Fred Williams’ wife Lyn wins top honour for service to the arts

Fred Williams’ wife, Lyn, reveals how her husband feared his artistic legacy would die with him – but the revered painter’s wife kept it alive.

Lyn Williams, widow of renowned Australian painter Fred Williams, is now a philanthropist and arts administrator and has been honoured with a Companion of the Order of Australia. Picture: Nadir Kinani

Lyn Williams says that when her husband, renowned landscape painter Fred Williams, died prematurely in 1982, he feared his cultural legacy would quickly fade away. “He felt it would be the end of his contribution,’’ Ms Williams told The Australian.

However, the-then widowed mother of three teenagers managed her husband’s estate so shrewdly, his artistic reputation still burns bright.

Fred Williams has had posthumous shows at the National Gallery of Victoria, the National Gallery of Australia and the British Museum, and his key paintings command prices of more than $1mn.

Now Ms Williams’ “eminent service to the arts” as a philanthropist and arts administrator has been recognised with the top award in the Australia Day Honours, the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC). It has been awarded “for eminent achievement and merit of the highest degree in service to Australia or humanity at large’’.

Ms Williams, now 90, said: “It is unexpected and of course I am honoured to be recognised – it’s far more than I could have possibly expected. I realise it’s also a recognition of Fred and his achievement.’’

Lyn Williams with Philip Bacon from Philip Bacon Galleries, posing in front of the painting Forest Pond by Fred Williams, 1974 which sold for nearly $3m in 2018. Picture: AAP

Prominent art dealer Philip Bacon called Ms Williams’ accolade “a wonderful appointment, well overdue and (it) will be welcomed and applauded by the art world’’.

Fred Williams was famous for his abstract Australian landscapes that featured rustic colour schemes and high horizons, and his works are represented at the NGA, NGV, the British Museum, Tate Gallery and New York’s Metropolitan Museum.

During his career, the Melbourne-born artist had more than 70 solo shows in Australia, and in 1977 – in a rare feat for an antipodean – he was granted an exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Tragically, in 1982, he died from lung cancer, aged 55, and his Australian dealer passed away a few months later.

Ms Williams said this was “a difficult time’’ but her management of the estate “gradually worked out … and kept Fred’s name there” through commercial shows and exhibitions at flagship galleries.

Despite the painter’s fears his contribution to art would die with him, Ms Williams was confident her husband had left behind “a fine body of work that was really worth working on and with’’.

The former schoolteacher married Williams in 1961 and in the decades after her husband’s death she became a notable philanthropist, art donor and art administrator.

In 2022, she gifted nearly 700 Fred Williams drawings, gouaches, and oils from her husband’s 1950s London period to the NGV. This led to a 2022 NGV exhibition of those drawings of theatre performers and zoo animals that showcased a different side of his creativity.

Ms Williams has donated her husband’s paintings and drawings to most of Australia’s state galleries.

Already a member of the Order of Australia (AM), Ms Williams has donated her husband’s paintings and drawings to most of Australia’s state galleries and to the British Museum, Tate Gallery and New York’s Metropolitan Museum. A retrospective exhibition at the British Museum in 2004 confirmed Fred Williams’ reputation as an internationally significant artist.

The Australian Arts Sales Digest said the highest price recorded for the artist’s work is $3.2m for Masons Falls, painted shortly before his death and sold in 2023. A further 23 Williams works have garnered more than $1m, the Digest reported.

Melbourne-based Ms Williams said becoming an arts administrator was “another side of what I’ve done’’. She spent several years on the Metropolitan Museum’s international council before the Covid pandemic, and in 2003 her name was enshrined on the British Museum’s official honour board.

She was “really startled” when former British Museum director Neil MacGregor told her the award was for the leadership she demonstrated relating to the museum’s print room expanding to include Australian and American artists. “That’s probably one of the personal achievements I am most proud of,’’ she said.

Ms Williams has also donated to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Musica Viva, and she said “the Smith Family is a special one for me’’.