In 1964, Williams travelled to Europe on the Helena Rubinstein Travelling Art Scholarship. His success during this highly creative period enabled him to concentrate on painting full-time, freed from financial pressures. While his major landscape works are bold and innovative and established him as one of Australia's leading artists, Williams also experimented with other subject matter throughout this time.

    
 

Legs of Lamb 1968

  

oil on canvas 71.5 x 71.5 cm

    
      Here a very different choice of subject for Williams - sides of meat hanging from hooks. Yet he employs his characteristically vigorous handling of paint to the two legs of lamb, isolating this subject against a flat brown background, so the effect is both realist and abstract. It is interesting to note that this sculpturally modelled still life was painted at the same time that Williams was perfecting the minute and erratic 'handwritten' touches that characterise the Lysterfield and Australian Landscape series.    
 

Seascape with Boat Mornington 1968

  

gouache 48.0 x 76.0 cm

    
      This work appears an interesting divergence for Williams at the time. Firstly, the subject is a seascape rather than a landscape, and secondly, it is light and airy, featuring a violet and blue palette in contrast to the sombre earth colours of a typical Williams landscape. Yet it is not merely a playful respite from the intense large-format landscapes which were consuming much of the artist's studio time - it also pre-signals the lighter, almost impressionist approach to painting Williams was to take in the 1970s. This is a prime example of Williams working en plein air.    
 

Landscape with Acacias 1974

  

oil on canvas 193.0 x 244.0 cm

    
      In the 1970s, Williams began his professional involvement with the Australian National Gallery. His elevation to public office and the responsibilities which went with this position put a strain on his painting time, as well as on his sense of self - Williams was fundamentally a private man and the hype of the art world, of which he was now an organiser and prime motivator (and in which he had achieved a standing of some significance), was not something with which he felt naturally comfortable.    
 

Dight's Falls 1974

  

oil on canvas 70.0 x 91.0 cm

    
      In 1968, Williams moved from Upwey to Hawthorn, Melbourne. Hence in these later years we see works inspired by suburban sites, such as Dights Falls, Kew Billabong and the then more rural Lilydale. Williams makes new demands on colour here, as is evident in this vivid, almost festive representation of a largely urban-industrial site.    
 

Kew Billabong I 1975

  

oil on canvas 96.0 x 96.0 cm

    
      Williams had not exhibited in Melbourne for several years, and had since been thoroughly engaged in a personal regeneration of his art and the concerns which informed it. The most dramatic change was his transition from an earthy palette, dominated by sombre tones, to a new rainbow palette, in which colour was given free play on the painting surface, rather than existing as underpainting revealed behind the surface, but never immediately expressed. The Kew Billabong works are strongly impressionist in feel and bear a particular allegiance to Monet's Waterlilies series, demonstrating a more intimate connection with the landscape than is evident in Williams' earlier landscape works, where dispassionate observation was the artist's key.    
 

Landscape with Goose 1974

  

oil on canvas 183.0 x 152.5 cm (Collection: Australian National Gallery)

    
      This work demonstrates a new perspective on the landscape. Williams paints with a vigour and sense of colour which gives full expression to the vibrancy of the landscape, its oppositions and contrast, and communicates a strong sense of its inherently wild, untamed nature.    
 

Werribee Gorge 1976

  

oil on canvas 183.0 x 110.5 cm

    
      No longer preoccupied with establishing his mark as a landscape painter, Williams was free to reinvent his notions of the landscape. Substance, form and a newly developed expressiveness combine to produce a work of impressive proportions; a grand wilderness, at once immediate to the viewer and yet removed.    
 

Bushfire 1976

  

gouache 57.0 x 54.0 cm

    
      Despite a personal crisis in the 1970s (the Barret Malt Factory in Richmond, where Williams stored a large number of his major works, burnt down, irreparably damaging many paintings) these years were prolific for Williams. During this period he worked with a greater richness and emotional depth than ever before. Here we see an aerial perspective on the distinctly Australian phenomenon of the bushfire: viewed from above at an immense distance it resembles less a bushfire than a multi-coloured snake looped against an ominous black background.    
 

Waterfall Polyptych 1979

  

oil on canvas 4 panels, each 183.0 x 152.5 cm

    
   


  The last of Williams' major landscapes, the Waterfall Polyptych represents a culmination of Williams' view of the landscape throughout his artistic career. It is epic in scale, but vibrant in colour scheme; flat and linear in some areas (such as the waterfall itself with its indigo rockscape); deep and densely worked in others. Waterfall Polyptych is a beautiful and expressive work, immediately recognisable as a landscape, but with an abstract quality which enables it to transcend specific locality, belonging instead to Williams' unique personal vision of Australia.    
             

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