William Frater

After his father died from typhoid, and his mother from gastroenteritis, Frater and his three siblings were brought up by his paternal grandmother Ann and uncle Andrew who lived in neighbouring houses at West Ochiltree Farm.

[2] His application to the National Gallery School of Art was rejected by Bernard Hall (1859–1935), and instead he found employment as overseer of stained-glass design at Brooks, Robinson & Co. Ltd on a five-year contract.

[5] Affronted, he impulsively returned to Britain on the Orama[6] in May 1912 after only five months, and completed his training at Glasgow in the senior painting classes at the School of Art under Maurice Greiffenhagen and Anning Bell.

They had six children; a stillborn female (1915); Arthur, a manufacturer (1916–1998); John, a carpenter/builder (1920–2004); Barbara Dare, an actor and office worker (1924–2000); and twins, musician William (Bill) (1931–2009) and scientist Robin (1931–2014).

[18]In 1936 Frater visited a flat in South Yarra owned by well-to-do Lina Bryans (née Hallenstein in Germany)[27] to advise her on stained-glass windows,[28] and painted her portrait.

[29] With his help and encouragement she decided to become an artist,[30] producing her first works early in 1937,[31][32] from which Basil Burdett (1897–1942)[33] selected her Backyards, South Yarra for the 'Herald Exhibition of Outstanding Pictures of 1937.

She, using her inheritance, purchased Ambrose Hallen's former hotel-cum-studio at 899 Heidelberg Road, Darebin in which Ada May Plante had been living, and with her painted and decorated it distinctively, naming it "The Pink Hotel".

In accordance with government war directives, the Yencken firm closed down his department in 1940 and Frater retired from stained-glass designing and, subsisting on his teaching, devoted himself to landscapes.

Frater was not well known outside Victoria[48] and his support and application of modernist principles in his art met often with uninterest or derision from Australia's mid-century conservative audiences.

"[49] The Bulletin of 29 May 1957 briefly reviewed the Victorian Artists’ Society’s autumn show incorporating the E. T. Cato £100 art prize and was dismissive of "William Frater’s Landscape, a simple and somewhat unsubstantial view of gumtrees which possibly owes something to Cezanne," which "cantered home in the oils division.".

[50] By contrast, Geoffrey Dutton in the new year, was more favourably disposed toward Frater's entry in Adelaide's John Martin's department store Christmas show, praising his "two fine landscapes of rolling pinks and reds.

[52]Frater's work was flown to Papua New Guinea for an exhibition in 1973 that was intended to reveal the influence of the country's indigenous art on modernist painters.

[53] In a 1979 interview with James Gleeson, Albert Tucker confesses that when he "heard about people like George Bell and Jock Frater and Cezanne...I had this sudden extreme and rapid expansion of consciousness and vision around the middle to late thirties.