Design and Art Australia Online

Frederick Ronald Williams was born in the inner Melbourne suburb of Richmond on 23 January 1927. On leaving school he was apprenticed to a company fitting out shops and making boxes.In later years when he was trying to establish himself in London, he would support himself by making picture frames.
At the age of 16 he began classes at the National Gallery School, including painting under William Dargie. He also took painting classes with the gently modernist painter, George Bell.
In 1950 he left Australia to further his studies in London. He furthered his studies at the Chelsea Art School, and also studied etching at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. His subject matter from these years was often figurative, as he drew elements of London life and music hall performers, almost in the tradition of Sickert usually on a small scale. He absorbed as much as he could from the great collections of European art, and from the start was especially influenced by the work of Cézanne.These were years of considerable poverty for him, but he wanted to absorb as much knowledge about art as he could. Patrick McCaughey wrote that bq). He would allow himself a trifling sum, say half a crown, for dinner but would frequently pass it up for an extra pint or two at the pub where Francis Bacon and his crew regularly drank.bq).
In 1956 his family were able to arrange a cheap passage home on one of the ships taking visitors to the Melbourne Olympics. Back in Melbourne he saw afresh both the landscape and the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria. These were both intellectually rigorous and emotionally responsive works. His understanding of the value of imagery meant that he was a surprise omission from Bernard Smith’s polemical Antipodean exhibition – especially as it otherwise included all his closest colleagues. But Smith rejected Williams’ essentially apolitical vision. Although he had an exhibiting profile, Fred Williams was less than financially successful until after 1960. That was the year he met Lyn Watson, who was to become his wife. He also changed dealers from Australian Galleries, to the entrepreneurial Rudy Komon, who was able to effectively market his work to the new breed of corporate collectors.
In 1963 the Williams family moved to Upwey in the Dandenongs, which became the subject of some of his most iconic works. He flattened the space of the scrubby bush so that it could be read in different ways. The subjects for his graphic work now included his three daughters,drawn on an intimate scale. The following year he was awarded a Helena Rubenstein Travelling Scholarship and the family travelled to Europe. On the return to Upwey Williams continued to paint the landscape around his home. There was a changed response in 1968 when bushfires threatened the house, but then he was also able to make works based on the rebirth of the land. Eight years later, he was flying to China and saw from the plane the lines of bushfires crossing the land. The drawings based on these were mingled with a new appreciation of Chinese aesthetic values.
In 1969 the family moved to a house in Hawthorn which remained his home. The 1970s saw more experimental approaches to his art. He returned to painting figures, including some of the subjects from his London years. 1977 Williams was the first Australian artist to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 1979, on his return to Australia, Williams painted in far north Queensland, and later was encouraged by Sir Roderick Carnegie CRA to paint in the the Pilbara region in Western Australia. These brilliantly coloured gouaches and oil paintings were his last sustained body of work. In 1981 Willams was diagnosed with inoperable cancer, and died on 22 April 1982. At Williams’ funeral his friend John Brack said: bq). The work speaks to us
now, in his voice, as it will speak to those yet to come.bq).

Writers:

Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2012