Sir George Russell Drysdale

Sir George Russell Drysdale (1912-1981), Australian landscape painter, noted for his bleak interpretations of the Australian outback, the continent's desolate interior region. He was born in Sussex, England, and moved to Australia as a child. After studying art in Melbourne, London, and Paris, during which time he lost the sight in his left eye, he settled in Sydney, Australia, in 1940 and became a full-time painter. During World War II (1939-1945), austerity measures forced him to work in crayon and ink. With these materials, however, he created striking color contrasts both in his paintings of the outback and in everyday scenes of wartime subjects such as aircraft hangars, devastated buildings, and groups of servicemen.

In 1944, Drysdale produced a series of line and wash drawings for the Sydney Morning Herald, depicting drought conditions in northern New South Wales and the harshness of life in the outback. During the 1950s he made extensive trips into the interior, producing pictures of barren landscapes, desolate settlements, and stark, lonely figures. In his later work he often focused on Aboriginal Australians, the country's native peoples, and their conflicts with the culturally dominant European society.

Drysdale received a number of awards for his work, which is represented in the Tate Gallery, London, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as well as in the Australian National Gallery and all Australian state galleries. Among his best-known paintings are Mullaloonah Tank (1953), Snake Bay at Night (1959), and Ceremony at Rock Face (1963).