Lloyd Rees
(1895 - 1988)
Rees was born in Brisbane, Queensland, and attended Ironside State School and Ithaca Creek State School in Brisbane's inner west. After formal art training at Brisbane's Central Technical College, he commenced work as a commercial artist in 1917.
From the 1940s until the 1960s Rees was part of the Northwood group, a small group of friends who would go on painting excursions around Sydney Harbour and northwestern Sydney. Rees tended towards a neo-impressionist style of landscape painting with sinuous linework. Rees’ painting of the ‘Old Sobran’ was done during this period.
One of the pre-eminent landscape artists of his age, Lloyd Rees was a skilled painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He sought to build upon the legacy of the European landscape painting, taking inspiration from artists such as Corot and Turner while also drawing from the Australian landscape tradition. His approach varied throughout his life from the precise analytical drawings and paintings produced during the 1920s and 30s, through the rhythmic, more sombre works of the 1940s and 50s, to the visions of light that characterised his late works. His painting technique reveals a capacity to characterize the texture and light of landscapes.
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.
