SYDNEY ART DISPUTE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 102, 27 October 1944, Page 6

SYDNEY ART DISPUTE

DOBELL GIVES EVIDENCE

SYDNEY, October 26. The hearing of the case in which a group of Sydney artists are asking the Equity Court to withhold the 1944 Archibald Prize money of £500 from William Dobell concluded today. The appellants claim that Dobell's winning ' painting is a caricature and not a portrait. Judgment has not yet been given.

Addressing the Court, Mr. Barwick, K.C., for the appellants, said that when the late Mr. J. F. Archibald made his bequest * "subjective" portraiture was not recognised in Australia. Therefore Dobell's prize-winning painting of Joshua Smith was not a portrait in the sense intended in Archibald's will.

Mr. Dwyer,. K.C., appearing for the National Gallery trustees, who made the award, said that all the authorities quoted had shown clearly that there was no line of demarcation by which one could say definitely that Dobell's disputed painting of Smith was or was not a portrait. Earlier, William Dobell himself gave evidence. He liked to think, he said, that his portrait of Joshua Smith was in the tradition of Rembrandt. Dobell add Id that he had never been called a modernist till he returned to Australia, in 1939. In London he had been regarded by art students as academic. He did not believe the picture of Smith was a caricature, nor was it distorted, as some witnesses had said. He knew Smith intimately and had endeavoured to make manifest Smith's character as he understood it. Smith was solitary, sensitive, talented, and determined. He had added to the pic-; ture only what was within the province of artistic licence.

Dobell appeared nervous in the box and at first spoke almost inaudibly, but when the sincerity of his views was challenged by opposing counsel he answered warmly and sometimes angrily.

Again today many people were unable to gain admittance to the Court.