B. 1980 – 1974 

William ‘Jock’ Frater was born in Scotland. He started his artistic career as an apprentice at the Glasgow glass studio of Oscar Paterson, who encouraged him to enrol in the Glasgow School of Art. In 1910 he relocated to Melbourne, Australia, where he worked as a stained-glass designer. 

As an artist, Frater was a close friend of Arnold Shore with whom he, Horace, Brandt, Harford and Isabel Tweddle established a post-impressionist school of painting in Melbourne. Frater exhibited with the Twenty Melbourne Painters from the late 1920s and the Contemporary Group of Melbourne in the 1930s. He was inspired by the tonal theories of Max Meldrum, creating portraits and landscapes inspired by Paul Cezanne. 

Represented at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria and National Gallery of Australia, Frater has become a key figure in Australian modernism. He was an outspoken opponent of the conservative art establishment, delivering a counterlecture to Bernard Hall in 1925 at the National Gallery of Victoria. In retort to Hall’s assertion that art ought to imitate nature, Frater stated: 

“Copying nature is not an art… to copy effects of light tends to destroy colour and form.”

To read a more in-depth biography of the artist, click here.