Author: Learn Antiques Team

FRED WILLIAMS: Painting a Landscape of Brilliance

Frederick Williams was noteworthy for not only being a prolific painter but is also celebrated for his etchings. He learned to draw in the traditional manner, copying from plaster casts. Fred became interested in etching from studying prints of Rembrandt and Goya at the British Museum and spent many hours making them. But when Fred returned home, he started to move away from his mainly figure-based work to painting landscapes. One painting sold for, what was at the time, the second-highest recorded price for any work sold at an Australian auction. Fred held more than 70 solo exhibitions both in Australia and abroad. His works can now be found in numerous galleries in Australia.

EDWARD WORMLEY: Drawing from the Best of Both Worlds

Edward J. Wormley is best known for his custom and limited-edition furniture designs for the Dunbar Furniture Corporation. He is honoured as one of the 20th century’s major designers of American modernist furniture. Ironically, Wormley married modern sensibilities to traditional designs that gave his modernist designs a distinctively muted warmth and a quality that defies time, making them stand out from among their contemporaries. He proved that one need not choose the new over the old and that new things can be made out of the old. A large number of Wormley’s popular pieces from the 1930s and 1940s were selling well even into the 1960s, and even command very high prices at auctions today.