DANILA VASSILIEFF

Acquired directly from the artist circa 1950; thence by descent to the present owner
Private collection, Queensland

Following his marriage to Elizabeth Hamill in 1947 and inspired by his readings on the psychology of children's art, Vassilieff's work shifted substantially "from the immediate to the timeless, from images observed directly to images derived from imagination and memory".¹ Always an expressive painter, he began to lean even more towards what Herbert Read called the 'haptic' type of creativity, in which visual reality is subordinated to subjective perception. His drawing became looser, his painting became faster, his colour became brighter.

Amidst the fantasies and mythologies of the late 1940s (the Peter and the Wolf watercolours, an Alice in Wonderland, the Father Murray series etc.), Vassilieff also revisited his Fitzroy paintings of 1937-38, apparently "in a fit of contemptuous irony"² in response to public demand for more street scenes. In this second series the terrace houses and children playing "are now rendered impatiently in broad gestural gashes, sudden tonal contrasts, and flat areas of sharp opaque colours...[showing] stunted figures with alienated faces and in irrational spaces".³

1. Felicity St John Moore, Vassilieff and his Art, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1982, p. 86
2. Elizabeth Vassilieff, "Soldier into Artist", Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, ML MSS 1304 8-280B
3. Moore, op. cit., pp. 86-7