William Dobell–Photo Max Dupane

Curator Mary Eagle concludes her essay in the catalogue of the exhibition thus,

"Overall I see a dissonance in Dobell’s art and life. Such a wonderful beginning. Such a mixture of vulnerability and determination later. 

His paintings oscillate between an often crude idea and a technique of transparent sureness: a master of touch ‘his paint could be light, thin, delicate, precise, caressing, sliding, sharp, staccato, brisk, broad, rough or energetic. 

He could make it do anything he wanted’. Crude ideas carelessly painted: refinement with insight. Whereas Dobell’s engaged eye – at times his actual presence – presses into the majority of drawings in the endless early sketchbooks, declaring the complicit engagement of the artist with his subject, the quality of earthy closeness did not last. 

At furthest remove, the 1950s New Guinea paintings have a remote and dream-like quality. His most famous Australian works are portraits, with which he was involved increasingly after his return in 1939. 

Yet he was hampered imaginatively in the presence of his sitters. Typically his portrait drawings of the 1930s are of men or women asleep or engaged in some activity that absorbed their attention and in Australia his best portraits were completed long after the difficult face-to-face encounter. 

From 1944 until the end of his life the artist and his art suffered from too much attention. He felt trapped.couldn’t go anywhere without being pointed out. I remember all the tram stood up once to look at me sitting in a smoker. You know, through the glass. Somebody said, "Oh there’s Dobell in there" and the whole tram stood up. 

I hopped out at the next stop and went for my life trying to lose myself in the crowd.’ There was no escape. At Wangi ‘I couldn’t get away from people. I used to hide behind the hedge, and they used to come around saying, "This is where the mad artist lives", and 

I would get visitors all around, and holiday-makers watching.’ This was the same man who invited opinions about his art from anyone and everyone.