The cottage that Watters has lived in for just about all of his 82 years looks like one of his paintings. The house is about a century old, with wrinkling skin of time-bleached paint, and an enclosed veranda.

Watters is renowned for painting these kinds of homes in his bold-coloured and meticulous style. He depicts rusting structures defying the elements, or gradually succumbing to them as they topple, in villages and paddocks around the Upper Hunter.

People are not seen in a Max Watters painting, but the old halls and farm houses, the shearing sheds and workers’ cottages that he depicts radiate with humanity.   

As Watters explains, “The building has got the feeling of the people who lived there.”

Watters’ own house is filled with not just character but art. His house is his studio. In the kitchen, there is little room for food preparation. Two paintings he is working on are plonked in front of the old stove, and a third is on the table.

“This is my winter studio,” Watters says in that laconic voice of his, before he points to the cluttered dining room. “And that’s my summer studio.”

He lives alone, but the rooms that once sheltered his parents and seven children are not empty. They cradle art, and the walls are alive with paintings that Watters has bought over the decades. This is the house that art consumed, much to the bemusement of his parents. He recalls his father saying to his mother, “Look behind the bloody door! He’s bought another one!”

“They were living with it,” Watters says. 

A lot of the paintings he bought retain a family connection. Max purchased art from the gallery of his older brother, Frank. As a young man, Frank Watters moved to Sydney and co-founded what would become one of the city’s leading commercial art hubs, Watters Gallery.

No sooner had his older brother opened the gallery in 1964 than Max began buying from him, using the money he earned from working in a mine, and in the power industry. Little by little, he filled the family home.

“I think basically because I was acquiring works from Frank and he was just starting off, they [their parents] let it run,” says Max Watters.

“When I saw the catalogues, and I saw something, I’d ring them [the gallery] and say, ‘I want that’.”

Frank Watters could never predict what his younger brother would buy.

“He very much had his own agenda,” recalls Frank Watters, adding that Max’s selection of paintings was “very creative”. 

“He’d ring up and talk to me about various things in the gallery. Sometimes there were things that were very expensive, and he’d say, ‘I’ll have it!’. Other times, I thought something would be good, and he’d say, ‘No!’.”

The key buying principle, Max Watters explains, was “diversity”. As a result, his collection features a wide range of names and styles, from the expressionistic landscapes of Euan Macleod and the abstract paintings of Tony Tuckson to figurative works by Robert Dickerson and Charles Blackman. 

Watters Gallery also exhibited a popular Hunter artist. Max Watters. Frank loved his brother’s landscapes but was reluctant to show them, until art historian Daniel Thomas said to him, “Why don’t you show your brother’s work? He’s a very good artist.” 

As his collection outgrew the cottage, Max Watters made a decision. He would give works to the community, to be held at the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre. The gallery’s Max Watters Collection would be not only held in trust for the people of Muswellbrook, but in honour of his parents. 

“Mum and Dad let me take the house over,” he explains. “Out of respect for what they did, this is a memorial to Mum and Dad.”

Over the years, Max Watters has given more than 300 works, valued at more than $2 million.

“It’s fairly rare, especially in regional Australia,” says the centre’s acting director, Elissa Emerson, of the scale of Watters’ philanthropy. “So Muswellbrook residents are very fortunate.

“The best works we have in the [gallery] collection have come in Max’s collection.”

Works from the Max Watters Collection, including the artist’s own work, are always on display, being circulated through a gallery in the restored School of Arts building in the town’s heart.

The centre currently has an exhibition titled “Watters to Watters: End of an Era”. 

As well as six of Watters’ Upper Hunter landscapes, the exhibition has 19 works he bought from his brother’s gallery, including a large Peter Poulet abstract painting, which was briefly in Max’s cottage.

“This one, I didn’t know where to put it, and it ended up covering the kitchen window,” Watters says. “It’s a ripper.”

Yet, as the title indicates, this exhibition marks the end of an era. After 54 years in operation, Watters Gallery closed a few weeks ago.

Frank Watters is moving to a house perched on the Great Dividing Range, above the valley where he grew up. 

“It’s just a beautiful, beautiful place to be,” Frank Watters says.

Max Watters may not be able to buy from his brother’s gallery anymore, but that doesn’t mean his collection will stop growing. He’s looking locally. Watters recently bought works at the Muswellbrook Local Art Awards, and they will be donated to the gallery. Max Watters just wants to give back.

As he says, “Art’s been good to me.”

And he believes art is good for Muswellbrook, offering a different view to the area being a centre of mining and industry. 

Watters recalls how at a recent packed opening in the gallery, he proudly noted, “That’s our people. And that’s our future.”    

“Watters to Watters: End of an Era”. Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre. Until December 23.