Year Of Birth

1899

Year Of Death

1970

Biography

William Dobell was a painter best known for his portraits, which used an expressive style to create vivid portrayals of character. He won the Archibald Prize for portraiture three times. In the post World War II era of great conservatism in Australian art and politics, he was a witty and incisive observer of social manners and morals. Dobell was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, and studied at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney from 1924. In 1929 he won the New South Wales Society of Artists Travelling Art Scholarship, which enabled him to continue his studies in London and travel throughout Europe. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London under Henry Tonks and Philip Wilson and then took private lessons from William Orpen. In London he made a close study of paintings by Rembrandt, Renoir, Turner, Constable, Van Gogh and Ingres and was influenced by the contemporary paintings of Augustus John The boy at the basin 1932.