WOOD, CLIFFORD DUDLEY (1905-1980)

Name: WOOD, CLIFFORD DUDLEY (1905-1980)
Price: 1625 AUD
Availability: InStock

$3,250.00

$1,625.00

“The Lost Chord” (c.1930)

gouache

Signed on verso

*private collection, Melbourne

Wood was a prominent, underrated Australian Watercolourist & Commercial Illustrator. He studied art, design & composition at Swinburne Technical College in the early twenties & then at night classes at Swinburne & the Victorian Artists Society. He started exhibiting works in a variety of styles in the Depression years, while at the same time rapidly becoming one of the country’s foremost commercial artists. Amongst the artists Dudley Wood most admired were Lloyd Rees, Blamire Young, Sir Hans Heysen & Harold Herbert . His ability to capture both the form & the atmosphere of any subject established him as a superb water-colourist & oil painter by the end of the 1940’s. Although not an official war artist, he continued to sketch & paint when assigned to the Allied Works Council in QLD & Darwin as a camofleur. Many of these World War II works are held in the Australian War Memorial. Later he was not only drawn to depicting the beauty of the Australian wilderness, but also undertook a wide variety of industrial commissions, travelling around the country to illustrate Australia’s post-war reconstruction. Later, in the 1960’s, he became fascinated by Australia’s Red Centre & it’s Aboriginal inhabitants. This resulted in numerous publications. Wood exhibited regularly at major commercial galleries throughout Australia, but also contributed to International Group shows, namely the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, UK, where He was included in the Australian Pavilion. In Melbourne he exhibited with the Victorian Artists Society from 1930-1947, with the Seven Watercolourists 1932-35 & in the 1950’s with the Fellowship of Australian Artists.

This unique Art Deco-inspired watercolour & gouache illustrates Arthur Sullivan's iconic composition "The Lost Chord" (1877). Set to words by Adelaide Anne Proctor, the song was most notably sung by legendary Enrico Caruso at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1912 at the benefit concert for victims' families of the Titanic disaster. This illustration was most likely used for commercial advertising purposes.