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Miss Manners: How do I tell a coworker I won’t make

drawings for her?
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Dear Miss Manners: I work in a fairly typical office setting and get along well with
my co-workers. There is one co-worker I know better than the others, and I
consider her a friend.

I do art as a hobby, mostly pencil drawings. My aforementioned work friend

made a joke that I should doodle something for her, and I surprised her by doing
so. It was a very simple doodle, but she loved it and showed everyone at the
office.

The problem arose when another co-worker approached me and asked/begged

me to do two drawings for her: one for each of her children. She had very
specific requests, and the art she wanted was very detailed and would take
some time.

I draw because I enjoy it, and I don’t take commissions (although I have in the
past). I tried to assure my co-worker that the art she wanted was really not my
specialty and that I didn’t think I would be able to complete her request, but she
insisted that I “try my best.”

I know her feelings would be hurt if I refused, but I really don’t want to take
requests for pieces I know I won’t enjoy making. How do I politely tell her that I
don’t want to draw for her?
“The one for Madeline was just a spur-of-the-moment doodle. What you’re
asking would take a lot more time, and I am afraid that I just don’t have that at
the moment. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but if you are looking for more detailed
work, I would be happy to refer you to another artist who takes custom
requests.”

And then, Miss Manners recommends, you find those artists quickly.

Dear Miss Manners: A married couple who have been dear friends of mine for
decades invited me to their home for dinner and an overnight visit. I brought with
me four boxes of my homemade cookies (several varieties) and an appetizer.

The hosts did not serve the appetizer, but I’m not complaining about that,
because I know a host is not obliged to serve food brought by a guest. After
dinner, they didn’t put out any dessert, although I heard each of them separately
go into the kitchen and eat some of the cookies I brought, without offering me
any! Finally, another dessert was brought out, along with some of the cookies.

In the morning, the hostess asked whether I’d like breakfast. I answered, “Sure,”
after which she didn’t offer anything! I went home hungry, as had happened on
previous occasions. Was any of their behavior rude?

Perhaps. But the biggest transgression — not feeding you breakfast — sounds
merely forgetful, not necessarily rude.

As you pointed out, and as Miss Manners constantly reminds her readers, hosts
are not required to serve food brought by guests when a meal has already been
prepared. That your hosts enjoyed an occasional cookie whilst working in the
kitchen is not truly impolite, just sneaky. And eventually you did get your dessert,
cookies and all.

Miss Manners’ advice in the future would be to come to your friends’ house
well-fortified — with some breakfast bars packed in your overnight bag, just in
case.

New Miss Manners columns are posted Monday through Saturday on

washingtonpost.com/advice. You can send questions to Miss Manners at her
website, missmanners.com. You can also follow her @RealMissManners.

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Unseen sketches reveal new side to a master Australian

painter
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Fred was very untidy,” Lyn Williams says of her late husband, the great
Australian landscape painter. “He did etching on the table he ate from. He put a
saucepan on the sink and it went into the acid bath and burnt the bottom out of
it.”
Williams and I are meeting in a nondescript room on the third floor of the NGV
with senior curator Cathy Leahy. She is talking about how Fred lived in a bedsit
in London’s South Kensington in the mid-1950s.

“His Irish landlady would come in and stack [Fred’s drawings] on the floor, and
throw out the dog-eared ones,” she says.

Lyn Williams is in her mid-70s and looks uber-chic with her salt and pepper bob,
Melbourne-black clothes and an elegant gold necklace. Along the walls are a
selection of framed works that feature in Fred Williams: The London Drawings,
an exhibition of 160 drawings, 12 gouaches and 30 etchings at NGV Australia.
The collection is a significant gift from the artist’s family and the exhibition is the
first time it has been seen in public.

Fred Williams in 1980, two years before his death at 55.Credit:Fairfax Media

When the couple met in 1960 in Australia, all the London drawings were in big
old cardboard boxes. Fred was “not exactly meticulous,” Williams says. “We
came to an agreement: If I didn’t go back teaching I would sort things out.”

Lyn Williams has cared for her husband’s estate ever since he died from lung
cancer in 1982 at just 55. Under her management, his work has survived shifts
in fashion and ultimately thrived, so much so that he is now one of a few
Australian artists whose larger works fetch more than $1 million at auction.

“He arrived in London [in 1951] and worked at a picture framers and went to the
Chelsea Polytechnic art school three nights a week,” says Leahy, who curated
London Drawings. “Major British artists went [to his picture framers]. He met
Francis Bacon. He saw how the art world worked, how the works got cleaned
up. He was allowed to take a Renoir home overnight.”
Fred was always drawing away in the darkened theatre. It’s really about
on-the-spot recording. He has a very telling line.

Lyn Williams

Williams recalls visiting a gallery in Cardiff with Fred in 1964. “There were a row
of Renoirs and I knew he was fond of Renoirs and he walked by very quickly and
I said ‘what’s the hurry?’ And he said casually ‘I framed them’.”

The three of us look at Fred’s in situ pencil drawings of performers in London’s

music halls. Tickets were cheap then, apparently; “cheaper than paying a shilling
at home to put money in the gas meter,” Lyn says with a wry smile. “Fred would
queue up outside the Chelsea Palace then race up the stairs to get the best
seats in the gods and look down.” Fred and his mates would do conté crayon
sketches of all the performers. Williams has heard that he may have even
etched “directly on to a plate” in the theatre.

Fred Williams, The clown, 1954-1955, varnished gouache on composition board.

© Estate of Fred Williams.Credit:Garry Sommerfeld/NGV
At various times she and Leahy ponder aspects of Fred’s work, including
whether a beautiful, solid portrait of a melancholic performer was the famous
comedian Max Miller. Their enduing adoration and fascination with Fred
Williams’ work is infectious. I lean in to inspect a couple of drawings of audience
members. They are sketchy, hastily done, but masterful. I mention how they
have a sense of urgency, like he didn’t want to get caught.

Nearby, rendered in fat, smeared sections of gouache, is a painting of a dancing

clown. Even though it is probably a reworking of the five-second drawing of a
performer next to it, it retains its loose energy. (Whenever I attempt to rework my
funny little sketches they always end up feeling drained of life, wooden.)
Williams mentions Fred would take things home to work on them further. “Fred
used the observational studies on the spot and then back in his room turned
them into etchings – combined them.”

We consider a drawing of a full-faced woman, an audience member, in a fancy

hat which prompts Leahy to mention that Fred loved Daumier, the great French
caricaturist. “Fred was always drawing away in the darkened theatre. It’s really
about on-the-spot recording. He has a very telling line.”

Williams predicts that viewers will see the drawings as “just hurried sketches, but
there is a real insight into Fred’s working method ... Drawing is the key to
understanding his work.”

“They really reveal what an extraordinary draughtsman he is,” says Leahy. “He
said drawing is ‘the final critical analysis of any artist’s work. A pencil and paper
tells you a whole lot. Drawing exposes all’.”
Fred Williams, Art student, Chelsea Polytechnic, 1952-1956, conté crayon. ©
Estate of Fred Williams.Credit:Garry Sommerfeld/NGV

Williams’ work is an inspiration, and I want to run out of the room and do some
sketching myself: the gallery visitors, the expensive croissants in the cafe, the
elms on St Kilda Road, even that old Chinese violinist – anything!

Looking at a few of Fred’s drawings I can’t help thinking about the quirky
observational cartoons by the late French illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempé. “Fred
had a great sense of humour,” Williams says. She points out an etching of a chef
in his high hat and white uniform at the dreary trade entrance of the Dorchester
Hotel clocking on to work, which Fred found amusing.

“Fred was always looking,” Leahy says. “This etching [of the chef] has an echo
of Whistler, Sickert and even Tom Roberts’ A Chinese cook shop. He has all that
research and knowledge of art and he makes it his own.”

Another drawing, this time of a fellow student, a nun in fact, is swiftly rendered
but perfectly arranged on the page, with just enough detail in her face and
posture to convey character. You can see how he twisted his pencil about in
acrobatic ways to create different lines.

An installation view of Fred Williams: The London Drawings at The Ian Potter
Centre: NGV Australia.Credit:Tom Ross

I wonder if Fred thought it was funny, or at least pleasingly odd, to see a nun in
her wimple in a life drawing class. (Who wouldn’t?)

From my experience, strangers on a train or in the street know when they are
being drawn: they sense your gaze then close themselves off to you (I tend to
have that effect on people). Looking at Fred’s portraits you can tell he was flying
by the seat of his pants, and this makes his canny sketches spring off the page.

We walk a little further down the line to the London Zoo sketches. “Fred used to
go there with [Australian artist] Francis Lymburner,” Williams says.
Fred Williams, Elephant c.1953, conté crayon. © Estate of Fred
Williams.Credit:Garry Sommerfeld/NGV

A large drawing shows an elephant standing precariously on the edge of a moat

in its enclosure. “This one was redone in his bedsit,” Leahy says as she shows
us Fred’s original, smaller sketch in the handsome exhibition catalogue that has
just come back from the printer. “It’s reaching out for food. Marvellous
composition.”

I marvel at how Williams has conveyed its mass with just a few lines, as if by
instinct. Then for a few long seconds the three of us just stare at it.

“This one I love too,” says Williams, breaking the spell. “The gibbon swinging.”

“He’s caught that sense of the movement through the body,” says Leahy.

“The boneless feeling,” Williams agrees.

Fred Williams, Gibbon swinging, c.1953, brown conté crayon. © Estate of Fred
WilliamsCredit:Garry Sommerfeld/NGV

Until recently I only really knew Fred Williams’ famous oil paintings: wide, earthy
abstracted landscapes with pronounced, high horizons and scratches and
smudges of trees and objects that shimmer and dissolve into the distance. I ask
his widow what caused this seemingly abrupt change in approach when he
returned from London in 1956.

“When the ship pulled into Fremantle he was struck by the contrast between the
Australian landscape and the orderly nature of England. [He thought] there’s an
opportunity to do something,” she says. “His friends said ‘why do you want to do
the Australian landscape?’ and he said ‘I think I can add something to that story.
Something that’s not there’.”

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She says that when she looks at the series of famous works in which the artist
looks down on the You Yangs, “it often reminds me of his audience drawings,
looking down – that view from the gods. Looking out to the landscape. There’s a
little connection.”

It’s a beautiful revelation, and again we go quiet and just look.

I suggest to Williams that it must have been an honour to work with Fred’s
collection after he died.

“Of course. Well worth sorting out. He was ambitious. When he heard his
diagnosis of his illness he said ‘that’s the end of me and my career’. And I
thought, given his body of work, I’m sure we can do a bit better than that.”

Fred Williams: The London Drawings opens at NGV Australia on October 21.
Oslo Davis is an illustrator and artist. His book Oslo’s Melbourne will be
published in November.

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