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拍品专文
In 1956 Drysdale and his family embarked on a journey that would last almost six months and take them Townsville, Cairns, Alice Springs, Darwin, the Kimberleys, Broome, Perth, across the Nullabor and over the Flinders Ranges back to Victoria.
Red Hills was painted in 1957, a year after Drysdale's return to the city. Not only was the journey a personal odyssey for the artist, it also enriched his visual vocabulary. In particular, the desolate parts of the Australian landscape were to become a potent source of subject matter, providing inspiration for his paintings throughout the following years. Dutton has suggested that "Many of Drysdale's most striking and successful paintings followed on his 1956 journey ....he developped his earlier foundness for the semi-surrealist effects that come from juxtaposition...imposed by the vastness of those lonely regionsl". (G Dutton, Russell Drysdale, London, 1964, p.68)
The artist's own words best describe the impression that his prolonged journey through the Australian outback made upon him. In the catalogue to an exhibition of his work held at the Leicester Galleries in London in 1958, Drysdale wrote:
"Magnificent in dimension, old as time, curious, strange and compelling, it rests in ancient grandeur indifferent to the challenge of man. Within this vast region exists an infinite variety of people, things and places the great red deserts of the centre, the broken mountains and ravaged gorges of the Kimberleys This is a land, mysterious and unknown until the last century, that held within itself curious forms of life, that in the rest of the world had long ago passed into the remote darkness of time. There are still men of stone-age culture living a forgotten pattern of life. Nomads of the desert, roaming as their ancestors roamed unhindered in the dawn of history. In rock and range and river is the meaning of their life and the rhythm of their way. In the poetry of their legends is the story of mankind, in the paintings of their caves the ancestry of art."
Drysdale continues here his rendering of the Australian landscape developed over the previous decade and simultaneously reflects his knowledge of English artists such as "Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland. Strengh of cursive outline in the landscape and weird light effects are seen..." (M Plant, Russell Drysdale, Melbourne, 1987, p. 26). The artist makes it clear that such landscapes are difficult to penetrate as evidenced with the foregroundis rocky barrier and the native stick figures seemingly guarding what lies beyond. "A world both sparse and plentiful, of loneliness, but a world that is strange, exciting and splendid." (G Dutton, op.cit, p. 57)
Red Hills was painted in 1957, a year after Drysdale's return to the city. Not only was the journey a personal odyssey for the artist, it also enriched his visual vocabulary. In particular, the desolate parts of the Australian landscape were to become a potent source of subject matter, providing inspiration for his paintings throughout the following years. Dutton has suggested that "Many of Drysdale's most striking and successful paintings followed on his 1956 journey ....he developped his earlier foundness for the semi-surrealist effects that come from juxtaposition...imposed by the vastness of those lonely regionsl". (G Dutton, Russell Drysdale, London, 1964, p.68)
The artist's own words best describe the impression that his prolonged journey through the Australian outback made upon him. In the catalogue to an exhibition of his work held at the Leicester Galleries in London in 1958, Drysdale wrote:
"Magnificent in dimension, old as time, curious, strange and compelling, it rests in ancient grandeur indifferent to the challenge of man. Within this vast region exists an infinite variety of people, things and places the great red deserts of the centre, the broken mountains and ravaged gorges of the Kimberleys This is a land, mysterious and unknown until the last century, that held within itself curious forms of life, that in the rest of the world had long ago passed into the remote darkness of time. There are still men of stone-age culture living a forgotten pattern of life. Nomads of the desert, roaming as their ancestors roamed unhindered in the dawn of history. In rock and range and river is the meaning of their life and the rhythm of their way. In the poetry of their legends is the story of mankind, in the paintings of their caves the ancestry of art."
Drysdale continues here his rendering of the Australian landscape developed over the previous decade and simultaneously reflects his knowledge of English artists such as "Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland. Strengh of cursive outline in the landscape and weird light effects are seen..." (M Plant, Russell Drysdale, Melbourne, 1987, p. 26). The artist makes it clear that such landscapes are difficult to penetrate as evidenced with the foregroundis rocky barrier and the native stick figures seemingly guarding what lies beyond. "A world both sparse and plentiful, of loneliness, but a world that is strange, exciting and splendid." (G Dutton, op.cit, p. 57)