Deutscher and Hackett

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 corpses 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, The Wind in the Willows, Rydal suggests the euphoria and sense of completion which the exhibition had brought. Of the retrospective Olsen noted, 'There they are, one hundred and five of the min 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

The bowl of ripe apples in the foreground and half-rainbow which graces the sky are all quietly joyous. Looking down upon the farm, out across the willows to the sky beyond which is just barely tinged with blue, we sense an artist pottering in the studio and enjoying the last dry days of autumn. The landscape here is executed with such authority and ease, the horizon dotted and adorned with the watercolour flourishes now synonymous with Olsen. There is the quiet clamour of the rainbow lorikeets as they glide over the dry yellow fields, the landscape so particularly Australian in this sparse and calligraphic mood.

1. Quoted in Olsen, J., Drawn from Life, Duffy and Snellgrove, Sydney, 1997, p. 282
2. ibid., p. 286

MERRYN SCHRIEVER