guy II

Famous artist pays for Rottnest accomodation with art!

A dream headline about the beautiful island. Since our recent post about Guy Grey-Smith, we've been in touch with the late artist's family about his Rotto work.

"The story about Rotto I can share is that Dad won a prize of accommodation at the Rottnest Lodge, so we all went over, only to discover it was for one person only," a relative revealed to Rotto Bloggo.

"Dad persuaded Lesley Anderson, who was running the Lodge with her husband, that he should paint Lesley's portrait in payment. So he did a pretty modernist portrait which I am not sure she particularly liked! It is knocking around somewhere I think."

We have made it our mission to bring this portrait to you. In the meantime we are wondering: how many pictures of the beautiful island did Grey-Smith paint?

Snell has two: we featured the one on the cover in our first Guy post, and the accompanying image is the other.

A WA Museum operative says they have one in storage: is it this one?

"I don't know of any other paintings of Rotto that he did other than those two you know of," Guy's relative says.

Snell hints at a major work done in his Darlington studio, in addition to the "several painted studies" done on the island.

And here's Snell on that competition: "...the inaugural Rottnest Island Art Award, established by Leslie and Bill Anderson after they took over the Rottnest Lodge in 1953. The prize of a fortnight's holiday for the winners of the three sections lured many artists over to complete their entries. However the choices of the judge Charles Hamilton, especially the selection of Guy Grey-Smith's oil painting, was so unpopular with the sponsoring businessmen of the island that it was also the last award of its kind."