William Dobell

(1899-1970)

Woman at a Window, 1937

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Sotheby's, Fine Australian and European Paintings, Melbourne, 26 April 1999, lot 42
The Collection of Amina and Franco Belgiorno-Nettis AC CBE, Sydney

William Dobell painted Woman at a window in London in 1937, eight years after he had moved there having won the New South Wales Society of Artists' Travelling Scholarship. It forms part of a small but seminal group of works he painted during his nine years abroad depicting daily scenes from London life capturing both the banality and absurdity of these complex interwar years. He paints his English subjects with a deep pathos, free of judgement and finds a dignity in their simplest actions, such as The Cockney mother, formerly in the collection of H. de Vahl Rubin, painted in the same year as this work and the Street Singer, collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, painted a year later.

Upon arrival in London in 1929 Dobell enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Arts where he studied under Philip Wilson Steer and Henry Tonks. The experience had a significant impact on his art and in 1930 he won the school's first prize for figure painting and shared the second prize for draughtsmanship. In the following year he painted his masterpiece from his English years, The boy at the basin, collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1933. It was one of only three works he exhibited in the entire nine years he lived there. He did not sell any of his paintings and all were brought back to Australia in 1938 when he returned home to care for his ailing father, who tragically died while Dobell was en route.

Dobell painted many women during this period, all captured as though they are oblivious to the painter's presence, during intimate moments such as disrobing or bathing or simply looking out of a window. Woman at a window is part of a core group depicting women framed by the architectural device of the window such as Maid at the window, 1937, and Woman watching a funeral, 1938, collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. These works suggest that Dobell was simply observing the women through his own studio window as they stopped their daily chores to see what was going on in the street below. Although classically composed, Dobell is able to create a sense of capturing a fleeting moment in time with his confident but delicate brushwork and Rembrandt-like palette.