Roland Wakelin (1887-1971) was born in New Zealand and studied at the RAS school in Sydney under Dattilo Rubbo from 1912 to 1914. In 1917 he joined the advertising firm of Smith and Julius, where he worked alongside de Maistre, Rees, Leason and others. At the RAS he had seen prints of modern French paintings and had fallen under the spell of Cézanne. After travel in London and Paris, he returned to Sydney and joined the Contemporary Group. Becoming a leading figure in the Sydney modernist movement, he held annual exhibitions from 1936 at the Macquarie Galleries. The National Gallery and state and regional galleries hold many of Wakelin's serene, cubist-inspired works, and four years before he died he was honoured by a major retrospective show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This is one of a number of restrained self-portraits painted over the course of his career.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Philip Bacon AM 2001
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
© Estate of Roland Wakelin
Roland Wakelin (age 75 in 1962)
Philip Bacon AO (3 portraits)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
This exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of self-portraits in Australia, from the colonial period to the present
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