The Library is the proud possessor of a work by John Olsen which was kindly donated to the Barr Smith Library in 1991 by Mr and Mrs Max Harris.

Born in Newcastle in 1928, John Olsen moved to Sydney in 1935. Between 1947 and 1953 he studied under John Passmore, painting portraits and still-lifes with a marked 'Cezanne-style cubism', a reaction to what he described as the prevailing 'boutique art' of the early 1950s. By 1956 Olsen had moved further towards abstract art. Studies in Spain and France in the 1950s confirmed this inclination to abstraction, although discernible images are present in many of his later works. Other influences include Chinese calligraphy, European modernism, and, by his own acknowledgment, the Swiss painter Paul KIee. Influential as inspiration is the Australian landscape, reflected in the colour, host of detail, and sense of space in many of his paintings. Olsen has exhibited widely in Australia and overseas, and is probably best known for his huge Salute to five bells, a 70 x 10 foot mural in the northern foyer of the Sydney Opera House.

Of the present painting Max Harris has written

"This painting comes from the period when John Olsen sought and found a greater metaphysical depth than at any other period in his life. He wished to escape the illustrative and exuberant landscape comment which characterises most of his work. He subdued his palette, explored 'Australian' colouration, and communicated the mystical landscape iconography. Brilliantly. In this context this painting of this period rounds off and finalises the Angry Penguins ideals. Curiously it is a point at which the language of Olsen and Fred Williams touched and then diverged again."