Lloyd Rees

Lloyd Frederic Rees (17 March 18952 December 1988) was an Australian landscape painter who twice won the Wynne Prize for his landscape paintings.

Most of Rees's works are preoccupied with depicting the effects of light and emphasis is placed on the harmony between man and nature. Rees's oeuvre is dominated by sketches and paintings, in which the most frequent subject is the built environment in the landscape.

Early life and education Rees was born in Brisbane, Queensland, the seventh of eight children of Owen Rees and his wife Angèle Burguez, who was half Mauritian, half Cornish.

Rees attended Ironside State School Ironside State School and Ithaca Creek State School in Brisbane's inner west. After formal art training at Brisbane's Central Technical College,

In the 1960s the Northwood Group was active during the modishness of Sydney abstract expressionism, their noted contemporaries were the Merioola Group and stalwart Melbourne postwar voices of disquiet such as Sidney Nolan and the Antipodeans. By the 1970s a young postmodern art scene emerged in Gallery A, Macquarie Galleries, and Watters Gallery. Celebrated painter Brett Whiteley was a member of this younger generation rediscovering the now elderly painter and drawer Lloyd Rees.

Friend and Northwood resident William Pidgeon painted Lloyd Rees portrait which won the 1968 Archibald Prize.

Europe

Rees first travelled to Europe in the 1920s (to meet with his then fiancée Daphne Mayo) and made sketches, including many of Paris, which were left accidentally on a bus in London at that time. While some of his works — and indeed his betrothal to Mayo — were lost, his connection with the landscapes of town and country France and Italy was to last a lifetime. Rees visited Europe again in 1953, 1959, 1966–67 and 1973, painting and sketching on all of his journeys.

Personal life and death Rees was engaged to sculptor Daphne Mayo, but it was broken off in 1925. He married Dulcie Metcalfe in 1926. In 1927 Dulcie died in childbirth and Rees married again, in 1931, to Marjory Pollard, mother to his son Alan. Following Rees's death, Alan Rees and his wife Jancis gave to the Art Gallery of NSW all of Rees's surviving sketchbooks.

Honours

Rees won the Wynne Prize in 1950 and 1982. He also won the Commonwealth Jubilee Art Prize in 1957 and in 1971 he won the John McCaughey Memorial Art Prize and the International Cooperation Art Award.

Rees was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 1978 and Australia's highest civilian honour, Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in 1985.

He was awarded the Médaille de la Ville de Paris in 1987 in honour of his artistic achievements.

For forty years, from 1946 to 1986, Rees taught art with Sydney University's Faculty of Architecture and in 1988 received the Sydney University Union Medal for his contributions to art and the University. In the same year he was named as one of the Australian Bicentennial Authority's Two hundred people who made Australia great.

Collections Art Gallery of New South Wales Art Gallery of Western Australia Bathurst Regional Art Gallery Darling Harbour Authority Parliament House, Canberra National Gallery of Australia Newcastle Art Gallery Queensland Art Gallery Royal Australian College of Physicians Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery University of Sydney University of Western Australia West Australian Institute of Technology

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