Donald FRIEND

Australian 1915–89
worked in Sri Lanka 1957–61, Indonesia 1968–79

Yugilbar is both a cattle property and the ruin of the elaborate house built by the first and most successful squatter on the Clarence River in northern New South Wales. Made from local stone to a design by the owner, Edward Ogilvie, Yugilbar was finished in 1866. It looked like a castle, with twin towers and crenellations, splendidly sited above the river. When Donald Friend visited in 1963 he painted the Clarence River through the window of a ruined part of the estate. Remnant ornament and painted wall friezes still cling below a collapsing lath and plaster ceiling. The cedar casements have vanished and in the middle distance a summer house or garden folly sits on a bald hill. The beautiful view enjoyed by the Ogilvies remains. Donald Friend was a war artist, well known for his evocative and eloquent drawings of ruined buildings and of the effect of war on local villagers as much as on infantry in Borneo. After the war he lived in Hill End in New South Wales, a goldmining ghost town of stone and brick houses whose bare gullies and deserted buildings form a major theme in his art.

In 1963 Yugilbar’s owner was Baillieu Myer who commissioned Friend to paint a mural. Donald Friend’s decorative, linear style and bright chalky colours remind us of early Italian Renaissance mural technique. Friend had recently returned from five years in Sri Lanka. To this early love of Italian architectural painting, Friend, who had lived in Europe, Nigeria and the Torres Strait, adds the pure colour of India, especially blue. The splashing patches of colour also form an overlay of abstract shapes, a reference to the fascination of Sydney artists with abstract expressionism. The graffiti on the remnant plaster walls tells another story, of local residents’ transgressions in the deserted house. The centre word ‘Baryulgil’ refers to a place upriver from Yugilbar, while Mundine is a prominent family name amongst the Tenterfield Bunjalong people.

Jennifer Phipps