Sam Fullbrook Art for Sale and Sold Prices

b. 1922 - d. 2004

Sam Fullbrook (14 April 1922 – 3 February 2004) was an Australian artist who was a winner of the Archibald Prize for portraiture and the Wynne Prize for landscape. He was described as "last of the bushman painters" (a rural art tradition). However Fullbrook was fine art-trained and his sophisticated works are in every State art museum in Australia and international collections.

Early life: Fullbrook was born Samuel Sydney Fullbrook, in the inner city suburb of Chippendale in Sydney in 1922.

From 1937 he worked as a timber cutter in Gloucester, New South Wales. He was to serve in the Australian army and work at manual jobs before discovering his bent for art. After the outbreak of World War II, he enlisted with the Australian Infantry Forces in 1940 and the following year was posted in Palestine but did not see active service. In the years 1943 to 1945, he trained in rifles in the Middle East and served in New Guinea.

At this time he found reading and painting through the Army Adult Education program so that after the war, in 1946, he enrolled in the National Gallery School of Victoria in Melbourne under a federal government retraining program. Among his contemporaries in art school were John Brack, Clifton Pugh and Fred Williams. Fullbrook painted his first portrait in Yarraville on the sugar wharf. In 1947 he moved to West Melbourne and began selling his work through the Victorian Artists’ Society.

Career: Fullbrook was to have a constant and wide ranging career as a painter beginning in 1948 with his first joint exhibition at Tye’s Gallery with NGS classmate Tim Nicholl. In the same year his father died and he returned to Sydney, converting his father’s shop into an art studio. To support his painting, Fullbrook went to far North Queensland for the cane-cutting season.

Around this time, sharks and "Bondi virgins" made their first appearance in his works. He returned to Queensland where he befriended James Wieneke of Moreton Gallery and was employed by Richard Morley, founder of the Blake Prize. This is when he discovered a talent for landscapes.

His first solo exhibition was held at the Waterside Workers’ Hall, Sydney in 1952. The same year, he had a second solo show at the Moreton Gallery, Brisbane and received honourable mention in the Archibald Prize for his portrait of his contemporary, potter Bernard Sahm. Fullbrook then travelled west across Australia, setting up a studio in Marble Bar in Western Australia, also working as a miner, cane cutter and stockman.

In 1971, he lost most of his work in a fire at his Brisbane studio, but recovered to continue working in the Darling Downs, Sydney, the Gold Coast and Melbourne.

He set up studios all over the country and each change in events and environment would prompt a new direction in the works. His main series were the "Darling River series", the "Phoenix" series in Buderim, Queensland, "Circus", "Brisbane River", and "The Shearer" series among others. His oeuvre ranged from biblical themes, horse-racing, aboriginal Australians, Pilbara landscapes to Bondi, wildlife, floral works, and studio nudes.

Artist Robert Jacks said he painted "some of the most beautiful portraits ever painted in Australia." Among them are former Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr and media entrepreneur Reg Grundy; others include Pat Brown and Bernard Sahm, artists, jockeys and members of the public. The Kerr portrait was submitted to hang in Parliament House but was rejected for being "caricature".