Dobell Prize

Last updated March 25, 2019

The Dobell Prize for drawing, held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was the highest prize for drawing in Australia. The prize had previously been held in conjunction with the Archibald Prize, Sulman Prize, Wynne Prize, around the early part of the year, but was moved in 2003 to being held around August or September.

Art Gallery of New South Wales public gallery in Sydney

The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), located in The Domain in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, is the most important public gallery in Sydney and one of the largest in Australia. The Gallery's first public exhibition opened in 1874. Admission is free to the general exhibition space, which displays Australian art, European and Asian art. A dedicated Asian Gallery was opened in 2003.

The Archibald Prize was the first major prize for portraiture in Australian art. It was first awarded in 1921 after the receipt of a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor of The Bulletin who died in 1919. It is now administered by the trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and awarded for "the best portrait, preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics, painted by an artist resident in Australia during the twelve months preceding the date fixed by the trustees for sending in the pictures." The Archibald Prize has been awarded annually since 1921 and since July 2015 the prize has been AU$100,000.

The Wynne Prize is an Australian landscape painting or figure sculpture art prize. As one of Australia's longest-running art prizes, it was established in 1897 from the bequest of Richard Wynne. Now held concurrently with the Sir John Sulman Prize and the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

The prize was initiated by the Trustees of the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation.^[1] In 2003, the prize money was $20,000. This was increased to $25,000 in 2009. The Dobell Prize was an acquisitive award, with the gallery keeping past winners in the permanent collection. There were 685 entrants in the first year of the prize, in 1993, of which only 34 were exhibited, and there were similar numbers in following years.^[2]

Sir William (Bill) Dobell was a 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. The Dobell Prize is named in his honour.

At the presentation of the 2012 Dobell Drawing Prize it was announced the prize would close as an open entry drawing prize, to be replaced by a curated biennial drawing show/award to be named the Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial

List of winners

1993 – Kevin Connor – Pyrmont and the city
1994 – Thomas Spence – The roofs of Oxford Street (Taylor Square)
1995 – Jan Senbergs – Kitchen at Smacka's
1996 – Pam Hallandal – Self portrait
1997 – Peter Bonner – Interior
1998 – Godwin Bradbeer – Man of paper VII
1999 – David Fairbairn (artist) – Portrait of Tao Triebels
2000 – Nick Mourtzakis – Untitled study
2001 – Nicholas Harding – Eddy Avenue (3)
2002 – Mary Tonkin – Rocky outcrop, Werribee Gorge
2003 – Aida Tomescu – "Negru III and Negru IV" (A candle in a dark room)
2004 – Garry Shead – Colloquy with John Keats (diptych)
2005 – Kevin Connor – Le Grand Palais, Clémenceau, de Gaulle and me
2006 – Nick Mourtzakis – nature. insects plants flowers. shell fish corals. the microscopic creatures. dreams
2007 – Ann Pollak – Mullet Creek
2008 – Virginia Grayson – No Conclusions Drawn + ABC coverage
2009 – Pam Hallandal – Tsunami
2010 – Suzanne Archer – Derangement
2011 – Anne Judell – Breath
2012 – Gareth Sansom – Made in Wadeye

Kevin Connor, Australian artist who won the Archibald Prize twice; in 1975 for The Hon Sir Frank Kitto, KBE, and in 1977 for Robert Klippel. He won the Sulman Prize in 1991/92 with Najaf (Iraq) June 1991 and again in 1997 with The Man with itchy fingers and other figures Gare du Nord.

Thomas Spence was an English Radical and advocate of the common ownership of land. Spence was one of the leading revolutionaries of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was born in poverty and died the same way, after long periods of imprisonment, in 1814.

Jan Senbergs is an Australian artist and printmaker of Latvian origin.

Additional works acquired

The Dobell Trustees occasionally buy some of the works which have not won the main prize but have been exhibited, or they acquire them for other reasons, such as:

Colin Lanceley's The garden between the mountains and the sea 1992 (bought)
Daniel Moynihan's Tasmanian tiger in Paris, Canal St. Martin 1992 (bought)
Dog by Rachel Ellis in 1992, which was admired by Arthur Boyd was bought by finalist Peter Kingston and donated to the gallery.
Margaret Woodward's In the penumbra of perfumes and songs, 1993, a gift of Dr Roderick Bain.
A gouache, Man on the beach, by Joe Furlonger, 1993
David Brian Wilson's The woman 1996 (bought)
Judy Cassab donated two of her drawings, which were exhibited as finalists in 1997 Transparent landscape, Rainbow Valley and 2002 Temple, Udaipur. Another entry of hers, Incredible lightness, Rainbow Vallery, 1998, was purchased in 1999.
In 2000, the Art Gallery Society supported the purchase of drawings Visibility/Invisibility by Jennifer Keeler-Milne and Urban landscape II by Sallie Moffat. Anne Judell's Mute 1999 was gifted to the gallery by an anonymous donor.
Margaret Olley, the judge in 2001, purchased two drawings. One by Margaret Woodward, Francisco Lezcano riding the unicycle, and one by Amanda Robins, Linen dress, and gave them to the gallery.

Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd was a leading Australian painter of the late 20th century. Boyd's work ranges from impressionist renderings of Australian landscape to starkly expressionist figuration, and many canvases feature both. Several famous works set Biblical stories against the Australian landscape, such as The Expulsion (1947–48), now at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Having a strong social conscience, Boyd's work deals with humanitarian issues and universal themes of love, loss and shame.

Judy Cassab, born Judit Kaszab, was an Australian painter.

Jennifer Keeler-Milne is an Australian contemporary artist who is best known for her sumptuous landscape oil paintings and large-scale charcoal drawings. Keeler-Milne draws on traditional oil painting techniques to create striking contemporary works. She trained in Melbourne at Melbourne State College, the Victorian College of the Arts, and the College of Fine Arts, COFA. Keeler-Milne was awarded the Fred Williams Family Prize in 1991 by the Victorian College of the Arts. In 2015 her 48 panel drawing work "NSW desert plants" was acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2016, the Glasshouse Regional Gallery at Port Macquarie is exhibiting "Drawn to a cabinet of curiosities" a collection of over 175 charcoal on paper drawings.

External links

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References

↑ Contemporary Australian Drawing 20 Years of the Dobell Prize for Drawing written by Helen Campbell, Hendrik Kolenberg, Anne Ryan Art Gallery of NSW | ISBN 9781741740868
↑ The Dobell Prize for Drawing. The first ten years. 1993–2002. AGNSW, 2003 ISBN 0-7347-6376-X

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[1] Contemporary Australian Drawing 20 Years of the Dobell Prize for Drawing written by Helen Campbell, Hendrik Kolenberg, Anne Ryan Art Gallery of NSW | ISBN 9781741740868

[2] The Dobell Prize for Drawing. The first ten years. 1993–2002. AGNSW, 2003 ISBN 0-7347-6376-X