William Dobell

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William Dobell with Margaret Olley , 1949.

Sir William Dobell (born September 24, 1899 in Newcastle , New South Wales , † May 13, 1970 in Lake Macquarie , New South Wales) was an Australian artist . He particularly distinguished himself as a painter and sculptor .

Life

William Dobell was born in Cooks Hill, Newcastle's working-class neighborhood, the youngest of seven children. His father was a tiler . Before that there was nobody in the family with artistic talent. Still, Dobell's artistic talent was recognized early on.

In 1916 he began training with a local architect . After completing his training, he went to Sydney as a draftsman in 1924 , where he attended evening courses in art at Julian Ashton's School until 1929 . During this time he was heavily influenced by the artist George Lambert .

In 1929 he received a fellowship from the Society of Artists , which enabled him to study at the Slade School of Art in London , England under the guidance of the artists Wilson Steer , Henry Tonks and William Orpen . In 1930 he won the first prize for figurative painting there.

In the following years he toured Europe before returning to Sydney, Australia in 1939. Here he first took up a part-time job as a teacher at East Sydney Technical College before he was drafted in 1941 for the Civil Construction Corps of the Allied Works Council as a painter for dummies and camouflage furnishings. He was later officially appointed as a war painter.

In 1943 he achieved his artistic breakthrough by winning the most important Australian art prize, the Archibald Prize . The first solo exhibition of his works took place the following year as the opening exhibition of David Jones' Art Gallery . Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that the onset of fame did more harm than good to William Dobell.

In 1949 he visited New Guinea with the writers Frank Clame and Colin Simpson as a guest of Sir Edward Hallstrom . This trip inspired him to create a series of small, excellently painted landscapes.

In the years 1960 to 1963 he was commissioned by the US news magazine TIME to paint a portrait each year to be printed on their front page. The personalities portrayed were the Prime Minister of Australia Robert Menzies , the President of South Vietnam Ngô Đình Diệm , the CEO of General Motors Frederick G. Donner and the Prime Minister of Malaysia , Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra .

A major retrospective of his work was shown in 1964 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales . At the same time a first monograph by James Gleeson was published .

He died on May 13, 1970 at his Lake Macquarie home. Almost a year later, on January 19, 1971, the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation was brought into being, to which the artist's entire assets were transferred.

Awards and honors

In 1943 he won the Archibald Prize with Joshua Smith's portrait "Portrait of an artist" . This award decision was challenged in court by two artists who were not considered (Mary Edwell-Burke and Joseph Wolinski) on the grounds that the painting had more the character of a caricature than that of a portrait. Although the award was confirmed in 1944, this episode left William Dobell with a high level of emotional distress, so that he retired to Lake Macquarie in 1945. There he began to paint landscapes.

In 1948, William Dobell was particularly successful. He not only won the Archibald Prize for the second time with the painting "Margaret Olley" , but also the similarly important Wynne Prize with the painting "Storm Approaching, Wangi" .

In 1959 he won the Archibald Prize for the third time for the portrait of his doctor "Dr EG MacMahon".

In 1965 he was inducted into the Order of the British Empire as an officer and was knighted as a Knight Bachelor in 1966 .

assessment

William Dobell's painting style is unique in that it adapts exactly to the character of the person portrayed. This chameleon-like ability varies in style from impressionism to expressionism .

Design element based on the portrait “Lady Mary Gilmore” (center at the back).

What is so typical of his work are both the expansion and dramatization of the essential properties of his models. As in the case of the “Portrait of an artist”, this means that his work can be assessed as a kind of caricature. He was able to show a sharp objectivity in his portraits in one moment, while in the next moment a satirical and gloomy perspective emerges.

William Dobell was undisputedly one of Australia's most talented and successful portrait painters.

His work includes portraits, figures and landscapes . Much of it is shown in exhibitions at the Newcastle Region Art Gallery , the Art Gallery of New South Wales or the National Gallery of Australia .

An impression based on his painting “Dame Mary Gilmore” adorns the back of the AUD 10 banknotes currently in circulation as a design element .

literature

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Dobell, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian painter and sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH September 24, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Newcastle , New South Wales, Australia
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1970
Place of death Lake Macquarie , New South Wales, Australia