Camp by a Waterhole, Channel Country, Western Queensland – SOLD
Detail photos for this Artwork
During his painting career Hugh Sawrey depicted the life of the stockman many times.
These works, which are amongst his most popular and sought after, were often based on his personal experiences of working on some of outback Australia’s best-known station runs; including those in the Channel Country which sits across the borders of Queensland, New South Wales, the Northern Territory and South Australia.
Sawrey was only in his teens when he first went there in the 1930s. The isolated towns of Birdsville and Windora, then the most prominent settlements in the region, overlooked portions of country that were once owned by the great pastoralist entrepreneurs such as Sir Sidney Kidman (1857-1935). Sawrey worked on stations that Kidman once owned, including Diamantina Lakes and Morney Plains.
By the late 1950’s Sawrey had retired from station work and was establishing himself as an artist depicting rural life and stockmen who travelled all over the interior moving from station to station and camp to camp on droving trips.
“The Camp by a Waterhole, Channel Country” is a narrative of a stockman’s lifestyle. There are many details recorded on this large canvas that tell this story … the stockman resting on a stump having a wash after a dusty day’s riding, his mates gathered around the warm campfire with a welcome billy on the boil, saddle blankets and a saddle strung over a makeshift line between the trees, horses resting and tethered near the waterhole, and the landscape of rich red earth surrounding the sheltered camp under the trees.
Being at camp was a time to rest, eat, have a yarn and recuperate before another day in the saddle. It was also a time when Sawrey, who often carried scraps of paper in his saddle bag, could scribble sketches of the life he observed around him, recording experiences and memories that were later depicted in his original oil paintings that made him a household name and one of Australia’s most successful artists.
