Angelsea
Medium:Oil on Board
Size: 50.5 x 60.5 cm
Date: c.1961
Signed: lower left
Provenance: William Frater, Australian Galleries 1980, William Frater Travelling Show

Biography:

William Jock Frater
(b. 1890, Scotland d. 1974 Alphington, Victoria)
Painter, draughtsman and designer

Throughout his career, William Jock Frater strove to push the canons of traditional techniques regarding drawing and painting. With adept skill and grace, he applied modernist idioms to classical subject matter like landscapes and portraiture such as illustrating surface colour, economy of pictorial information and favouritism of tone over perspective. Regarded as leading figure in the Australian modernist movement, Frater's work is greatly admired and highly collectable. Frater was a finalist in the Archibald prize in 1945 with his portrait of the Australian author, Thea Reintis, and a major retrospective of work was held at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1966. His paintings are held within the collections of many major public museums throughout Australia and Scotland.