Private collection, Peru;
Sotheby’s, Important Australian Art, Sydney, 09/04/2019, Lot No. 79;
Private collection, Australia

Reflections by Charles Blackman, The Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane, 14-31
August 1966, no. 5

The Road, a dreamlike and lyrical painting by Charles Blackman was created in 1966 upon the artist’s return to Australia from London. During his time in Europe, Blackman had mingled and worked with other expatriate Australian artists including Arthur Boyd, Brett Whiteley and Fred Williams.

The 1960s saw the rise of abstract expressionism and with it, a vehement rejection by its major exponents of more figurative artistic practices. This in turn was a major factor in the formation of the Antipodean group, founded by academic and historian Bernard Smith. This movement reacted against the perceived emergence of a “fanatical devotion to the principles of abstract art and a rising intolerance of figurative painting,”1 that had taken hold of Sydney’s art scene. Their manifesto asserted their right to draw inspiration from life, nature and their surroundings, central to which was the importance of recognisable imagery, stressing too the importance of artistic diversity.

Like many of Blackman’s paintings, The Road is notable for its balance of simplicity and richness inviting reflection and contemplation.

1. Bernard Smith, Australian Painting 1788 – 1970, Melbourne, Oxford
University Press, 1971, p. 326

Collection of the artist;
Private collection, Queensland

A magical feeling for the spirit of place combines with a grand vision of the ocean and adjacent landscape in this large scale, light-filled work. Here the artist, as expressed in his own words, invites the viewer ‘…to live in the vision itself.’ The Robinsons purchased a retreat near Byron Bay in 2005 and the paintings from this area are both rare and among the artist’s finest.

The beautifully detailed foreground foliage in the present picture demonstrates aptly William Robinson’s exceptional skills as a colourist, and in the rendering of the ocean his ability to capture extraordinary effects with clarity of light.

Of his solo exhibition at the Ray Hughes Gallery in 1994, critic John MacDonald stated ’Robinson is the only non-Aboriginal artist since Fred Williams and John Olsen to give… an entirely new view on the Australian landscape’.

William Robinson is represented widely in public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia; Australian university collections; Parliament House, Canberra; many Australian regional galleries; Artbank; Museum of Brisbane and State Library Queensland; all Australian mainland state collections; and internationally in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Vatican Museum, Vatican City; the Auckland Art Gallery and Waikato Art Museum, Hamilton in New Zealand.