottish jurist and legal author
* George Alexander Bell (1856–1927), Canadian pioneer and Saskatchewan politician
* George Bell (Canadian politician) (1869–1940) ...
the following year, who had his own art school in Melbourne. This continued until 1950. Bell was a conservative modern artist but a very influential teacher.
Between 1952 and 1956, Williams studied part-time at the Chelsea School of Art,
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
(now
Chelsea College of Art and Design
Chelsea College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London based in London, United Kingdom, and is a leading British art and design institution with an international reputation.
It offers further education, further ...
) and in 1954 he did an etching course at the
Central School of Arts and Crafts
The Central School of Art and Design was a public art school, school of fine arts, fine and applied arts in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1896 by the London County Council as the Central ...
. He lived in a
South Kensington
South Kensington, nicknamed Little Paris, is a district just west of Central London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically it settled on part of the scattered Middlesex village of Brompton. Its name was supplanted with ...
bedsit and subsidised his art practice by working part-time at Savage’s picture framers.
Williams returned to Melbourne in 1956, when his family was able to send him a cheap ticket aboard a ship bringing visitors to the
Melbourne Olympics
The 1956 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, from 22 November to 8 December 1956, with the exception of the equestrian events, whi ...
.
He had work included in the 'Recent Australian Painting' exhibition at the
Whitechapel Gallery
The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fir ...
, London, and 'Australian Painting: Colonial, Impressionism, Modern' at the
Tate Gallery
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
.
Work
After mainly working with figures in early paintings and etchings, he began painting landscapes after returning to Melbourne in 1957, which remained the major theme in his art.
While learning etching and printing in London, he produced vivid caricatured sketches of contemporary London life. It was during this period that he established his method of reworking the same motif a number of times in a number of mediums and very often over a number of years.
As an artist concerned with form over subjectivity, Williams' approach struck a jarring note against the unity of many of his close associates such as
John Brack
John Brack (10 May 1920 – 11 February 1999) was an Australian painter, and a member of the Antipodeans group. According to one critic, Brack's early works captured the idiosyncrasies of their time "more powerfully and succinctly than any Aust ...
,
Arthur Boyd
Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd (24 July 1920 – 24 April 1999) was a leading Australian painter of the middle to late 20th century. Boyd's work ranges from impressionist renderings of Australian landscape to starkly expressionist figuration, ...
and
Charles Blackman
Charles Raymond Blackman (12 August 1928 – 20 August 2018) was an Australian painter, noted for the ''Schoolgirl, Avonsleigh'' and ''Alice in Wonderland'' series of the 1950s. He was a member of the Antipodeans, a group of Melbourne painter ...
, the authors of the famous ‘Antipodean’ manifesto of 1959. Williams' work was excluded from their major exhibition. As heirs to the
expressionist
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
tradition, the Antipodeans lauded a spontaneous, improvised approach to painting and saw the function of art as vested in its expressive potential. They had little time for - and, in fact, denounced - the 'new' art emerging from Europe, the influences which were increasingly informing Williams' development.
On his return to Australia, Williams saw the
aesthetic
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed th ...
potential of the Australian bush in its inherent plasticity. His interest in finding an aesthetic 'language' with which to express the very un-European Australian
landscape
A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...
. This was grounded in establishing a pictorial equivalent to the overwhelmingly vast, primarily flat landscape, in which the traditional European relationship of foreground to background breaks down, necessitating a complete re-imagining of
composition
Composition or Compositions may refer to:
Arts and literature
*Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography
*Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...
al space. In this, Williams looked to the approach taken by
Australian Aboriginal
Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Islands ...
artists.
He did this by tilting the landscape up against the
picture plane
In painting, photography, graphical perspective and descriptive geometry, a picture plane is an image plane located between the "eye point" (or '' oculus'') and the object being viewed and is usually coextensive to the material surface of the w ...
, so that frequently the only indicator of horizontal recession is the presence of a
horizon
The horizon is the apparent line that separates the surface of a celestial body from its sky when viewed from the perspective of an observer on or near the surface of the relevant body. This line divides all viewing directions based on whether i ...
line, or where clumps of trees huddle closer together towards the horizon, suggesting recession. Where no horizon is visible, the landscape runs fully parallel to the picture plane, as in the major
You Yangs
The You Yangs are a series of granite ridges that rise up to above the flat and low-lying Werribee Plain in southern Victoria, Australia, approximately due west of the rural town of Little River, southwest of Melbourne CBD and north of Ge ...
series of the mid-1960s. Here, calligraphic knots of pigment indicate the presence of single trees against the earth, as if seen from the air
example.
Williams' first Australian landscape series was based on the
Nattai River
The Nattai River, a perennial river that is part of the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment, is located in the Southern Highlands region of New South Wales, Australia.
Course and features
The Nattai River rises on the Mittagong Range within the Great ...
(1957–58).
Williams' landscapes recorded the passage of the
Yarra River
The Yarra River or historically, the Yarra Yarra River, ( Kulin languages: ''Berrern'', ''Birr-arrung'', ''Bay-ray-rung'', ''Birarang'', ''Birrarung'', and ''Wongete'') is a perennial river in south-central Victoria, Australia.
The lower s ...
from its source to its mouth.
In 1960, Williams was invited to enter for the
Helena Rubenstein
Helena Rubinstein (born Chaja Rubinstein; December 25, 1870 – April 1, 1965) was a Poland, Polish and United States, American businesswoman, art collector, and philanthropist. A cosmetics entrepreneur, she was the founder and eponym of Helena ...
Travelling Art Scholarship, the richest and most prestigious art prize at the time with an award of £1000 plus £300 travel expenses aimed at giving the winner overseas experience.
[Mollison (p. 48.)] Five paintings were required for his entry and he selected ''Landscape with a steep road'' (1957), ''Landscape with a building I'' (c. 1957–58), ''The forest pond'' (c. 1959–60), ''Sherbrooke Forest'' (1960) and ''The St George River'' (1960).
He won in 1963 and it proved to be a turning point in his career which, according to fellow artist Jan Senbergs, brought Williams wide acclaim, especially from many influential curators and critics.
Sydney art dealer
Rudy Komon
Rudolph John Komon MBE (21 June 190827 October 1982) was a Viennese-born Czech-Australian art dealer, gallery director, benefactor and wine connoisseur. He had a great influence on the burgeoning artistic life of Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. ...
took Williams on as one of his key artists which enabled Williams to discontinue his part-time work with a Melbourne picture-framer and paint full-time.
In 1969, Williams started using a horizontal strip format in his landscape paintings in order to present different aspects of one scene on the same sheet.
In 1970, Williams produced a group of four large strip format gouache-on-paper paintings called the ''West Gate Bridge series'' showing the half-constructed
West Gate Bridge
The West Gate Bridge is a steel, box girder, cable-stayed bridge in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, spanning the Yarra River just north of its mouth into Port Phillip. It carries the West Gate Freeway and is a vital link between the inner ...
over the
Yarra River
The Yarra River or historically, the Yarra Yarra River, ( Kulin languages: ''Berrern'', ''Birr-arrung'', ''Bay-ray-rung'', ''Birarang'', ''Birrarung'', and ''Wongete'') is a perennial river in south-central Victoria, Australia.
The lower s ...
in
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
.
A section of the bridge collapsed on 15 October 1970, while it was still under construction, killing thirty-five workers. Williams had planned to paint the length of the river, but his widow, Lyn said he "lost heart in the project" after the accident.
In his ''Beachscape with bathers Queenscliff'' I-IV series from 1971, Williams painted from the top of a cliff overlooking the beach during a seaside holiday.
Each sheet is broken horizontally into four separate strips representing a different time of day and corresponding shift in the colour and tone of the scene as Williams recorded the effects of light on the landscape.
By 1971 he had developed the technique extensively, moving from a vertical format to a horizontal format.
In March 1974, Williams travelled to
Erith Island in
Bass Strait
Bass Strait () is a strait separating the island state of Tasmania from the Australian mainland (more specifically the coast of Victoria, with the exception of the land border across Boundary Islet). The strait provides the most direct waterwa ...
with the historians
Stephen Murray-Smith
Stephen Murray-Smith AM (9 September 1922 – 31 July 1988) was an Australian writer, editor and educator.
Early life and education
Murray-Smith's father ran a lucrative business shipping Australian horses to India for the armed forces. It ena ...
and
Ian Turner, and fellow painter
Clifton Pugh
Clifton Ernest Pugh AO, (17 December 1924 – 14 October 1990) was an Australian artist and three-time winner of Australia's Archibald Prize. One of Australia's most renowned and successful painters, Pugh was strongly influenced by German Expr ...
.
Poor weather prevented Williams and his friends from leaving the island when they had intended.
When the weather broke Williams painted a number of gouaches, including ''Beachscape, Erith Island'' I and II which employ the horizontal strip format.
The ''Beachscape, Erith Island'' pictures show the point where the sea joins the land depicted as if looking down from above in the form of four strips.
Williams recorded the event in his diary from 27–28 March 1974, "I do 'strip' paintings of the beach using sand glued on – but the wind has worn me to a 'frazzle' … My final half doz. strip paintings are my best."
In May 1976, while Williams and his wife Lyn were visiting Paris and Bologna, many of Williams's paintings and all gouaches stored at the Barrett Malt Factory in Richmond were damaged by a fire.
In 1976, Williams flew over the Northern Territory at night on his way to an art fair in
Bologna
Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...
,
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
. He saw lines of bushfires burning and later that year produced the twelve-sheeted gouache series, ''Bushfire in Northern Territory''.
In February 1979, Williams visited the Lal Lal Falls on the
Moorabool River
The Moorabool River is a river in Victoria, Australia, that runs past several small towns and areas such as Meredith, Anakie, and Staughton Vale (north-west of Geelong). The river joins with the Barwon River at Fyansford.
Bridges
The rive ...
to the west of Melbourne near
Ballarat
Ballarat ( ) is a city in the Central Highlands (Victoria), Central Highlands of Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. At the 2021 Census, Ballarat had a population of 116,201, making it the third largest city in Victoria. Estimated resid ...
and painted the ''Lal Lal polyptych'', a four panel painting that he regarded as a single work.
[Mollison (p. 224.)] The successive canvases of the polyptych depict the changes in light on the waterfall and the surrounding landscape.
Williams painted the last of his major landscapes, the four panel ''Waterfall polyptych'' (oil on canvas, each 183.0 cm x 152.5 cm), in his studio in 1979 based on the ''Lal Lal polyptych''.
He described the studio painting as "a major effort on my part" and it is regarded as one of the most important works of his career.
Williams said that his "enthusiasm was fired" by
Eugene von Guérard's ''
Waterfall, Strath Creek'' from 1862.
In the last years of his career, Williams produced more landscape series with strong themes, his last being the
Pilbara
The Pilbara () is a large, dry, thinly populated region in the north of Western Australia. It is known for its Aboriginal peoples; its ancient landscapes; the red earth; and its vast mineral deposits, in particular iron ore. It is also a glo ...
series (1979–81), which remained intact as it was acquired by Con-Zinc
Rio Tinto Group
Rio Tinto Group is an Anglo-Australian Multinational corporation, multinational company that is the world's second-largest metals and mining corporation (behind BHP). The company was founded in 1873 when of a group of investors purchased a mine ...
, the mining company that had invited him to explore the arid north-west region of Australia.
Awards
Williams received a
Helena Rubinstein
Helena Rubinstein (born Chaja Rubinstein; December 25, 1870 – April 1, 1965) was a Polish and American businesswoman, art collector, and philanthropist. A cosmetics entrepreneur, she was the founder and eponym of Helena Rubinstein Incorporat ...
Travelling Art Scholarship in 1963.
In 1976 he was named an Officer of the
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established ...
(OBE), and awarded a Doctorate of Law (Honoris Causa) by
Monash University
Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university has a ...
in 1980.
Williams won the
Wynne Prize
The Wynne Prize is an Australian landscape painting or figure sculpture art prize. As one of Australia's longest-running art prizes, it was established in 1897 from the bequest of Richard Wynne. Now held concurrently with the Sir John Sulman Prize ...
for landscape painting twice; in 1966 with ''Upwey Landscape'' and in 1976 with ''Mt. Kosciusko''.
His painting ''Upwey Landscape'' (1965) sold for $1,987,700 in one of the final auctions of
Christie's
Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...
in Australia in April 2006, which at the time was the second highest price for any work sold at an Australian auction. In September 2007, auction house
Deutscher-Menzies broke their sales record with Williams' ''Landscape with Water Ponds'' (1965) selling for $1,860,000. The most expensive work sold at an Australian auction in 2009 was Williams' 1965 ''Evening Sky, Upwey'', which sold for $1.15 million.
Two of Williams' paintings, ''Dry Creek Bed, Werribee Gorge I'' (1977) and ''Drifting Smoke'' (1981) were included in Quintessence Editions Ltd.'s 2007 edition of ''1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die''. Williams' work is also represented in William Splatt's ''100 Masterpieces of Australian Landscape Painting''.
Personal life
Williams met Lyn Watson in January 1960 while painting at
Sherbrooke
Sherbrooke ( ; ) is a city in southern Quebec, Canada. It is at the confluence of the Saint-François and Magog rivers in the heart of the Estrie administrative region. Sherbrooke is also the name of a territory equivalent to a regional count ...
. They were married in March 1961 and moved to the inner-city suburb of
South Yarra
South Yarra is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 4 km south-east of Melbourne's Melbourne central business district, Central Business District, located within the Cities of City of Melbourne, Melbourne and City of Sto ...
. They had three daughters: Isobel, Louise and Kate. In 1963 the couple moved to
Upwey in the
Dandenong Ranges
The Dandenong Ranges (commonly just The Dandenongs) are a set of low mountain ranges, rising to 633 metres at Mount Dandenong, approximately east of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The ranges consist mostly of rolling hills, steeply weathere ...
outside Melbourne, a location that would have a decisive impact on his work. In 1964 they travelled through
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
on a
Helena Rubenstein
Helena Rubinstein (born Chaja Rubinstein; December 25, 1870 – April 1, 1965) was a Poland, Polish and United States, American businesswoman, art collector, and philanthropist. A cosmetics entrepreneur, she was the founder and eponym of Helena ...
Scholarship. In 1969 Williams moved to
Hawthorn
Hawthorn or Hawthorns may refer to:
Plants
* '' Crataegus'' (hawthorn), a large genus of shrubs and trees in the family Rosaceae
* ''Rhaphiolepis'' (hawthorn), a genus of about 15 species of evergreen shrubs and small trees in the family Rosace ...
, an inner suburb of Melbourne.
Death and legacy
In November 1981, Williams was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.
[Mollison (p. 237.)] He died less than six months later in Hawthorn on 22 April 1982, aged 55.
Fellow artist and friend
John Brack
John Brack (10 May 1920 – 11 February 1999) was an Australian painter, and a member of the Antipodeans group. According to one critic, Brack's early works captured the idiosyncrasies of their time "more powerfully and succinctly than any Aust ...
gave the eulogy at his funeral. He said
Williams' estate
Williams' estate is managed by his widow, Lyn Williams.
Lyn bought a former factory in inner-Melbourne in 1989 and has managed the artist's estate from there since she sorted through his studio at their former home in Hawthorn.
All of the artist's known works have been catalogued on a database.
The building houses Williams' easel, brushes, the leather-bound diaries he kept from 1963 until his death, clipping books, a range of works and includes a gallery for hanging and photographing the artist's works.
Works that are donated to public galleries and museums are prepared there.
In 2009, Lyn Williams completed her ongoing gift to the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) of the prints of Fred Williams.
Major collections
*
Holmes à Court Collection
Holmes may refer to:
Name
* Holmes (surname)
* Holmes (given name)
* Baron Holmes, noble title created twice in the Peerage of Ireland
* Chris Holmes, Baron Holmes of Richmond (born 1971), British former swimmer and life peer
Places
In the ...
Notes
See also
*
Australian art
References
*
*
*
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Fred Williams Image GalleryFred Williamsat the
Art Gallery of New South Wales
The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1883 and 1958, is located in The Domain, Sydney, Australia. It is the most importa ...
Fred Williams, The Later Landscapes, 1975 - 1981, LA Louver galleryFred Williams in Queensland: Exhibition review by Grafico Topico's Sue Smith''Infinite Horizons''- Major retrospective, National Gallery of Australia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Fred
1927 births
1982 deaths
Landscape artists
Alumni of Chelsea College of Arts
People from Richmond, Victoria
Deaths from lung cancer
Australian printmakers
Alumni of the Central School of Art and Design
Wynne Prize winners
20th-century Australian painters
20th-century Australian male artists
20th-century printmakers
Deaths from cancer in Victoria (Australia)
Australian male painters
Artists from Melbourne
National Gallery of Victoria Art School alumni
Australian Officers of the Order of the British Empire