DOBELL, Sir WILLIAM (1899-1970)

$3,250.00
"New Guinea Native" (c.1950)
pencil on paper
21 x 13.5cm
details on verso
*Dobell Sketchbooks
*GFL Fine Art
*private collection, Sydney
 
Dobell was arguably the most renowned Australian portrait and landscape artist of the 20th century. Dobell won the Archibald Prize, Australia's premier award for portrait artists on three occasions, including his controversial portrait of Joshua Smith. The Dobell Prize is named in his honour. He studied at the Sydney Art School (which later became the Julian Ashton Art School), with Henry Gibbons as his teacher. He was influenced by George Washington Lambert. In 1929, Dobell was awarded the Society of Artists' Travelling Scholarship and travelled to England to the Slade School of Fine Art where he studied under Philip Wilson Steer and Henry Tonks. In 1930, he won first prize for figure painting at Slade and also travelled to Poland. In 1931 he moved on to Belgium and Paris, and after 10 years in Europe returned to Australia – taking with him a new Expressionist style of painting as opposed to his earlier naturalistic approach. In 1939, he began as a part-time teacher at East Sydney Technical College. After the outbreak of war, he was drafted into the Civil Construction Corps of the Allied Works Council in 1941 as a camouflage painter; he later became an unofficial war artist. In 1941, he was the centre of Australia’s greatest art controversy, when his Archibald Prize-winning portrait of Joshua Smith was contested in a court case, which Dobell ultimately triumphed, but seriously affected his life afterwards. In 1944, he had his first solo exhibition including public collection loans at the inauguration of the David Jones Art Gallery, Sydney. In 1949, he visited New Guinea as a guest of Sir Edward Hallstrom with writers Frank Clune and Colin Simpson. The trip inspired a new series of tiny, brilliantly coloured landscapes. In 1950, he revisited New Guinea; on his return to Australia he continued to paint scenes of New Guinea, as well as portraits. In 1964, Dobell exhibited in a major retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the first monograph of his work was written by James Gleeson.