Page 42 - Studio International - October 1965

Russell Drysdale

by John Russell

The Ruins 'Lake Callabonna·
Oil on canvas
30 X 40 in.

Eddying as it does between Manhattan and St. Tropez. right. Now. the prettiest house in Double Bay is a two­
Brooklyn Heights and the more dismal suburban storeyed white villa with vestiges of castellation on its
developments of any large English city. Sydney can be roofline and a long narrow lawn running down to the
made to fit into any judgment, favourable or unfavour­ road. Imagine a dower-house from Jane Austen set
able. which a visitor cares to pass upon it. 'Irresistible' down on a sub-tropical island and you will. once again.
is not the word for it: all depends. beyond a doubt, be about right. And I was being piloted by someone
on getting the password. How else could one tell. for who knows every personable house in the Sydney area
instance, that what looks from the road like a back­ I asked him who lived there. 'Russell Drysdale', he said.
watery private mansion is in fact the best hotel east of but I was too slow to catch on. that time round. and
Singapore 7 Happily the password in matters of art is asked to go in.
easily found: and although Sydney has its full share of But a day or two later the chance recurred. and Mr.
the internal hatreds which characterise Australian art­ and Mrs. Drysdale said 'Yes· to the idea. and I did get
life these hatreds are suspended-on the surface. at inside the house. which had been very elegantly and
any rate-when a visitor from London is in the offing. resourcefully got up by the painter Stanislaus Rapotec.
Thus it is that within an hour or two of his first who now lives in London and had rented it, meanwhile.
acquaintance with the Sydney morning papers the to the Drysdales. I had no very clear idea of Mr. Drysdale.
visitor is likely to be whisked out of the Belvedere Hotel beyond the fact that for every painter I had met he
(no other will do, by the way) and off on a tour which seemed to serve as the anchorman. not only of
will touch on a large number of subjects. many of them Australian painting. but also in a sense of Australian
unexpected: wines good enough for the Mosel valley, manhood as well. People were pleased to belong to the
for instance. early Victorian marine architecture, signed same race as Drysdale. even if they were painting in
French furniture of the 18th century, ceiling-paintings quite a different way But I knew him only indirectly,
by John Olsen. a quick look at a legalised gambling­ through his paintings. and I could not for the moment
hell. office-towers stylish enough for Skidmore. Owings make the connection between the solitary, under­
& Merrill. fish-restaurants with tables set out on the privileged world of those paintings and the house on
fine white sand of the shore. and in the very middle of Double Bay, which was one with which Oliver Messel
the city a flourishing and unacknowledged Chinatown. would have been delighted.
Most such tours wind at some point through Double Most painters· houses. anywhere in the world. have
Bay. I can best describe Double Bay by saying that if a room where everything happens: a combination of
London's Little Venice had the sea in front of it, instead drawing-room. dining-room, library, counting-house.
of a canal. and if it had rather more trees and were cabinet des merveilles and kitchen. The house on
backed by Primrose Hill instead of by the flaking Double Bay was no exception to this and I found
terraces of Westbourne Grove. that would be just about myself plunged. like one of Livy·s heroes, in medias res.
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