Lloyd Rees was perhaps one of the finest Australian landscape painters of the 20th century. He was born and educated in Brisbane, and studied art at the Brisbane Technical College and then the Chelsea Polytechnic, in London. In 1917 he moved to Sydney to work at Ure Smith's commercial art studio, where he remained until 1946. He then took up a teaching position within the Faculty of Architecture, at the University of Sydney, where he continued to give occasional lectures until the mid 1980s. During his lifetime he won numerous awards for his paintings, including the Wynn Prize (1950 and 1982), and by his later years he had gained widespread acclaim, both within Australia and overseas. For much of his life, Rees also had an interest in left-wing politics, and he was at times outspoken in his support of environmentalist issues.
