Robert Dickerson

(1924-2015)

Swimmers at the River, 2000

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney (label attached verso)
Private collection, Sydney
Sotheby's Australia, Sydney, 11 May 2016, lot 195
Private collection, Melbourne

EXHIBITED
Robert Dickerson, Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney, 8 August - 2 September 2000, cat. 1


Set on the Shoalhaven River, Swimmers at the River was painted in Arthur Boyd's studio at Bundanon where Dickerson had spent 12 months as an 'artist in residence'. Boyd was, in fact, both a friend of Dickerson and a fellow member of the Antipodeans who came together during 1959-60 to staunchly defend traditional and figurative art as abstract expressionism was gaining popularity around the globe. Though the manifesto was an important symbolic declaration, it is evident that the Antipodeans had little to fear – far from being put aside and replaced with this new movement, they each retain an important place in Australian art history, with Robert Dickerson one of the most iconic figurative painters of his time and represented in all important public and private collections.

In Swimmers at the River Dickerson masterfully captures the varying emotions of the three central figures. Though we only see the downturned partial profile of one and one exposed eye of another through crossed arms, there can be no doubt that each is deeply troubled in their own mental turmoil. Though they are together, they are very much solitary in their thoughts and anguish. In just a few brushstrokes Dickerson delivers a powerful and direct message that is immediate for the viewer. As a keen swimmer himself throughout his life, it was a subject to which he returned regularly and perhaps reflected his own struggles and experiences in these anonymous visages.

Throughout this period, Dickerson's early desolate, urban cityscapes made way for the natural landscapes he observed around his home in Nowra with stretches of skies in all kinds of weather, dense forests, still rivers or raging surf executed in his distinctive structured, formalist manner. One of the largest works Dickerson ever painted, the scale of Swimmers at the River serves to emphasize the vast, isolated expanse of the riverbank that the three figures inhabit. The forest behind seems indeterminable. It is almost as though the figures are stranded with no escape from their thoughts.

Francesca Cavazzini