“If there is one reputation in Australian art that is surely unassailable, it is the reputation of Fred Williams. He died in 1982, and it is now clear, if it was ever in doubt before, that he was the most compelling, the most inventive and the most disciplined of the many Australian artists who tried to the new freedoms of modern art to bear on the Australian landscape. “
Sebastian Smee, 2004
Art critic, Daily Telegraph, London
Extract from 2004 exhibition catalogue
Image: Fred Williams – Wattles at Cottlesbridge I, 1969, oil on canvas, 89 x 89 cm. Text