Fred Williams: The London Drawings

Fred Williams is recognised as one of Australia’s most significant landscape painters of the twentieth century. Yet, the artist’s early commitment to drawing and painting the human figure, his accomplishments as a draughtsman and the importance of drawing in his oeuvre are less well known. Fred Williams: The London Drawings explores these aspects of Williams’s work and presents a focused survey of the drawings made during his formative years in London (1952–56), when he first came to maturity as an artist.

Important drawings from the NGV Collection – including series of drawings that he made in the music halls and on the streets of London, as well as at the city’s zoo and in formal life-drawing classes – reveal Williams’s extraordinary observational skills and his ability to capture the world around him.

With contributions by Cathy Leahy, Deanna Petherbridge CBE, Chris Stephens, Fiona Gruber, Louise Wilson and Lyn Williams AM, Fred Williams: The London Drawings presents rich imagery as well as new scholarship on one of the most celebrated figures in Australian art and the artistic processes that shaped his practice.