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Picture of Donald Friend | ||||
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In 'Picture of Donald Friend'...the artist seems to be gloating over the debris. Ruins have their attraction whether they are of ancient Rome or early Australia. Among his contemporaries, Donald Friend was the greatest influence on Drysdale's work. In 1944 Drysdale wrote to Friend, describing the significance he placed on their relationship: Occasionally in one's life a condition arises which causes a change in one's outlook, a sort of re-evaluation which somehow makes one see things in a different way - I feel somehow a bloody sight more grown up and it's made me a little impatient of a lot of the sort of stuff and a lot of the sort of people one liked or put up with once. And out of it all, I've realized how much I've grown to respect and appreciate your friendship. Thank God that you are an honest individual - it makes you a doubly better artist. I mean by that, that you insist by not covering up whatever shortcomings you may consider you have, that people like or accept you not merely for the many good things about you. So many people strive all the time to put only the best things in the shop window and when you go into the shop there's just nothing really.1 Painted immediately after Hill End, Picture of Donald Friend, was one of only a handful of portraits Drysdale painted in his career. Of these, three were of fellow artists.2 The painting is a celebration of the time Friend and Drysdale spent together at Hill End. It is both informal and classical in its composition. Friend strikes a casual pose, in boots and with his hair tousled, outside the rear of Hill End's Presbyterian church, standing on what appears to be the remnants of a building. His confident stance is reminiscent of a big-game hunter or an explorer triumphantly claiming new territory. It represents one of the rare instances in Drysdale's art where the subject looks directly at the artist and hence the viewer.
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© 1999 ABC and NGV