Time's passing sheds new light on a master

THE Lloyd Rees Festival celebrates a giant of Australian art

Gerringong Landscape by Lloyd Rees.

LLOYD Rees's last exhibition took place when he was 93. Entitled Works on Paper, it was held in Melbourne in October 1988 at the Australian Galleries. In the exhibition catalogue, I pointed out that in the year of the Bicentenary, the life span of this giant of Australian art represented almost half the history of our nation.

Lloyd had been living in Tasmania with his son and daughter-in-law, and we had heard that he was depressed and had taken to his bed. There was no chance he would be able to attend the exhibition opening.

When the phone rang from Hobart, we expected the inevitable. Not so -- Lloyd was up and coming to Melbourne. The exhibition was a great success, the gallery was filled with collectors and admirers. Lloyd was in great form, holding court in the gallery. He had finally conquered Melbourne -- not an easy task for an artist so closely associated with Sydney.

It was a different story when he had an exhibition of his paintings and drawings in Melbourne in 1925. He recalled that on opening day he sat in the gallery and the only other person there was Harold Herbert, who came to review the exhibition.

Rees has always had a serious group of admirers and was a successful painter. He had a retrospective at the Art Gallery of NSW (then the National Gallery of NSW) in 1942. And again in 1969, which toured all state galleries. It was curated by Renee Free, who also wrote two important books on Rees.

Yet Rees didn't achieve the national reputation of artists such as William Dobell or Russell Drysdale until much later in life. When a younger painter asked what one had to do to get some recognition, Rees told him that it seemed all one needed to do was to live as long as possible and recognition would follow. Rees had a great sense of humour.

In my introduction to the book Lloyd Rees Drawings, published in 1978 by John Brackenreg, I wrote "in every age there is always the artist who is the link between the past and the future" and "while he is among us we may take him for granted and neglect him". Indeed, in 1978 Rees was 82, and still in my view seriously neglected. In October 1973, Rees had an exhibition of paintings and drawings at the New Grafton Gallery in London -- 14 oils, 14 drawings, all masterpieces -- and though the exhibition was opened by the Australian high commissioner and the room was full of Australian celebrities, a good number of these works returned to Australia unsold and were included in an exhibition of his work at the Lister Galleries in Perth early in 1975. By this time I was back in Perth as senior curator at the WA Art Gallery.

When my book on the drawings was published in 1978, we celebrated the event at the gallery -- our staff being probably the most committed to Rees's work.

They would later all make a contribution to furthering the appreciation of Lloyd's work: Barry Pearce, Hendrik Kolenberg, Barbara Chapman and Anna Gray.

Two events changed the perception of Rees nationally. The first was when John Olsen opened Lloyd Rees, A Tribute to Sydney exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries in January 1979 and made people aware that here was a great artist. He, like Brett Whiteley, was an admirer and had written an article on Rees.

The second, in May 1979, was when Rees appeared as a guest of Michael Parkinson on ABC TV. They shared a love of cricket and the interview, transmitted into thousands of homes, made Lloyd a national figure. He was one of the country's most intelligent painters, and the interview revealed his great personality and wisdom.

This interview coincided with a great exhibition of Rees's work organised by Betty Clark of the University of Melbourne, which was later shown at the SH Ervin Gallery, Sydney, and opened there by Parkinson. By then, Rees had painted some of those magnificent late visionary works that were included in the exhibition.

In 1981 he won the Wynne Prize. After that he became one of the most admired and loved artists, whose great achievement, intelligence and wisdom disarmed anyone who might have previously had reservations about him.

His long life in art amounts to a considerable and varied achievement. There are the amazing pencil drawings made in the 30s that are marvels of detail. Then there are those works that came when Lloyd became free of having to earn his living in commercial art. In 1947, he was appointed tutor in drawing and lecturer in the history of art in the School of Architecture at the University of Sydney. This meant working three days a week at the university; the rest he devoted to painting.

In 1948, he built a holiday cottage, Caloola, at Werri Beach, Gerringong on the NSW south coast, which became a retreat and the area a source of inspiration. The small town will this weekend host the Lloyd Rees Festival to coincide with the 25th anniversary of his death.

It was there he painted The Road to Berry as well as what I consider to be one of his greatest paintings, 1954's The Road to the Mountain, which is in the Art Gallery of WA, where I was privileged to "feed" from it. This painting was also admired by Whiteley, who came several times to look at it when it was exhibited at the SH Ervin Gallery exhibition in 1981.

Even after Lloyd's sight deteriorated and he could not see details clearly, he continued painting. Not all of these works are of the highest quality, but many I would rank among his greatest achievements, especially the painting Fire Haze at Gerringong in the Art Gallery of NSW.

Lloyd explained that although he could not make out details any more, the years spent making the detailed pencil drawings, enabled him to master tone, and through this he was still able to make credible paintings. The late paintings became larger, bolder and visionary.

A Queenslander by birth, with a French mother, Rees always preferred French art to the English. In 1917 he discovered and fell in love with Sydney when he passed through on the way to Melbourne, and saw the harbour through a porthole. Soon after, Sydney became his home.

He is the painter of Sydney, par excellence; later he became the painter of light. His optical handicap now allowed him to look straight at the sun. Though aged, he was still full of the wonder of life. At the end of a large book by Free, devoted to the late works (published in 1983), Lloyd wrote an epilogue, and ends it by describing a journey on the ferry from Northwood to the city.

"One Monday morning I went down and sat on the seat by the wharf. It was one of those mornings that I've always reacted to, everything coming through a veil, a gentle light -- whitish with a touch of blue -- and it was like that all the way to town. It was light and delicate, actually a prelude to a day of fog the next day.

"The light came through wonderfully. I got up on the ferry and got an outer seat at the back. I looked out upon it all and suddenly thought: I don't want to go to Heaven because it can't be as beautiful as this."

When Lloyd died, a great fire was extinguished. With the death of an important artist, a lighthouse disappears and for a while his reputation suffers.

It is the fate of many artists who live a long life. It takes time for the public to realise that great fire is not lost but is contained in all the artist's works. Then little by little a beacon is ignited, which is the artist's vision, and his reputation is restored.

Lou Klepac is an art historian, publisher and author of several books. He will give a lecture at the Lloyd Rees Festival in Gerringong, NSW, on Saturday entitled Lloyd Rees: One of the Giants of Australian Painting.

FESTIVAL FOR AN ARTIST
THE inaugural Lloyd Rees Festival, marking 25 years since the artist's death, opens today in Gerringong on the NSW south coast. Rees had a family holiday home for nearly 40 years at the town's Werri Beach, which according to his son Alan -- who is attending the festival -- was both a retreat and a source of inspiration for the landscape painter. More than 30 of Rees's works are showing at the Shoalhaven City Arts Centre, including Fire Haze at Gerringong, a large abstract work of oil-on-canvas from the Art Gallery of NSW that depicts a local bushfire from the 1930s, which Rees painted in the 80s. The exhibition titled Works from the South Coast runs until December 14. The festival, which features exhibitions at Gerringong Town Hall of memorabilia, classes and concerts, runs until Sunday.
Justin Burke