Sir Russell Drysdale

George Russell Drysdale was born on the 7 February 1912 in Bognor Regis, Sussex, in England, the eldest child of Australian born George Russell “Leigh”
Drysdale (1889-1969) and his wife Isabel Emily Drysdale, nee Gates (1891-1989).

Drysdale came to Australia at the age of 11 with his family who returned in 1923 with the intention to farm in the Riverina district of NSW. His father had close ties to Australia and indeed had established Pioneer Sugar mill on the Burdekin River in far north Queensland with his brother Cluny Drysdale.
In Australia, Drysdale was enrolled as a boarder at Geelong Gramma School where he remained until his eye first began to give him trouble at the age of 17. After leaving school he went to work as a jackeroo for his Uncle Cluny in Queensland but returned to the Riverina 6 months later to watch over the property whilst his family travelled to England. The death of his uncle during this time was catalyst to his decision to remain in New South Wales where a detached retina forced him to spend time in hospital in 1932.

Drysdale spent much of his recuperation drawing and sketching which caught the attention of his doctor who learned that his young patient held an interest in becoming a cartoonist. So armed, his doctor showed some of his work to Daryl Lindsay and George Bell who encouraged him to continue his studies and work at developing his own distinct artistic voice.

Shortly afterward, Drysdale travelled on family business to England where he spent time viewing modern art in London and Paris. In 1935, he married Elizabeth “Bon” Stephen who hailed from a good family of the region, and with her encouragement and with the financial support of his family, Drysdale enrolled to the George Bell School the same year becoming close friends with fellow student Peter Purves-Smith.

Drysdale held his first solo exhibition at Riddel’s Gallery in Melbourne in 1938, showing now-iconic works such as The Rabbiter and His Family, for which critics praised Drysdale for his bold experimentation. The couple’s first child, Lynne, had been born earlier in the year and with a little coin in their purse, the family travelled to England where Drysdale intended to continue his studies for 12 months.

After the birth of their son, Timothy, in 1940, the family took up residence in Albury from where Drysdale began exhibiting with the Sydney based Contemporary Group of artists. By the end of the year the family made the decision to move there.

In 1941, the Rabbiter and his Family was shown in the United States as part of the Art of Australia 1788–1941 exhibition that travelled to Washington, New York and Canada. This was followed by an Exhibition of Australian, British, and American Painters held at the Anglo American Art Centre in New York from March 1942. The Drysdale pictures included in the exhibition were loaned by Mrs R.G. Casey, the wife of the former Australian Minister to Washington and from whom the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York purchased Monday Morning for their collection. 

Despite divisions in Australian regarding the virtues of contemporary art, Australian institutions, perhaps emboldened by international interest in Drysdale’s work and the idea that his work captured the essence of Australia in a new and interesting way, the National Art Gallery of New South Wales (Art Gallery of New South Wales) and the National Gallery of Victoria followed suit – the former purchasing Sunday Evening for 45gns in March 1942 and the latter, Moody’s Pub, in June 1942.

It was during this time that most of the world was again engaged in bloody conflict, but Drysdale’s eyesight prevented him from fighting and instead gave his time to making camouflage and painting pictures of soldiers and airfields from Australia. His “Local Volunteer Defence Corps Parade” was purchased by the National Art Gallery of South Australia in 1943.

During these years in Sydney, Drysdale exhibited with the Contemporary Group as well as the Society of Artists and supported the Macquarie Galleries by regularly contributing works to the annual exhibitions organised by gallery owners and close friends Lucy Swanton and Treania Smith. He also held solo
exhibitions there in 1942, 1943, 1945, 1949, 1950, 1953, 1961, 1962, and a two-man show with Donald Friend in 1957. Swanton was a great advocate of Drysdale’s work and took a series of his landscapes to London for exhibition there in 1948.

Perhaps his biggest break came with a commission from the Sydney Morning Herald to record his impressions of drought effected areas of NSW in 1944 for publication which solidified his reputation as a painter of the Australian outback and making himself a household name. The scenes he witnessed inspired such iconic works as Bush Fire, Deserted Outstation, and Walls of China. In the same year he was commissioned to produce the illustrations for John Hetherington’s book The Australian Soldier and Allan Dawes’ Soldier Superb. 

As Drysdale continued to build is reputation, he entered several art prizes, winning the Wynne Art Prize for “Sofala” in 1947 and third place for Eroded Tree Forms in the Ballarat Art Gallery’s Crouch Memorial Prize in 1946. His images of the thirsty Australian outback were becoming national symbols, and his designs were used by Silk and Textile Printers Pty Ltd in Hobart as part of a range of artist-designed textiles which excited the industry when they were exhibited at textile shows across Europe after the war.

In 1949, Drysdale won first place in the South Australian Society of Arts’ Melrose Prize for excellence in Portraiture for his Woman in a Landscape which reignited the old debate around the virtue of Contemporary art. The picture elicited criticism for his unflattering impression of rural women by respected authorities including Max Meldrum who earlier argued that the Australian public were not ready for modern art and who he believed “had to be educated more progressively” saying that “people would not be educated in art appreciation by the majority of modern work which is notorious, not famous, as a pathological manifestation”. But modern art had some very powerful advocates in its corner including media mogul Sir Keith Murdoch who had sponsored The Herald Australian Present Day Art Exhibition in Melbourne in 1945 and which included 10 pictures by Russell Drysdale.

With his national reputation secured, Drysdale turned his focus to the place of his birth, holding his first solo exhibition at Leicester Gallery in London in 1950
under the sponsorship of Sir Kenneth Clark, former Director of the London National Gallery. The whole family travelled together to London in the company of Maisie Purves-Smith, the recently widowed wife of Drysdale’s close friend, the artist Peter Purves-Smith who had lost his life from tuberculosis in 1949. Timothy Drysdale, at the age of 10 years, had just completed filming in his role as John Joyce, the brother of pianist and child prodigy Eileen Joyce, in the movie about her life. The role had taken young Drysdale to Kalgoorlie for six months and the family were looking forward to spending time together in Britain and France during their 3-month visit.

Although Londoners were curious to see his landscape pictures, of the 25 oils selected for exhibition, it was those depicting outback characters such as
George Ross of Mullengandra, Tractor Face Jackson, and Maria that proved of the greatest interest to critics. He would go on to hold three more solo exhibitions at the Leicester Gallery during his career. One in 1958, another in 1965 and a final one in 1972.Shortly after that successful London exhibition, Sydney Ure Smith published the first of several books that would later to be published on the work of Russell Drysdale. 1000 copies were printed in time for Christmas of 1951 simply titled The Paintings of Russell Drysdale. It featured 15 colour plates and numerous others in black and white.

Such was the level of his success, that although only mid-career, a retrospective exhibition of his work from 1937 to 1960 was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1960, moving to the Art Gallery of Queensland in 1961 and the John Martin Gallery in Adelaide in 1964, the same year in which his biography, written by Geoffry Dutton, was published.

As the country celebrated Drysdale’s achievements, his personal life was marked by profound loss. At the age of 21, his son died by suicide. Devastated by the loss of their child, his beloved wife also took her own life the following year. A few years earlier, Timothy had accompanied his father and the renowned
zoologist Professor A.J. (Jock) Marshall on an expedition to document the Australian outback in a series of articles commissioned by the London newspaper The Observer. The journey culminated in the 1962 book Journey Among Men, co-written by Drysdale and Marshall and illustrated by Drysdale.

Earlier this year, the National Gallery hosted an exhibition of these illustrations. Having known grief herself as a young bride, good friend Maisie Purves-Smith became a source of comfort to the family. She had been a regular visitor to the Drysdale household during happier times and, seeking a new beginning, Drysdale and Maisie married in 1964 and moved into the vacant home of a friend in Double Bay. A few years later they built their own home, nestled within Bouddi National Park on the New South Wales Central Coast that overlooked McMasters Beach and at the time was described as been so big that the Opera House had nothing on it. 

Before the tragedy, Drysdale had been appointed as a Trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The same year he also accepted a position on the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board and when Australia began its transition toward decimal currency later that decade, Drysdale became the Artistic Advisor to the banks and assisted the panel in its deliberations to select appropriate designs. When in 1965 Sir Robert Menzies established an Australian National Gallery Committee of Inquiry to report on the feasibility of a National Art Gallery in Canberra, Drysdale was one of the Commonwealth Art Advisor Board members to serve on the committee.(32) During the 50s and 60s he also judged several art prizes including The Blake Prize in 1955 and the Italian Government’s Travelling Scholarship to Italy in 1956. His service to Australian art was formally acknowledged in 1965 when he was awarded the £5,000 Britannica Australia Award for Art, honouring his generosity towards young artists and his contribution to artistic progress in Australia. Drysdale also leant his weight to several political issues joining a group of prominent citizens calling themselves “Friends of American Hurrah” and supporting action against the banning of Motel in 1968. In the same year he joined the campaign against the Vietnam War, becoming a member of a group of Sydney poets, painters, composers and actors behind the anti-war arts
project “Arts Vietnam” an exhibition to raise money to bring speakers to the conference on the Asian Revolution and Australia. The exhibition opened on Thursday the 3rd of October and included his powerfully evocative “Mourner”. The following year he was named as one of several prominent Australians to sponsor Walkabout for Aborigine Education, an initiative to encourage and support Aboriginal students to remain in school.

His services to art were once again recongised when he was named as one of 20 Australians listed for a Knighthood on the 1969 Queen’s birthday Honours list.
In the final decade of his life, following a cataract operation that successfully preserved his remaining eyesight, Drysdale continued both his civic commitments and his painting practice. He held his last solo exhibition in London in 1972, featuring 28 new drawings, watercolours, and oils.

Thereafter, he appears to have devoted much of his creative energy to illustration work. In 1970, Chinaman’s Reef Is Ours by Ivan Southall was published with artwork by Drysdale on the cover. He also designed artwork for Christmas cards issued jointly in 1970 and 1971 by the Aboriginal Education Council and the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, produced for the United Nations Year to Combat Racism.
Drysdale illustrated The Shiralee by D’Arcy Niland, published in 1973, and contributed illustrations to The White Chrysanthemum: Changing Images of
Australian Motherhood by Nancy Keesing, published by Angus & Robertson for Mother’s Day in 1974. He later supplied eight drawings for Miles Little’s Road
Trip, published in 1978.

In 1980, Drysdale suffered a series of illnesses that ultimately led to his untimely death in 1981 though he lived long enough to witness the successful
completion of a landmark travelling exhibition of 103 of his pictures that had been organised by the deputy director of the Western Australian Art Gallery,
Lou Klepac. 12 Months before his death on the 29th June 1981, Drysdale was once again honoured for his service to art with the Order of Australia Award.

Drysdale is represented by all National and State galleries of Australia and several regional galleries. His work is also held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London and appears in hundreds of books and other publications published since his career took off in the 1930s. His work remains highly respected and integral to the story of Australian art history though sadly, at the time of writing, none of his pictures were on public display. Two catalogues have been completed on Drysdale’s oeuvre – one on drawings and the other on paintings. Each contains several hundred titles that existed during the artist’s life. For more information on the life and oeuvre of Sir Russell Drysdale, please contact me via the contact form on the contact page.