Russell Drysdale

The collection of the artist Carl Plate; thence by descent
Private collection, Sydney

Several abrasions to the surface consistent with the work's age and originally being executed on a plaster wall. There is a hairline crack approximately 25cm long where the plaster meets the stretcher.
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Russell Drysdale's friend Geoffrey Dutton described the artist as a 'slow, stubborn and solitary painter of unshakeable integrity.'¹  Dutton's image of Drysdale is of an obsessive artist who regularly overpainted pictures that he was not satisfied with.  The present work offers an alternative view of Drysdale's practice, and an intriguing insight into the Sydney artistic community of the 1950s and 60s.

One evening circa 1960, Drysdale was visiting the home of the painter Carl Plate, in Woronora.  It was a lively night, and after dinner Drysdale decided that he would like to a do a drawing - not on paper, but on the wall of the house.  Plate's daughter Cassie recalls that Drysdale used her sister's Christmas present - a new box of crayons - to make the drawing.  She remembers being most upset at the destruction of her brand-new crayons, though over time the annoyance dissipated, and she and her sister came to love the drawing.

This large, fine, colourful drawing captures that rural element that was so central to Drysdale's work and that has long been important to the national self-image.  The anonymous drover bears a close resemblance to  Tractor-face Jackson (1950, private collection), but also recalls Brandy John (1965, Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery) and Rocky McCormack (1963, private collection, sold through Sotheby's, August 2008), and the many outback characters Drysdale captured in pen and ink drawings.  

1.  Geoffrey Dutton, Drysdale: A Biographical and Critical Study, London and Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1981, p. 7