Lysterfield Landscape

In 1967, Fred Williams described in his diary the colours of the landscape at Lysterfield, just outside Melbourne. On 28 March, he observed "yellow and lilac everywhere", on 25 June a "pink haze over everything" (J. Mollison, A Singular Vision, Canberra, 1989, p.102). The colours, which inspired a new vision of the Australian countryside away from the traditional ochres, rich blues and golds, remained with Williams over the next few years, inspiring his Lysterfield Landscape series. Adopting the high horizon line apparent in his earlier Upwey landscapes, Williams' Lysterfield paintings attained a new spaciousness, attributable in large part to his use of smaller daubs of paint, which gave, in his own words, "a bigger suggestion of space without resorting to too many illusionist ideas." (ibid, p. 110)