Painting - Artwork, 'Smeaton' by Wes Walters [and charcoal study], 1978

Historical information

Wes WALTERS (06 August 1928 - 19 August 2014)
Born Mildura, Victoria

From 1940 t0 1945 Wes Walters attended the Ballarat High School. He then studied architecture at the Gordon Institute in Geelong, followed by art at the Ballarat School of Mines (a division of the Ballarat School of Mines). During his time at the Ballarat Technical Art School (later Federation University Australia) Walters studied under Neville Bunning and Taylor Kelloch, and was awarded the Ballarat Ladies Art Association Scholarship in 1948. He next moved to Melbourne to work as a commercial artist with the George Patterson advertising agency. Each evening Walters studied life drawing at the Victoria Artists’ Society and taught himself anatomy.

Wes Walters excelled in both abstract and realist art. He won the Art Gallery of Ballarat’s Minnie Crouch Prize for watercolour art in 1953 and 1956. He won the prestigious Archibald Prize in 1879 for his portrait of Phillip Adams, and the sketch was completed tin preparation for that portrait.

Bruce Smeaton (born 5 March 1938) is an Australian composer who is well known for a variety of Australian film and television scores in all genres, including features, shorts, television, documentaries and advertisements.[1] His scores include Picnic at Hanging Rock, Seven Little Australians, Roxanne, Iceman, and Circle of Iron. He has won the Australian Film Institute 'Best Original Music Score' Award for The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), The Great McCarthy (1975), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978) and Street Hero (1984, shared with Garth Porter and others). (Wikipedia)

Physical description

.1) Portrait of Bruce Smeaton in oil on an unframed stretcher.

.2) Charcoal sketch of the head of Bruce Smeaton

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