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Collection

An image of Italian landscape drawing by Janet Dawson

Janet Dawson

(Australia 1935– )

Title
Italian landscape drawing
Place of origin
Melbourne → Victoria → Australia
Year
1960
Media category
Drawing
Materials used
charcoal on thick ivory wove paper
Dimensions

77.0 x 90.0cm sheet

Signature & date
Signed and dated l.l., pencil "J. Dawson ´60".
Credit
Purchased with funds provided by the Arthur Boyd Acquisition Fund 2001
Accession number
108.2001
Copyright
© Janet Dawson, 1960. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney
Location
Not on display
Further information

This drawing was made in December 1960 in Melbourne, shortly after Janet Dawson returned to Australia from Europe, courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria Traveling Scholarship. In Europe she had experienced a direct introduction to contemporary art, which was to have a profound effect on her work, as was the influence of her teacher at the Slade School, Ceri Richards.

The latter period of her time abroad was spent in Italy where she lived for some months in the village of Anticoli Corrado in the Sabine Mountains near Rome.

"The drawings she produced of the Italian landscape are abstracted lyrical responses to the physical experience of being there. The soft black charcoal shapes are not so much descriptive as sensual renderings of places, hills, trees and folds of valleys ... her use of formal devices of abstraction (are) embedded in a genuine response to the sensations of the landscape itself."
Deborah Clark, The drawings of Janet Dawson National Gallery of Australia 1996 pp.3-4

Australian Art Department, AGNSW, 2001

Bibliography (1)

Christine France, Janet Dawson survey 2006, Bathurst, 2006, 13, 15 (colour illus.), 67. cat.no. 5; plate no. 4 NOTE: this work was only shown at the first three venues of the tour

Exhibition history (1)

Janet Dawson survey: