FRED WILLIAMS

Fred Williams Exhibition, Georges Gallery, Melbourne, 1-14 April 1964, cat. 15
Fred Williams Farewell Exhibition, Rudy Komon Art Gallery, Sydney, 13-30 May 1964, cat. 2
Australian Landscape Painting 1937-1965, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 29 October - 19 December 1964, cat. 62
Heroic Landscape: Arthur Streeton – Fred Williams, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 16 October - 22 November 1970, cat. 36

Bernard Smith, 'Two Exhibitions by Mature Artists', The Age, Melbourne, 1 April 1964, p. 5
Alan McCulloch, 'An Artist's Two Outlooks, Regional, Abstract?', The Herald, Melbourne, 1 April 1964, p. 21
Daniel Thomas, 'The Week in Art', The Sunday Telegraph, Sydney, 17 May 1964, illus.
Bill Hannan, 'Williams's Landscapes', The Bulletin, Sydney, 18 April 1964, p. 43
Adrian Rawlins, 'Fred Williams', Art and Australia, vol. 2, no. 3, December 1964, p. 181, illus.

Hillside is one of Fred Williams's early masterpieces, widely recognised as such when first exhibited in 1964. In Melbourne, Bernard Smith wrote: 'Hillside (15) is a magnificent painting, to my mind the masterpiece of the exhibition'. ¹ All the art critics singled it out for special mention, or illustrated it in their reviews. Alan McCulloch of the Melbourne Herald, said that the trees in Hillside were 'as eloquent as signals'. Daniel Thomas in his weekly column in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph, reproduced the work and added: '"Hillside" is a seemingly deadpan quarter-circle profile, with little trees; but it tumbles. Moreover, it tumbles with gaiety and joy; it is like the biblical psalm where the little hills dance and sing'. Bill Hannan of The Bulletin, noted it together with Yellow Landscape, and Adrian Rawlins in a special article on Williams in Art and Australia, presented it in colour. 

Hillside was a key work in Williams's rise to eminence and in the recognition of his individual achievement-as Bernard Smith put it, 'a new and personal image of the Australian landscape'. ² His two 1964 solo shows in Melbourne and Sydney were highly  successful. Williams had arrived, hailed by Hannan as 'among the best painters in the country', and by Wallace Thornton in The Sydney Morning Herald as 'among the top few of Australian landscape artists'. ³ In the Sydney exhibition, James Gleeson considered all the paintings 'major achievements, but "You-Yangs," "You-Yangs III," "Sapling Forest," "Sherbrooke Forest" and "Kallista" are quite outstanding.' ⁴  The frequent references to Hillside confirmed it as the best among the best. The artist himself regarded it as a major work, its significance again confirmed in 1970 by inclusion in the National Gallery of Victoria's important exhibition, Heroic Landscape: Arthur Streeton - Fred Williams.

Previously, the early sixties had seen Williams represented in London in the Whitechapel and Tate Gallery exhibitions; and receiving, among other awards, the Helena Rubinstein Travelling Scholarship and the Transfield Prize. After his return from the European scholarship tour, in 1966 alone Williams added the Georges Prize, and the Wynne and John McCaughey prizes from the Art Gallery of New South Wales. These years were among his richest periods of creativity. Gallery curators responded accordingly. The Art Gallery of New South Wales acquired Trees on a Hillside II, 1964 the following year; You Yangs II, 1963 is now in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and the Art Gallery of South Australia has You Yangs Pond, 1963. A closely related painting, Dark Hillside, 1964/67, is in the National Gallery of Victoria as part of the Joseph Brown Collection.

Hillside shows Williams as a classicist of enormous stature. The bold curve of the hill, with its suggestion of visual insecurity, is arrested by the balance and weighted opposition of the horizontals and verticals of the trees. Conceived in the most sensuous colours, the mood of the painting is one of serenity, while an engaging counter play between the animated surface textures of the land and the luminous sky involves the viewer intimately in the vista. Paradox is but part of the intellectual fascination of the work, of analysis and synthesis harmoniously balanced in an elegant statement of classical simplicity. In the history of Australian art, Hillside must be numbered among our great landscapes.

1. Smith, B., The Age, 1 April 1964, p. 5.
2. Ibid.
3. Hannan, B., The Bulletin, 18 April 1964, p. 43; and Thornton, W., The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May 1964, p. 16.
4. Gleeson, J., 'A Painter with Delicate Style', The Sun-Herald, Sydney, 13 May 1964.