"The Piano Player"

Oil on canvas board.

Clearly signed C Dudley Wood in oil bottom right.

260 x 230mm. With period frame 300 x 260mm.

Clifford Dudley Wood began his career by studying art, design and composition at Swinburne Technical College in the early twenties and then at night classes at Swinburne and 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.

His ability to capture both the form and the atmosphere of any subject established him as a superb water-colourist and oil painter by the end of the 1940’s. Although not appointed as an official war artist, he continued to sketch and paint when assigned to the Allied Works Council in Queensland and Darwin as a camofleur. Many of these World War II works are held in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. Later he was not only drawn to depicting the beauty of the Australian wilderness, but also undertook a wide variety of industrial commissions, travelling from Newcastle to Wittenoom, from Hobart to Whyalla, to illustrate Australia’s post-war reconstruction. Later, in the 1960’s, he became fascinated by Australia’s Red Centre and it’s Aboriginal inhabitants.

“This survey of the works of Dudley Wood fills an important gap in the history of Australian Art, a period in which fine artists of the calibre of Dudley Wood turned, for mere financial survival to the practice of commercial art.

C. Dudley Wood remained firmly in the traditional school of Australian landscape artists. He resisted the turmoil and controversy of contemporary art developments and continued to paint for the enjoyment of a large and loyal following.

Amongst the artists Dudley Wood most admired were Lloyd Rees, Blamire Young, Sir Hans Heysen,and Harold Herbert . These artists all depicted the qualities of light with a lyricism that Dudley Wood also aspired to.

Investment Grade Artist.