Sir Hans Heysen OBE (1877–1968), one of Australia's best known landscape painters, arrived in Adelaide from his native Germany as a child. After spending four years studying in Paris, Heysen held his first solo exhibition at Melbourne's Guild Hall in 1908. His career grew steadily and he was able to purchase a property near Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills, where he lived for the rest of his life. Specialising in depictions of bush landscapes, Heysen's works feature his distinctive gum trees and reveal his fascination with the Australian light and sky. His popularity was such that Art in Australia ran two special Heysen issues in the 1920s and he won the Wynne Prize for landscape nine times between 1904 and 1932. In 1926 he first visited the Flinders Ranges and returned many times, making paintings of the rocky, dry landscape. Appointed to the Board of the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1940, he served for a record 28 years until his death.
This is one of John Dowie's finest busts, made when Heysen was 83. As Dowie noted in 1960, 'The sculptor is not interested in making eyes and nose and mouth … what he is doing is making his clay or his stone take up forms which will reveal the appearance and mood of the subject.'
Purchased with funds provided by the Basil Bressler Bequest 2004
© Estate of John Dowie
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