Mr Joshua Smith

1943 painting by William Dobell

Mr Joshua Smith, also known as Portrait of an Artist (Joshua Smith), is a 1943 painting by Australian artist William Dobell. The painting is a portrait of Joshua Smith, an artist and friend of Dobell. The painting was awarded the Archibald Prize in 1943. The painting took a modernist approach to portraiture; a break with the realism favoured to that date by Archibald Prize entrants. [I was] trying to create something, instead of copying something. To me, a sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is living in itself, regardless of its subject. So long as people expect paintings to be simply coloured photographs they get no individuality and in the case of portraits, no characterisation. The real artist is striving to depict his subject’s character and to stress the caricature, but at least it is art which is alive.

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