For biographical information see Acc. no. 1994.261 'Additional information'. Fred Williams is one of the most admired Australian artists of this century, and one of the very few who have been able to maintain vitality of the European landscape tradition in our own times. Williams travelled to Queensland in 1971 and twice again in 1973. His Queensland visits were an important influence, primarily because of the tangle of rainforest vegetation which prompted a new, more densely painted and richly coloured phase of his work. On his first visit he painted a series of gouaches of the Glasshouse Mountains, including this one during the journey by road back to Melbourne. The painting represents an important development in the artist's mastery of one of the most salient aspects of the Australian landscape, the horizon. The vastness of the continent could be conveyed even in his smallest images. His refinement of landscape elements to minimal marks on the painted surface becomes like the most personal notation in a book when arranged in lines as in 'Glasshouse Mountains'. Here his interpretation of the famous Queensland landmarks, as strange protrusions just beyond the horizon, creates an almost musical rhythm. It is a very unconventional depiction of the volcanic plugs, which most artists represent in terms of their looming height and bulk. Williams' manner of reducing landscape details, such as rocks and trees, to a handwriting of dots and dashes has become a familiar way of conveying the sparseness of our landscape. In this painting, however, the small marks are used to describe immense objects, which increases the impression of vastness integral to the artist's interpretation of Australia. In his book on Williams, Patrick McCaughey describes the artist's 1971 visit to the Glasshouse Mountains as 'a significant episode for Williams', and in the book this triple painting was chosen to illustrate the group of works produced during that visit.