FRED WILLIAMS

The artist's estate
The Qantas Collection; purchased from the above circa 1986
Gould Galleries, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne; purchased from the above in 2002 

Gould Galleries Modern, Melbourne, 20 July - 31 August 2002, cat. 13, illus.

Original stretcher and not lined, overall very good original condition
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Fred Williams first painted wattles at 'Dunmoochin', his friend Clifton Pugh's property at Cottlesbridge, north-east of Melbourne, in the winter of 1969. He returned to the location and the subject in 1974, noting in his diary for 24 July: 'It was a superb spot and a delight to paint the Wattles in their nat[ural] surrounds.' ¹ He completed numerous paintings of the acacias in bloom, in which the trees are described in blue or green linear blobs overlaid with golden hairs, like giant emperor gum moth caterpillars. Williams's interest in the subject continued over several years; one such later work, Wattles at Dunmoochin, 1977, was sold at Sotheby's in May 2007.

Although very closely related to the 1974 pictures - the wattle bending over a dam in the centre is virtually identical with that in the right hand panel of Landscape with Acacias: diptych, 1974 - this would appear to be a later, studio work. While the earlier wattle paintings were relatively spare and pale, the present work is a horizonless and richly encrusted piebald rainbow confection, much more in the style of the Kew Billabong paintings of 1976. Moreover, the dirt road that sweeps through the right hand side of the composition represents a new pictorial interest, as expressed in other contemporary slashes through the bush: Guthega and Dry Creek Bed, 1976, Werribee Gorge, 1976-77 and Wild Dog Creek, 1977.

Bush Road with Cootamundras successfully employs several different stylistic languages concurrently: hairy, oily whorls of paint in the foreground, blurry ambiguity in the central tree and water, perspectival naturalism along the dusty road, abstract vertical harmonies in the forest and, in the distance, unexpected glimpses of a flat, blue sky.

1. Quoted in Mollison, J., A Singular Vision: the Art of Fred Williams, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 1989, p. 175