Prints and Drawings Room
View by appointment- Artist
- Fred Williams 1927–1982
- Medium
- Etching, aquatint, engraving and drypoint on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 125 × 73 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by the artist's estate 2013
- Reference
- P13504
Summary
The Window Washer 1954–5 is an etching with aquatint, rough biting, engraving and drypoint on paper that shows a man sitting on a window sill washing the glass pane of a sash window. It exists in an edition of twelve, of which this copy is number one. It is one of over a hundred prints that Williams made when he was an art student in London in the early to mid-1950s.
Fred Williams arrived in London from Australia in 1951 and did not return until 1956. This was a time when Britain was increasingly receptive to French and, latterly, American art and these years offered Williams a chance to absorb contemporary European art. It was while he was living in London that he first turned to printmaking in 1953, when he studied briefly at the Central School of Arts and Crafts where the studio printer who assisted him had also worked as a printer for Walter Richard Sickert (1860–1942) (at the same time Williams worked in Robert Savage’s framing shop alongside Roger Hilton [1911–1975] and Yves Klein [1928–1962]). He was immediately prolific, creating at least 117 prints during this short two-year period, most of which exist in more than one state (one in as many as fourteen states) and exhibit his quick mastery of a whole range of printmaking techniques. The Artist, although not a street scene, is typical of the humble approach to his subject matter that Williams pursued in his work and reflects his interest in the work of Honoré Daumier (1808–1879), Sickert and the poetry of everyday life. Williams’ London prints often acted as studies for paintings and then evolved and developed to their own ends, although this relationship was not always clear cut. His friend the artist John Brack (1920–1999) explained: ‘Mostly these etchings were made from sketches drawn on the spot, and some were also the basis for paintings, though the painting is never a translated version of the print, any more than the etching is a translated drawing.’ (John Brack, ‘Introduction’, in Brack and Mollison 1968, p.6.)
Further reading
John Brack and James Mollison, Fred Williams Etchings, Woollahra 1968.
Patrick McCaughey, Fred Williams 1927–1982, London 2008.
Fred Williams, Infinite Horizons, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2011.
Andrew Wilson
September 2013
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.