Famous Australian artist suspected of war-time treachery

Sir Hans Heysen is an acknowledged master of Australian landscape painting, with one wag quipping his iconic works did for the gum tree what Norman Lindsay did for the nude: made them famous! “Heysen made his home in the Adelaide Hills, amongst its gums from 1908 and, even though he trained in a traditional European set of painting values, he nevertheless was an important innovator of Australian landscape painting.” But in the course of his PhD, Mr Body uncovered a cache of letters showing not everyone was enamoured with Heysen – instead seeing the artist as a potential war-time traitor.