White and Friend

Abstract

White and Friend Ron Pretty (bio) I am writing in the front room of Murrays Cottage, where Donald Friend made his home for two years, until he left for Europe in March 1949. He visited again from time to time in later years. His friend Donald Murray remained in the cottage until his death in 1988, for Russell Drysdale and Friend had combined to purchase the cottage for him. Friend's stays in Hill End, and the extended stays by artist friends such as Russell Drysdale and Margaret Olley, transformed the almost deserted exgoldmining town into the artists' colony it remains to this day. According to the local shopkeeper, the population of the town today is 117. In 1872, at the height of the gold rush, the population was anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000, depending on whom you believe. Not much is left today of the extensive gardens that Friend and Murray planted and tended; the kangaroos and wallabies have seen to that. Even a wild pig has been rooting around in the backyard. The white goods and fittings have been modernized, but otherwise the cottage is very much as Friend left it: a modified nineteenth-century wattle and daub cottage. I am here to look for parallels between Patrick White's theories of art and Donald Friend's ideas and practice, as well as to write some ekphrastic poetry based on Friend's work. Years ago, I got so involved in White's semiautobiographical novel The Vivisector that I determined to write my MA thesis on it, despite my supervisor Leonie Kramer's opposition to the idea. She, of course, was of A. D. Hope's persuasion about White's "pretentious verbal sludge," but she didn't try to stop me. White's theory of art was one of the things that interested me. Was it a purely writerly concern, I wondered, or would a painter who had (at least superficially) some similarities, be likely to subscribe to similar theories? There are some interesting parallels between the painter and the writer: They lived at almost exactly the same time: White was born in 1912, Friend in 1915. Both died in 1989. Both escaped wealthy grazier backgrounds. White became increasingly estranged from his mother, Friend from his father (he idealized his mother as a child but became estranged from her later). Neither had any ambition to follow the grazier's life, though in both cases the properties continued to give them financial backing for their art. In spite of such assistance, both became increasingly irritated by the demands of their families. They were both romantics, both in their art and, especially in Friend's case, in their lives. [End Page 137] Both were gay, though Friend was more promiscuous, at one stage admitting to more than 1,000 lovers. White also had a number of lovers (though fewer than Friend) before Manoly Lascaris. Both found love, and relief from Australian mores, in exotic locations: Torres Strait, Sri Lanka, and Bali for Friend; Greece for White. Friend left Australia regularly to escape whenever he tired of his life. He was steeped in admiration for exotic cultures, though eventually they started to pall. Once White returned after the war, he stayed in Australia, but fulminated against Australian culture from the inside. "In Australia," he wrote, "the mind is the least of values."1 For twenty years, White was very close to Sidney Nolan, though the friendship soured after Cynthia Nolan's suicide and Sydney's rapid remarriage. That was paralleled by Friend's close friendship with Russell Drysdale, which also cooled somewhat after 1965, when, after the suicide of his first wife Bon, Drysdale married Maisie Newbold, whom Friend did not much like. But while they lasted, those friendships, White with Nolan, Friend with Drysdale, had a considerable impact on both their lives and their approaches to their art. Overall, though, Friend's relationships are much more important in his art than are White's. Lascaris is the steady center of White's life, but he is not central to his art the way Friend's lover/subjects are. We could perhaps also add that, for both of them, there...