Fred Williams painting hits Australian auction scene after 60 years in private collections

After almost 60 years brightening corporate and private collections, Australian iconic artist Fred Williams (1927-1982) highly significant painting Pond in Landscape (lot 38) will make a welcome and first appearance at auction from 6.30pm Thursday May 7 at Melbourne’s Menzies Gallery, 1 Darling Street, South Yarra with a catalogue estimate of $600,000-$800,000.

Following an intensive seven-month tour of Europe, in January 1965 Williams and wife Lynn returned to Australia where, in the following decade, he rejected descriptive modes of landscape painting to present an innovative and concise visual shorthand of the Australian bush through his many works.

Executed in William’s characteristically abbreviated style, Pond in Landscape is closely related to the gouache Lysterfield Landscape with Pool 1965, held in Canberra’s National Gallery of Australia collection.

Writing in the Menzies catalogue, former Sydney Morning Herald art critic John McDonald says Williams scenes were instantly familiar, capturing the flat, disorderly nature of Australian topography, in which trees and scrub fought for moisture under the rays of a burning sun.

“Art may come and go, but the landscape would endure. In paintings such as Pond in Landscape, he aspired to transcend art’s perpetual search for sensation and make works that seem as fresh today as they did in the 1960s.”

The first five entries of Menzies 122-lot catalogue contain a prized group of Clarice Beckett (1887-1935) paintings from the collection of Dale Trezise, wife of the late Victorian pathologist Neil Trezise – all of which are making their auction debut.

All works were purchased over 25 years from Niagara Galleries and bear a distinguished early provenance – having been originally owned by the artist’s sister, Hilda Mangan, before being acquired by Ruth Prowse, who formed one of the most significant collections of Beckett’s paintings at her Canberra home.

The centrepiece of these paintings is Marigolds in Meldrum’s Pot 1927-28 (lot 4), a delightful still life that pays tribute to the formative teachings of Max Meldrum, with a $60,00-$80,000 catalogue estimate.

The remaining works, including Quiet Spot – The Empty Seat c1927 (lot 3) and Incoming Tide (lot 5) – are poetic landscapes of Beckett’s native Beaumaris on the edge of Port Phillip Bay.

Many of Australia’s leading modern artists from the latter half of the 20^th century feature in this auction with important paintings by such luminaries as Jeffrey Smart (1921-2013), Arthur Boyd (1920-1999), Ian Fairweather (1891-1974), Margaret Olley (1923-2011) and John Perceval (1923-2000).

Smart has two works in the auction – Four Seats, Venice Biennale 1983 (lot 36), with an estimate of $150,000-$250,000 which will be offered two days before the opening of this year’s Biennale on May 9, and the higher valued Outside the Ministry (lot 39 - $400,000-$600,000), typical of his signature works where the only natural element is the sky with its fluffy white clouds.

There also are two Boyd paintings from the 1970s – one, Shoalhaven c1975 (lot 32) created soon after he bought ‘Riversdale’ on the banks of the Shoalhaven River, and the other, Narcissus with Three Clouds 1979 (lot 41) with a $120,000-$150,000 estimate.

Major works by indigenous artists Lin Onus (1948-1996) and Emily Kngwarreye (c1910-1996) are another auction highlight.

The product of a Yorta Yorta Aboriginal father and Scottish mother, Onus was a master painter of great political intellect able to cleverly combine the best in indigenous and European cultures in his works.

With a catalogue estimate of $300,000-$400,000, the auction painting Cloud Fish 1994 (lot 37) stems from a sublime and ethereal corpus of carefully contrived water bodies interlaced with layers of imagery sometimes obscured by reflected sky or landscape, or both.

Kngwarreye’s The Anooralya Yam 1995 (lot 29) is a wonderful example of the artist’s vibrant linear style and her physical connection to Country, the law ceremonies of her people and attendant custodial responsibilities for nurturing the land and its bounty.

The painting recalls her monumental masterpiece Yam Awely 1995, held by the National Gallery of Australia.