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Lot Essay
From the earliest stages of his career, Russell Drysdale focused upon scenes of Australian rural life. Works including Sunday Evening, 1941 (collection of Art Gallery of New South Wales), and Man Feeding his Dogs 1941 (collection of Queensland Art Gallery) are illustrative of his early interest in the domestic aspects of country life. Nevertheless, political events soon overtook the young artist: during the 1940s, these rural images were supplanted by scenes associated with the Second World War, including The Medical Examination 1941 (private collection) and Soldier 1942 (collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra).
In another example of Drysdale's engagement with the spirit of his times, a commission by the Sydney Morning Herald enabled Drysdale to travel into northern New South Wales in 1944 to chronicle the impact of a severe drought that had crippled the region. This journey reinforced Drysdale's interest in country life, but encouraged him to focus less on the domestic scenes of life in small towns he had previously favoured.
Instead, the artist moved towards an engagement with outback life, represented by increasingly broad vistas of ochre desert ground and vast expanses of sky in his paintings, for example Desolation, 1945 (collection Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, Castlemaine). The commission has been described as "the most important event in Drysdale's career as an artist From the domesticity and comparative comfort of Sydney, he was plunged into a devastating reality more frightening than any surrealist could have imagined." (L. Klepac, Russell Drysdale, Sydney, 1983, p.79). The commission also precipitated a series of journeys that brought a new concentration on both indigenous and migrant occupants of the land, as seen first in Mother and Child, North Queensland 1950 (private collection), and portraits of Joe 1950 (private collection) and Maria 1950 (private collection).
In 1956, Drysdale travelled once again into the Australian outback through Queensland, the Northern Territory and across to Western Australia. Accompanied throughout the journey by his son, Tim, Drysdale would visit Broome, and would write of the dust there, which "gets into everything, so that your body is red with it and your clothes powdery. It grits in your mouth, and tastes in your food" (ibid, p.144).
This journey, time in London during 1957 and another outback trip in 1958 marked a time of change in the artist's approach, but also of relatively small output, Drysdale re-working canvases with patience to achieve his desired result. Stylistically, Drysdale began to focus upon the human subject. This shift is exemplified by Diver, Broome, a portrait of a Malay diver employed in Broome for pearling.
During the late 1950s, the artist began to develop "his earlier interest in semi-surrealistic effects, achieved by the juxtaposition of strange objects. Produced with great energy, several of the paintings share loose and undefined forms that, while adding to the sense of mystery, create a greater synthesis between the human figure and the landscape." (G. Smith, Russell Drysdale, Melbourne, 1997, p.29)
In Diver, Broome, the figure of the diver is contextualised by an ochre background and shadowy black branches; a synecdoche for the arid desert that lies to the east of Broome. Against this background sits the diver, his face, body and jacket a study in contrasts. The acid yellow favoured by Drysdale for its ability to imbue the canvas with unparalleled liveliness comes to the foreground in this canvas on the right-hand side of the jacket and at the front of the diver's hat. Rather than casting a shadow over his forehead and eyes, the man's hat illuminates the fine arch of his brow and draws attention to his almond-shaped eyes, which stare out at the viewer with an intensity heightened by Drysdale's unusual colouration.
Diver, Broome bears a strong resemblance to Drysdale's Malay Boy, Broome, also painted in 1959 (private collection). Both works share a similar half-portrait format, in which the divers are seated at an almost full-frontal angle, dominating the picture plane. Both men wear hats, but in Malay Boy, Broome, the brim shadows the man's eyes with a red glow. In contrast, Drysdale's application of paint around the eyes of the subject of Diver, Broome is almost surreal, giving visual expression to his sentiments set out in a letter to the Melbourne modernist George Bell. "I find I have a bit more courage about it than I had before and tend more and more to use colour not locally but as an arbitrary symbol to emphasise the relationships of the forms and areas and provide an illumination which belongs entirely to the picture" (G. Smith, Russell Drysdale, Melbourne, 1997, p.156)
In Diver, Broome, Drysdale has extrapolated from the small patches of brilliant crimson in the face, jacket, vest and shirt of Malay Boy, to a more confident expression of colour in the broad expanses of the burnt umber and acid yellow. The portrait marks a growth in the confidence of the artist, whose achievements were recognised the following year by a Retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
In another example of Drysdale's engagement with the spirit of his times, a commission by the Sydney Morning Herald enabled Drysdale to travel into northern New South Wales in 1944 to chronicle the impact of a severe drought that had crippled the region. This journey reinforced Drysdale's interest in country life, but encouraged him to focus less on the domestic scenes of life in small towns he had previously favoured.
Instead, the artist moved towards an engagement with outback life, represented by increasingly broad vistas of ochre desert ground and vast expanses of sky in his paintings, for example Desolation, 1945 (collection Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, Castlemaine). The commission has been described as "the most important event in Drysdale's career as an artist From the domesticity and comparative comfort of Sydney, he was plunged into a devastating reality more frightening than any surrealist could have imagined." (L. Klepac, Russell Drysdale, Sydney, 1983, p.79). The commission also precipitated a series of journeys that brought a new concentration on both indigenous and migrant occupants of the land, as seen first in Mother and Child, North Queensland 1950 (private collection), and portraits of Joe 1950 (private collection) and Maria 1950 (private collection).
In 1956, Drysdale travelled once again into the Australian outback through Queensland, the Northern Territory and across to Western Australia. Accompanied throughout the journey by his son, Tim, Drysdale would visit Broome, and would write of the dust there, which "gets into everything, so that your body is red with it and your clothes powdery. It grits in your mouth, and tastes in your food" (ibid, p.144).
This journey, time in London during 1957 and another outback trip in 1958 marked a time of change in the artist's approach, but also of relatively small output, Drysdale re-working canvases with patience to achieve his desired result. Stylistically, Drysdale began to focus upon the human subject. This shift is exemplified by Diver, Broome, a portrait of a Malay diver employed in Broome for pearling.
During the late 1950s, the artist began to develop "his earlier interest in semi-surrealistic effects, achieved by the juxtaposition of strange objects. Produced with great energy, several of the paintings share loose and undefined forms that, while adding to the sense of mystery, create a greater synthesis between the human figure and the landscape." (G. Smith, Russell Drysdale, Melbourne, 1997, p.29)
In Diver, Broome, the figure of the diver is contextualised by an ochre background and shadowy black branches; a synecdoche for the arid desert that lies to the east of Broome. Against this background sits the diver, his face, body and jacket a study in contrasts. The acid yellow favoured by Drysdale for its ability to imbue the canvas with unparalleled liveliness comes to the foreground in this canvas on the right-hand side of the jacket and at the front of the diver's hat. Rather than casting a shadow over his forehead and eyes, the man's hat illuminates the fine arch of his brow and draws attention to his almond-shaped eyes, which stare out at the viewer with an intensity heightened by Drysdale's unusual colouration.
Diver, Broome bears a strong resemblance to Drysdale's Malay Boy, Broome, also painted in 1959 (private collection). Both works share a similar half-portrait format, in which the divers are seated at an almost full-frontal angle, dominating the picture plane. Both men wear hats, but in Malay Boy, Broome, the brim shadows the man's eyes with a red glow. In contrast, Drysdale's application of paint around the eyes of the subject of Diver, Broome is almost surreal, giving visual expression to his sentiments set out in a letter to the Melbourne modernist George Bell. "I find I have a bit more courage about it than I had before and tend more and more to use colour not locally but as an arbitrary symbol to emphasise the relationships of the forms and areas and provide an illumination which belongs entirely to the picture" (G. Smith, Russell Drysdale, Melbourne, 1997, p.156)
In Diver, Broome, Drysdale has extrapolated from the small patches of brilliant crimson in the face, jacket, vest and shirt of Malay Boy, to a more confident expression of colour in the broad expanses of the burnt umber and acid yellow. The portrait marks a growth in the confidence of the artist, whose achievements were recognised the following year by a Retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.