The rabbiter and his family

The rabbiter and his family

1938 Melbourne

oil on canvas

61.5 x 76.7 cm

inscribed in white paint l.l.: R. Drysdale 1938

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Purchased, 1980

The rabbiter and his family is the largest and most important of Drysdale's early paintings, made while he was a student of George Bell. The bright colours, rhythmic forms, naivety, and the smooth oval-shaped heads reveal the influence of French painters of the early twentieth century and, in particular, Amedeo Modigliani and Moise Kisling. Unlike most of his fellow students, Drysdale had experienced contemporary French painting at first hand during trips abroad. In 1937 the National Gallery of Victoria hosted a Loan Exhibition of Works of Modern Art by Artists Outside Australia which included Kisling's Head (1937).¹

The subject of a rabbiter and his family would have been familiar to Drysdale who spent part of his youth at his family's property Boxwood Park, near Albury, New South Wales. The formal pyramidal arrangement of the figures evokes a grandeur that is contrasted to humorous elements of everyday life, such as the carpet slippers with pom-poms and the dog scratching itself. Drysdale would have known Danila Vassilieff's Man, wife and mother-in-law in street 1937, probably exhibited at the Shore-Bell School in late 1937 or early 1938.²

The rabbiter and his family was purchased by Maie Casey (1892-1983) in 1938. Married to Richard Casey (1890-1976), engineer, diplomat, politician, and later Governor of Bengal and Governor-General of Australia, Maie Casey studied at the Shore-Bell School on her regular visits to Melbourne. The Caseys were enthusiastic patrons of contemporary Australian and international art.³ As Drysdale's first major patrons, they also owned Monday morning (cat. 2), Still life (1938) and The paper (1940).⁴

1 Loan Exhibition of Works of Modern Art by Artists Outside Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne,
20 October - 21 November 1937, no. 24, lent by Gino Nibbi.
2 Danila Vassilieff, Man, wife and mother-in-law in street 1937, oil on canvas, 47.4 x 53.0 cm, private collection. Moore 1992, p. 132.
3 In 1937 the Caseys purchased Pablo Picasso's Les Repos 1932, oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, private
collection, reputedly the first painting by the artist to enter an Australian collection.
4 Still life (1938), oil on canvas, 68.3 x 48.1 cm, private collection; The paper (1940), oil on canvas, 24.8 x 34.3 cm, private collection.