The National Gallery of Victoria has this lovely Eric Thake watercolour, pastel, and charcoal drawing in their collection. Documenting, again, his presence in Alice Springs.
| Eric Thake, Night time, Alice Springs, 1945-47 |
It’s an unusual work for Thake. Grim Thake. Dark Thake. No humorous intent here. Long shadows of an artist sitting quietly in a dark room.
Thoughts of war.
It’s a beautiful linear work.
Same year we see the more quirky Thake.
Thake was friends with artist George Bell. George described this drawing. “Intensely personal, exquisite in refined colour and powerful in suggestion of grim reality, these pictures show him as the best war artist Australia has commissioned”.
| Eric Thake, Self portrait in a broken shaving mirror, 1945, image from Classical Modernism: The George Bell Circle |
Julia Ritson
JULIA RITSON 
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