Sir George Russell Drysdale (7 February 1912 – 29 June 1981), also known as Tass Drysdale, was an Australian
artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...
. He won the prestigious
Wynne Prize for ''
Sofala
Sofala, at present known as Nova Sofala, used to be the chief seaport of the Mwenemutapa Kingdom, whose capital was at Mount Fura. It is located on the Sofala Bank in Sofala Province of Mozambique. It was founded by Somali merchants. This name ...
'' in 1947,
and represented Australia at the
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
in 1954. He was influenced by abstract and surrealist art, and "created a new vision of the Australian scene as revolutionary and influential as that of
Tom Roberts
Thomas William Roberts (8 March 185614 September 1931) was an English-born Australian artist and a key member of the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism.
After studying in Melbourne, he travelled to Europe ...
".
Early life and career
George Russell Drysdale was born in
Bognor Regis,
Sussex
Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the Englis ...
, England, to an Anglo-Australian pastoralist family, which settled 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 metro ...
, Australia in 1923. Drysdale was educated at
Geelong Grammar School. He had poor eyesight all his life, and was virtually blind in his left eye from age 17 due to a
detached retina (which later caused his application for military service to be rejected).
Drysdale worked on his uncle's estate in
Queensland
)
, nickname = Sunshine State
, image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, establishe ...
, and as a
jackaroo in Victoria.
A chance encounter in 1932 with artist and critic
Daryl Lindsay
Sir Ernest Daryl Lindsay (31 December 1889, in Creswick, Victoria – 25 December 1976, in Mornington), known as Dan Lindsay, was an Australian artist.
Early life
He was the youngest son in a large family born to Anglo-Irish surgeon Robert Ch ...
awakened him to the possibility of a career as an artist. Supported by a fellow artist, Drysdale studied with the modernist artist and teacher
George Bell in Melbourne from 1935 to 1938. He also made several trips to Europe; during 1938–39, he attended the
Grosvenor School in London and the
Grande Chaumière in Paris. By the time of his return from the third of these trips in June 1939 Drysdale was recognised within Australia as an important emerging talent, but had yet to find a personal vision. His decision to leave Melbourne for Albury and then Sydney in 1940 was instrumental in his discovery of his lifelong subject matter, the Australian outback and its inhabitants. Equally important was the influence of fellow artist
Peter Purves Smith
Peter Purves Smith (26 March 191223 July 1949), born Charles Roderick Purves Smith, was an Australian painter. Born in Melbourne, Purves Smith studied at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London and under progressive art teacher George Bel ...
in guiding him towards his characteristic mature style with its use of desolate landscapes inhabited by sparse figures under ominous skies.
Sydney
Drysdale's 1942 solo exhibition in Sydney (his second in point of time; his first had been in Melbourne in 1938) was a critical success, and established him as one of the leading Sydney modernists of the time, together with
William Dobell,
Elaine Haxton
Elaine Alys Haxton, AM (26 September 1909 – 6 July 1999) was an Australian painter, printmaker, designer and commercial artist.
Biography
Haxton was born in the north Melbourne suburb of Newmarket. Her family moved to Sydney when she was a y ...
, and
Donald Friend. In 1944, ''
The Sydney Morning Herald
''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...
'' sent him into far western New South Wales "to illustrate the effects of the then-devastating drought".
With his series of paintings of drought-ravaged western New South Wales and, later, a series based on the derelict gold-mining town of
Hill End, his reputation continued to grow during the 1940s. ''
Sofala
Sofala, at present known as Nova Sofala, used to be the chief seaport of the Mwenemutapa Kingdom, whose capital was at Mount Fura. It is located on the Sofala Bank in Sofala Province of Mozambique. It was founded by Somali merchants. This name ...
'', a painting of the nearby town of
Sofala
Sofala, at present known as Nova Sofala, used to be the chief seaport of the Mwenemutapa Kingdom, whose capital was at Mount Fura. It is located on the Sofala Bank in Sofala Province of Mozambique. It was founded by Somali merchants. This name ...
, won the Wynne Prize for landscape in 1947.
His 1948 work, ''
The cricketers'' has been described by the
National Gallery of Australia as "one of the most original and haunting images in all Australian art."
London 1950
His 1950 exhibition at London's
Leicester Galleries, at the invitation of Sir
Kenneth Clark, was a significant milestone in the history of Australian art. Until this time, Australian art had been regarded as a provincial sub-species of British art; Drysdale's works convinced British critics that Australian artists had a distinctive vision of their own, exploring a physical and psychological landscape at once mysterious, poetic, and starkly beautiful. The exhibition initiated the international recognition of Australian art that quickly came to include Dobell,
Sidney Nolan
Sir Sidney Robert Nolan (22 April 191728 November 1992) was one of Australia's leading artists of the 20th century. Working in a wide variety of mediums, his oeuvre is among the most diverse and prolific in all of modern art. He is best known ...
,
Arthur Boyd,
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 ...
, and others who came to national and international prominence in the 1950s.
Last years
Drysdale's reputation continued to grow throughout the 1950s and 1960s as he explored remote Australia and its inhabitants. In 1954, together with Nolan and Dobell, he was chosen to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale, and in 1960, at Bouddi near Gosford, New South Wales. Also in 1960, he was the first Australian artist to be given a retrospective by the
Art Gallery of New South Wales.
[John McDonald, "The past master", ''Sydney Morning Herald'', 11 April 1998, Spectrum, p. 12s]
In 1962 he co-wrote a travel book, ''Journey Among Men'', with Jock Marshall. They dedicated it to their wives, "who were good enough to stay at home".
[
In 1963 the Reserve Bank of Australia, then led by ]H. C. Coombs
Herbert Cole "Nugget" Coombs (24 February 1906 – 29 October 1997) was an Australian economist and public servant. He is best known for having been the first Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, in which capacity he served from 1960 to 19 ...
, appointed him to a small committee supervising the note designs for the new Australian decimal currency (which finally came into fruition in 1966).
In 1969, Drysdale was knight
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the Christian denomination, church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood ...
ed for his services to art, and in 1980, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia. His later years saw a marked falling off in the quantity of his output, which had never been large.
Drysdale died in Sydney on 29 June 1981 of cancer. At his request, Sir Russell's cremated remains were placed in the shade of a tree by the church in the burial ground beside historic St Paul's Anglican Church, Kincumber.
Personal life
He was married twice, and had a 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 Joyce, the Tasmanian born pianist, playing the part of Eileen's brother. Tim took his own life in 1962, aged twenty one, and the following year, Drysdale's wife Bon also committed suicide. In 1964 Drysdale married Maisie Purves Smith, an old friend.
Soon after Tim's suicide, Drysdale made the acquaintance of the composer Peter Sculthorpe, who had recently lost his father. The two spent a working holiday together in a house on the Tamar River in Tasmania, and became lifelong friends. Sculthorpe came to regard Drysdale as a role model, admiring the way he reworked familiar material in new ways. He said: "In later years he was often accused of painting the same picture over and over again. But his answer was that he was no different to a Renaissance artist, striving again and again to paint the perfect Madonna-and-Child. Since then, I've never had a problem about the idea of reusing and reworking my material. Like Tass, I've come to look on my whole output as one slowly emerging work". He dedicated works to Russell Drysdale and to the memory of Bonnie Drysdale.[Graeme Skinner, "Pete and Tass; Sculthorpe and Drysdale", '' ABC Radio 24 Hours'', August 1997, p. 34]
Drysdale's second wife Maisie was the sister-in-law of the Canadian novelist Robertson Davies
William Robertson Davies (28 August 1913 – 2 December 1995) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished " men of letters" ...
, with whom Peter Sculthorpe discussed collaborating on an opera based on the Australian adventures of the Irish actor Gustavus Vaughan Brooke
Gustavus Vaughan Brooke (25 April 1818 – 11 January 1866), commonly referred to as G. V. Brooke, was an Irish stage actor who enjoyed success in Ireland, England and Australia.
Early life
Brooke was born in Dublin, Ireland, the eldest son of ...
.[
]
Style and themes
Australian art scholar and gallery director Ron Radford argues that, towards the end of World War II, Drysdale triggered "'a general reddening' of Australian landscape art". Radford describes Drysdale's work as follows: "His dried up earth suggested that man had lost control of the land - nature had fought back and taken back". Drysdale's Australia was "hot, red, isolated, desolate and subtly threatening". His ''The Drover's Wife'' "cohabits in Australians' minds with Sidney Nolan
Sir Sidney Robert Nolan (22 April 191728 November 1992) was one of Australia's leading artists of the 20th century. Working in a wide variety of mediums, his oeuvre is among the most diverse and prolific in all of modern art. He is best known ...
's ''Carcass'' paintings" as conveying a sense of desolation. Drysdale's red presents "a landscape deeply, intrinsically inhospitable" and conveys the "utter alienation" of the figures he paints in the landscape.
Drysdale's use of colour photography as an aide-mémoire was the subject of an exhibition in 1987 at the NGV and publication which reveals in previously unknown photographic imagery this method of working and his stylisation in interpretation of subject matter and specific locations.
Christine Wallace suggests that Drysdale "was the visual poet of that passive, all-encompassing despair that endless heat and drought induces", but that it was Sidney Nolan who, with a similar view, "most powerfully projected this take on Australia to the outside world".
Lou Klepac, summing up in his 1983 work on Drysdale, says: "He found in the common elements of the landscape permanent and moving images which have become part of the visual lingua franca of modern Australia...Those who see in Drysdale's paintings a world remote from the comforts and pleasures they depend on, feel that he depicts loneliness and isolation. To him it was the opposite, a liberation from 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 at auction".Russell Drysdale's outback painting Grandma's Sunday Walk sells for $3m at auction
''ABC News'', 25 June 2017. Retrieved 26 June 2017.
See also
* Australian art
References
Further reading
*. Republished as ''Russell Drysdale'' in 1996 by Murdoch Books ()
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External links
Russell Drysdale
at the Art Gallery of New South Wales
NGV/ABC Drysdale exhibition
(also available a
. Contains biography and images of many of Drysdale's works.
''A football game'' 1943
- Ballarat Fine Art Gallery
The Art Gallery of Ballarat is the oldest and largest regional art gallery in Australia. Established in 1884 as the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery by the citizens of Ballarat, both the building and part of its collection is listed on the Victorian ...
Russell Drysdale on Artabase. ''The Bath'' 1941
{{DEFAULTSORT:Drysdale, Russell
1912 births
1981 deaths
People from Bognor Regis
British emigrants to Australia
Companions of the Order of Australia
Australian Knights Bachelor
People educated at Geelong Grammar School
Alumni of the Académie de la Grande Chaumière
Wynne Prize winners
20th-century Australian painters
20th-century Australian male artists
Australian contemporary artists
Australian male painters