Upwey
(1965)
- Medium
- gouache
- Measurements
- 49.6 × 73.2 cm (image and sheet)
- Place/s of Execution
- Upwey, Victoria
- Inscription
- inscribed in pen and ink (in image) l.c.: Fred Williams
- Accession Number
- AC3-1980
- Department
- Australian Prints & Drawings
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of the H. J. Heinz II Charitable and Family Trust, Governor and the Utah Foundation, Fellow, 1980
© Estate of Fred Williams
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of the Joe White Bequest - Gallery location
- Not on display
- About this work
-
Melbourne-born Fred Williams is considered one of Australia’s finest landscape painters of the twentieth century. His works mark a great departure from traditional depictions of the Australian landscape.
After winning the 1964 Helena Rubinstein Travelling Scholarship, Fred Williams visited Europe. He returned inspired by the densely painted landscapes of French nineteenth-century painter Gustave Courbet, an influence that can be seen in the generous application of paint in the foliage of this painting. Williams and his family had moved into a small house on 2 acres of land at Upwey, in the Dandenong Ranges outside of Melbourne in 1963. With his studio situated at the base of a valley, the setting became the inspiration for the high horizon line seen in this and many other paintings.
