Russell Drysdale

Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
Dr R. M. Crookston, Sydney; purchased from the above; thence by descent
The estate of the Late Jacqueline Crookston, Sydney

Russell Drysdale, Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 21 November - 3 December 1945, cat. 14

This painting is in sound, stable original condition; inspection under UV light confirms there has been no retouching or restoration. The reverse of the work has been completely painted over in white, probably to obscure another composition beneath. This reverse paint layer has several vertical stress cracks, which have produced the minor but discernible vertical creases on the front. The front paint layer retains its full integrity.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

In November 1944 Russell Drysdale was invited by the Sydney Morning Herald to accompany investigative journalist Keith Newman on an extended tour of the far west of the state, to report on the impact of the dreadful World War II drought (1937-1945). It was, as Lou Klepac has written. 'a brilliant decision both for the paper and for Australian painting.'¹

Bearing the initial headline ''An Artist's Journey into Australia's "Lost World"', the three feature articles were illustrated with 19 of Drysdale's field studies both in ink and ink and wash, and their patchwork of pictures – images of abandoned homesteads, skeletal trees and gaunt yet determined 'bushies' – captured and conveyed the social geography of the drought-stricken western plains more effectively than any folio of photographs could have. For the artist himself, the experience was at once disturbing, confusing and profound. As he explained it to his friend and fellow artist Donald Friend: 'The Herald ran great pages with the drawings which people tell me are good but which I feel to be inadequate – I want to turn them into paintings. I feel very much like a new man – all this has done something to me which is difficult to explain.'²

The drought provided inspiration which had to be proven in the studio, on the painted surface, and over the following year Drysdale worked up a compelling and extended series of drought pictures. The overall coherence and integrity of the group was recognised by the artist himself; in July 1945 he wrote again to Friend: 'all these pictures seem to have a definite link about them – I mean they have an evenness which is rather exciting and stimulating.'³

The power of this 'unforgettable series of paintings'⁴  was immediately recognised by Drysdale's public; by the time the Macquarie Galleries opened its show of 17 paintings in November 1945, eight of them were already sold. The commercial success of the exhibition was enhanced by curatorial and critical endorsement: the newly-appointed Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Hal Missingham, spent almost his entire annual acquisition allowance of £250 on Walls of China, Gol Gol (1945, Art Gallery of New South Wales), while the Herald's art critic, Paul Haefliger, called the show 'an amazing advance in this artist's development,' noting that 'from his former appreciation of the loneliness of the Australian countryside, he now moves with the spirit of tragedy.'

The tragedy was expressed not only in bleak, dehydrated, empty landscapes like Walls of China, but in images of the country people who were suffering under the drought. Evening is one of these. It is one of the first in a long and intense series of paintings in which Drysdale explores the archetype of the sturdy, patient outback woman: The drover's wife (1945, National Gallery of Australia), The countrywoman (1946, John Fairfax Limited), Woman in a landscape (1949, Art Gallery of South Australia), Maria (1950, ICI Australia Limited) and The gatekeeper's wife (1965, Art Gallery of Western Australia). These women are the direct descendants of colonial balladist George Essex Evans' Women of the West:

... The red sun robs their beauty and, in weariness and pain,
The slow years steal the nameless grace that never comes again;
And there are hours men cannot soothe, and words men cannot say
The nearest woman's face may be a hundred miles away ...

With their shapeless dresses and frayed aprons, broad bosoms and piano-leg calves, these women represent in themselves all the stoicism of Australia's frontier settlers. Through them (to use Mary Eagle and John Jones' phrasing), 'Drysdale was attempting to define a quintessential Australianness. Skating over the thin ice of sentimentality and theatricality, the best of these works show the means by which Drysdale achieved this – his indebtedness to the romanticism of the English artists Paul Nash and John Piper for mood making, Henry Moore for statuesque form and the surrealists for void.'⁵  Here the English romanticism is in the rich paint surface and the image of the primitive homestead, there is Moore in the solid body of the woman and vernacular surrealism both in the vast emptiness and in its capture in the frame between verandah post and roof line. Indeed, in the present work the artist summarises the whole Australian landscape experience in a composition of audacious simplicity: cloudless sky and red earth meeting at a central horizon; a selector's hut; a single dead tree; a line of fence posts; and the isolated, bored, casual, watching, waiting woman.

1.  Lou Klepac, The life and work of Russell Drysdale (rev. ed.), Sydney: Murdoch Books, 1996, p. 79
2.  Letter, Russell Drysdale to Donald Friend, December 1944, quoted ibid., p. 81
3.  Letter, Russell Drysdale to Donald Friend, 4 July 1944, quoted ibid.
4.  ibid.
5.  Mary Eagle and John Jones, A story of Australian painting, Sydney: Macmillan, 1994, p. 214