FIZELLE, REGINALD 'RAH' (1891-1964)

“Beginnings of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Sydney Harbour” (c.1926)
Watercolour
32 x 42m
Signed lower left
*exhibited at Australian Watercolour Institute, 1925
*private collection, Melbourne
 
Fizelle was a prominent Australian Modernist. Having served as an ANZAC in France during WWI, in 1921 won a scholarship to Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School, studying under Will Ashton. Known as 'Rah', he chiefly painted pleasantly airy landscape watercolours and exhibited with the Society of Artists, Sydney, from 1923 and the Australian Water-Colour Institute from 1925. He travelled widely in Europe and exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français, Paris. In 1939 Fizelle became the first president of the New South Wales branch of the Contemporary Art Society of Australia. A pioneering 'Sydney Modern', Rah held countless successful solo shows and is represented in most important National collections, particularly the Art Gallery of NSW. This impressive plein air watercolour comes from a number of Sydney Harbour studies Rah completed in preparation for the opening exhibition of the Australian Watercolour Institute in 1925.