Donald Friend and the City of Galle

One of the best paintings ever drawn of Galle is a six-meter long mural of the ancient city of Galle painted by Donald Friend, who is often referred to as "the great wine of Australian Art". The Artist became famous in his lifetime and died in the year 1989 unable to stretch his extraordinary life long enough to see a major Retrospective of his work arranged by the Art Gallery in New South Wales, Australia, in the early part of 1990. John Keells Group, the present owners of this magnificent piece, loaned it to the Museum of New South Wales for the exhibition. When informed of this decision prior to his death, he has been delighted that one of his major triumphs was being loaned as a centerpiece of the Retrospective. Barry Pearce, the Senior Curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, regards this mural, "City of Galle", as Donald Friend's finest work.

Mackinnon Mackenzie & Company, a premier shipping agency in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), commissioned Donald Friend in the early 1960s, when he lived and painted in Sri Lanka for a period of 4 years. The mural depicts the artist's impression of the ancient walled city of Galle as at the turn of the century. Galle was the shipping hub at that time, and the company traces it's beginnings to this walled city, where it's century long association with the shipping principals Peninsular & Oriental line (P&O) had its beginnings. The house depicted on the point on the left, (which is now the Closenberg Hotel), was once owned by the Manager of P&O, colonial artist and pioneering photographer, Colonel Bailey. The person in the right foreground, with the telescope, is the then Manager of P&O. This telescope is still in the possession of the company, and was used even after the shipping activities shifted to the port of Colombo. The ships depicted in the harbor are a mixture of traditional Arab trading sailing boats and some British India Steamship Navigation Co., trading ships that P&O and Mackinnon Mackenzie used at that time.

Whilst in Ceylon, Donald Friend also painted a smaller mural for John Keells Limited, a long established tea broking firm, titled "The City of Colombo", with the accent on the tea trade. This mural was also loaned to the new South Wales exhibition. Both paintings were restored by the Art Museum of NSW during its stay in Australia. The 'City of Galle' was treated for insect damage as well.

The two murals take pride of place today in the executive floors of the John Keells Group in Colombo. Copies of the paintings adorn the entrances to the Head Office ('City of Colombo') and the Shipping firm of Mackinnon Mackenzie, adjoining the Colombo port ('City of Galle').

Donald Friend was born in Sydney on 6 February 1915. He studied with Dattilo Rubbo at the Royal Art Society of New South Wales in 1934 and under Bernard Meninsky and Mark Gertler at the Westminster School of Art, London. When the Second World War was declared he returned to Australia and joined the AIF, serving as an artillery gunner 1942-5 and as an official war artist in 1945. He wrote and illustrated two books based on his wartime experiences, Gunner's Diary (1943) and Painter's Journal (1946), which enhanced his reputation for versatility and wit. He spent much of his life outside Australia including periods in Ceylon 1957-61 and Bali 1966-80. He had power and sensitivity as a draughtsman, with an ability to delineate forms in an almost calligraphic line, mixed with feeling for colour and design. He died in Sydney on 16 August 1989, aged 74.


With Russell Drysdale	Invite from 1990 Retrospective

Barry Pearce, friend and Senior Curator at the National Gallery in NSW, writes about his sojourn in Ceylon;

In 1957 he sailed for Colombo with Russell Drysdale's son Tim, but just before he did, produced The Fortune Teller in Hill End in 1956-without doubt one of his best paintings. Rich in colour and shape, it recalls one of the artist's earliest loves of modern French painting: Paul Gauguin. Margaret Olley has pointed out that the decorative elements were inspired by a reproduction of Indian elephant rugs. Then in Ceylon [Sri Lanka] he produced a substantial body of work, from the trompe l'oeil doors, An Exotic Garden Viewed at Different Levels 1957, whilst staying on the estate of Bevis Bawa, whose brother the architect Geoffrey Bawa later installed the doors in his house, and there they stayed until purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1988; to the large mural City of Galle 1961 commissioned by a prominent shipping company. This walled Portuguese fort was captured by the Dutch in the seventeenth century and became the Ceylonese center of the Dutch East India Company.

He produced some ravishing watercolors of figures set against ancient temple and rock paintings, and the odd mysterious work like The Overlander 1960, a kind of hybrid between an Aboriginal bark painting and a medieval map with fragmented symbols.
Interrupted Genius: Donald Friend as Artist - by Barry Pearce