Kenneth Rowell AM (1920–1999), artist and theatre designer, left school aged around thirteen and found work as a window dresser, spending his spare cash on theatre and his spare time at the National Gallery of Victoria. He began designing backdrops and costumes during the early 1940s, earning his first professional commission in 1947. Awarded a British Council Scholarship in 1950, he moved to London, subsequently working there and in Australia over the next four decades on more than 140 ballet, opera and theatre productions. In the 1960s, he developed a close association with The Australian Ballet, creating designs for productions including Coppelia (1960), Giselle (1965) and Sleeping Beauty (1973). In the 1970s, he created the sets and costumes for the ballets of Peter Sculthorpe's Sun Music and Rites of Passage, choreographed by Robert Helpmann. At the same time, Rowell developed a considerable reputation as an artist, producing expressionist paintings, mixed media works and sculpture inspired by the Australian landscape. The National Gallery of Australia holds more than 400 examples of his costume design drawings; and in 1999, Opera Australia mounted the retrospective exhibition Double Act.
David Strachan was a Sydney painter who spent much of his working life in Europe. A finalist in the 1967 Archibald Prize, his portrait of Rowell positions the sitter against a stark yellow background, bathed in golden light.
Gift of Margaret Olley 2002. Transferred from the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
© Estate of David Strachan
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