THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS, RYDAL, 1991
JOHN OLSEN
watercolour and pastel on paper
100.0 x 78.0 cm
signed, dated and inscribed lower right: The Wind / in / the Willows / - Rydal / John Olsen 91
Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 9 April 1997, lot 233
Australia Art Resources, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne
In March of 1990, John Olsen moved to Chapel House Farm at Rydal, near Bathurst. The property was to be a source of considerable inspiration, its landscape populated by a series of clear spring dams, tufty native grasses and copses of eucalypts. Undoubtedly the subject of this genial composition, Olsen would often note in his journal the mood of the Rydal landscape; 'March 20, Mists foretelling autumn are curling down from Mount Lambie, a touch of gold is in the willows. Ash trees are bright red. No significant rain since late October, the grass is crackling straw.'1
Painted in the year of Olsen's major retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria, Wind in the Willows suggests the euphoria and sense of completion which the exhibition had brought. The small rose garden in the foreground and half-rainbow which graces the sky is imbued with a gentle whimsy. Of the retrospective, Olsen noted, 'There they are, one hundred and five of them in three courts; forgotten pictures, some I would like to forget, some that thrilled me so much I could not grasp how I could have painted them. A feeling of swinging from one court to another by chandeliers.'2
1. Olsen, J., Drawn from Life, Duffy and Snellgrove, Sydney, 1997, p. 282
2. ibid. p. 286
MERRYN SCHRIEVER