Painter, had been a POW in Germany before being repatriated to England suffering from TB. After the war, he studied at the Chelsea School of Art under Ceri Richards, who introduced him to Cezanne and Matisse. 'One of the earliest works in the Holmes à Court collection, Perth, is a small painting of a kitchen sink that shows how quickly he latched on to Cezanne’s structural principles’ (Snell). After returning to WA he built a house at Darlington, a small village nestled in the Darling Scarp just outside the Perth metropolitan area, where he and the Holmes à Courts lived and became friends in the 1960s. The Holmes à Courts became his best patrons. Grey-Smith’s painting transposed European modernism onto local fauna and flora, e.g. Kings Park, Perth (1948, Holmes à Court col.). An exhibition of almost 100 works by Grey-Smith in the Holmes à Court collection was at the HaC Gallery, Perth, in 2002 (ended 17 March). Review by Ted Snell, Australian 8 February 2002, p 18, includes a photograph of Grey-Smith working on a portrait of Robert Holmes à Court in 1981, the year Grey-Smith died.
(NB: This not the Gray Smith – no hyphen – who was Joy Hester 's 2nd husband.)
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2011
