Australian artist: Robert Emerson Curtis (1898-1996) Drawing & watercolour


Australian artist: VALENTINE DELAWARR (1852 - 1918)
1952 Broken Hill, NSW
Drawing & water colour on paper
34 x 26 cm (timber frame: 53.5 x 43.5 cm)
Signed lower Right

Robert Emerson Curtis (1898-1996) was an illustrator and painter who arrived in Sydney from England in 1924. During the war he worked as a Camouflage Officer attached to the RAAF in Cairns and New Guinea before being appointed an Official War Artist in 1945. The Australian War Memorial holds more than 200 of his works, as well as more photographs of Curtis by Dupain. In the post war years Curtis shared Dupain's interest in the construction of the Opera House; his A Vision Takes Form - Sydney Opera House was published in 1967. His book of lithographs of the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, A Vision Takes Form was published in 1967.