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DOUGLAS STEWART FINE BOOKS
DRYSDALE, Russell (1912 – 1981)
Western Desert
Watercolour, pen and ink on paper, watermarked Canson France, 145 x 225 mm (image), 162 x 248 mm (paper), titled and signed lower right, framed (framed size 465 x 525 mm).
In this small gem of a painting, Drysdale effectively captures the expansive inland landscape, sparsely populated with the occasional rocky outcrop or patch of scrub. The scene most likely dates from 1956, when Drysdale spent six months travelling across outback Western Australia and the Northern Territory in a Land Rover with his wife Bon and teenage son Tim. The fact this small work is fully signed and titled indicated it was most likely prepared for exhibition, possibly in one of the Annual Show of Fives or Annual Show of Sixes at Drysdale’s gallery Macquarie Galleries, where a group of artists all submitted small works priced at five or six guineas each. Drysdale returned to his earlier imagery all through his career, and this work may have also been painted later, based on his earlier travels west in the fifties.
$11,000