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Lot Essay
On a label attached to the reverse is the following information: "Mr Lloyd Rees visited Newcastle on 7th June, 1962 to open an exhibition of paintings by New Australians at the Art Gallery. Mr Rees said that this painting, as is usually the case with his landscapes, is not representative of any particular scene but of a number of impressions. However, the mountain in this landscape, he said, is Mt. Ca...(illegible), Capertree, N.S.W."
Capertree is a village in the tablelands of New South Wales, located approximately 180km north-west of Sydney, in the Great Dividing Range. Since the 1890s it has been an area that was extensively mined for coal, limestone and oil shale, with many of the miners using caves formed by erosion in the sandstone cliffs as temporary shelters.
Mountain Range at Capertree is a fine illustration of Rees' inimitable ability to capture the quiet majesty of the Australian landscape. In order to realise the unique nature of Rees' art, it is necessary to put the work into its historical context. During the same period that Rees painted this view of Capertree, Drysdale was painting the desert interior, Nolan was depicting the rainforests and Boyd was producing his Bride series. Thus at a time when the Modernist trend was to seek out the harsh or unexplored terrain of Australia, and to depict it in a flattened and sparse style, Rees was championing a gentler and more internationally integrated vision, based on the topography of the coastal and inhabited rural areas of New South Wales.
Rees' preference for the more temperate places, (which are as inherent to the Australian landscape as the unfamiliar and hostile environments that Drysdale and his contemporaries sought out), resulted in paintings where Australia was seen through eyes that had been refreshed by continual sojourns in Europe. However, Rees' achievement lay in not merely seeing Australia from a Euro-centric perspective, but rather interpreting the landscape with the rejuvenated vision of the returned traveller. Renee Free eloquently articulated this observation in the following extract from her book:
"Experimentation led to the rich style of his work in the sixties, when the paintings have freedom, wideness of vision, and a sense of the 'miraculous in nature'. Rees set his sights on the grand manner of heroic landscape... This (European) grandeur influenced him in perceiving the grandeur of Australia...Now his art portrays great Gothic rocky masses, cliff facades and surging seas, city skyscrapers, and panoramas as distant as those of Rubens and Breughel, crossed by rivers as broad as Van Eyck's river of life. It is not nature overwhelming man as in the grand romantic poems of Piguenit but the great expanse of Australia, its largeness of scale, appreciated to the full in familiar scenes. It is not the far distance, or the unattainable, that holds the attention, but the solid detail of the middle distance." (R Free, op.cit, p.78)
The three year gestation period of this work may be partly attributable to the fact that in 1959 Rees and his wife travelled once again to Europe. Upon his return to Australia Rees embarked upon an active role in public life, serving as a board member and advisor to numerous architectural and visual arts committees.
Capertree is a village in the tablelands of New South Wales, located approximately 180km north-west of Sydney, in the Great Dividing Range. Since the 1890s it has been an area that was extensively mined for coal, limestone and oil shale, with many of the miners using caves formed by erosion in the sandstone cliffs as temporary shelters.
Mountain Range at Capertree is a fine illustration of Rees' inimitable ability to capture the quiet majesty of the Australian landscape. In order to realise the unique nature of Rees' art, it is necessary to put the work into its historical context. During the same period that Rees painted this view of Capertree, Drysdale was painting the desert interior, Nolan was depicting the rainforests and Boyd was producing his Bride series. Thus at a time when the Modernist trend was to seek out the harsh or unexplored terrain of Australia, and to depict it in a flattened and sparse style, Rees was championing a gentler and more internationally integrated vision, based on the topography of the coastal and inhabited rural areas of New South Wales.
Rees' preference for the more temperate places, (which are as inherent to the Australian landscape as the unfamiliar and hostile environments that Drysdale and his contemporaries sought out), resulted in paintings where Australia was seen through eyes that had been refreshed by continual sojourns in Europe. However, Rees' achievement lay in not merely seeing Australia from a Euro-centric perspective, but rather interpreting the landscape with the rejuvenated vision of the returned traveller. Renee Free eloquently articulated this observation in the following extract from her book:
"Experimentation led to the rich style of his work in the sixties, when the paintings have freedom, wideness of vision, and a sense of the 'miraculous in nature'. Rees set his sights on the grand manner of heroic landscape... This (European) grandeur influenced him in perceiving the grandeur of Australia...Now his art portrays great Gothic rocky masses, cliff facades and surging seas, city skyscrapers, and panoramas as distant as those of Rubens and Breughel, crossed by rivers as broad as Van Eyck's river of life. It is not nature overwhelming man as in the grand romantic poems of Piguenit but the great expanse of Australia, its largeness of scale, appreciated to the full in familiar scenes. It is not the far distance, or the unattainable, that holds the attention, but the solid detail of the middle distance." (R Free, op.cit, p.78)
The three year gestation period of this work may be partly attributable to the fact that in 1959 Rees and his wife travelled once again to Europe. Upon his return to Australia Rees embarked upon an active role in public life, serving as a board member and advisor to numerous architectural and visual arts committees.