Lloyd Rees Print Page

The sculpture commemorates Australian artist Lloyd Rees.

Lloyd Frederic Rees AC CMG (17 March 1895 – 2 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.

Rees was also interested in civic architecture and town planning; a member (1962-67) of the Sydney City Council fountains committee, in 1976 he underwrote the waterfall in Martin Place.  A democratic socialist, he was a long-time supporter of the Australian Labor Party.  His skill as a raconteur, especially about cricket, endeared him to Prime Minister Robert Hawke; Neville Wran, Tom Uren and William Deane were among his friends.  In the 1980s he opposed the destruction of Tasmanian wilderness areas.

Rees painted right up to his death, by which time he was in his nineties. His works of the last one to two decades in particular showed a preoccupation with the spiritual dimension of the relationship with and portrayal of the landscape, and this became the focus of the final book prepared in cooperation with the author Renée Free: Lloyd Rees: the last twenty years.

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