Judy Cassab John Wolseley

When Judy Cassab’s autobiographical Diaries was published in 1995, she received a letter from artist John Wolseley asking if he could visit her when next in Sydney. Cassab was delighted. She had never met Wolseley but had long admired his paintings of the Australian bush. Wolseley duly arrived and Cassab asked if she could paint his portrait, took a sketch of him and set to work.

Cassab’s first work was a portrait of her grandmother in 1932. Since then she has painted portraits of those close to her, particularly portraits of fellow artists. She usually likes to place her subject against something relating to their own work; in Wolseley’s case, one of his own paintings.

Born in England, Wolseley arrived in Australia in 1976. He has become known for the extraordinary affinity with the bush, evident in his paintings of the Australian outback.

Judy Cassab was born in Vienna in 1920, studied in Prague in 1939 and in Budapest from 1945 to 1949, before arriving in Australia in 1951. She has won the Archibald Prize twice for her portraits of artists Stanilaus Rapotec (1960) and Margo Lewers (1967).

This portrait of Wolseley is now in the collection of the National Library of Australia, Canberra.