Skip to content
home main static Home
Close this menu

Tasmanian Literary Awards

A Salute to Max Angus, Tasmanian Painter by Alison Alexander (Forty South Publishing)

Image tiles

A Salute to Max Angus, Tasmanian Painter

Born in Hobart in 1914, Max Angus was educated at Albuera Street Primary School and the technical high school before starting paid employment at fourteen. He studied art at night school and war service broadened his horizons, and in 1946 he decided to become a full-time artist. He quickly became a household name, a much-loved icon for Tasmanians, especially for his sensitive, beautiful watercolours of Tasmanian bush and mountain landscapes. In the 1950s and 1960s these helped waken Tasmanians’ appreciation of their own scenery, just becoming accessible as people bought cars and roads improved. The flooding of Lake Pedder, ‘the jewel of Tasmania’, woke Max’s interest in saving this environment and he became a passionate leader in the environmental movement, from 1980 virtually until his death in 2017. Max also wrote and helped produce three major books: The world of Olegas Truchanas, about this brilliant photographer of the wilderness; Simpkinson de Wesselow, about the nineteenth-century Tasmanian watercolourist; A salute to watercolour, explaining his love of this artistic medium. But Max was best-known for his watercolours, becoming the Grand Old Man of Tasmanian art, widely praised and much-loved, the best-known Tasmanian artist of his generation.

About the author

Born and educated in Tasmania, with a doctorate in Tasmanian history, Alison Alexander has written 36 books about various aspects of the island’s story, from football clubs and schools to artists. Meeting Patricia Giles inspired her to write the biography of this well-known artist – which led to writing about Patricia’s painting companion, the much-loved and much-admired Max Angus. Alison was a teacher before taking up writing commissioned histories. She is married with three children, and also enjoys bushwalking, visiting places of historic interest and handcrafts.