.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
... I think the pleasure of painting is the manipulation of this solid body - that it's pushed around into a kind of structure - the thickness of paint or impasto ... the physical pleasure of having enough stuff to push around.
Grey-Smith in interview with Laurie Thomas, 1969, p.21
Grey-Smith returned to Western Australia in 1949 after his post-war years of study at the Chelsea School of Art, London. While works that immediately followed Grey-Smith's return show the influence of Cézanne, the paintings of the 1960s and 1970s, such as the present work, show the influence of the Russian artist Nicholas de Staël.
'... the first time I really felt free ... was when I could use the lesson of de Staël. I found de Staël's painting gave me an avenue of freer individual development ... I found, too, at this time that the north-western landscape seems to be a typical de Staël country, and one of my greater wishes would have been for de Staël himself to have come up and worked in this country.' (Grey-Smith in interview with Laurie Thomas, 1969 quoted in J. Scott, Landscapes of Western Australia, Claremont, 1986, p.20)
Grey-Smith in interview with Laurie Thomas, 1969, p.21
Grey-Smith returned to Western Australia in 1949 after his post-war years of study at the Chelsea School of Art, London. While works that immediately followed Grey-Smith's return show the influence of Cézanne, the paintings of the 1960s and 1970s, such as the present work, show the influence of the Russian artist Nicholas de Staël.
'... the first time I really felt free ... was when I could use the lesson of de Staël. I found de Staël's painting gave me an avenue of freer individual development ... I found, too, at this time that the north-western landscape seems to be a typical de Staël country, and one of my greater wishes would have been for de Staël himself to have come up and worked in this country.' (Grey-Smith in interview with Laurie Thomas, 1969 quoted in J. Scott, Landscapes of Western Australia, Claremont, 1986, p.20)