‘Australia’s greatest artist’: William Robinson dies aged 89

Lauded Australian painter William Robinson AO has died in Brisbane, aged 89.

One of the few Australian artists to have an entire gallery dedicated to their work – the William Robinson Gallery at Queensland University of Technology – Robinson was famous for his landscapes, portraits and still lifes.

Born in Brisbane in 1936 and growing up in Fairfield on the city’s south side, he attended Brisbane State High School and Brisbane Central Technical College.

He taught art full time until 1989, after which point he dedicated himself to painting.

He would win the Archibald Prize twice: in 1987 for Equestrian Self Portrait and again in 1995 for Self Portrait with Stunned Mullet.

Robinson was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2007, among many other awards. His work is held in all major Australian public art museums as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the British Museum, London.

His final exhibition was opened by former governor Quentin Bryce in July at Philip Bacon Galleries in Fortitude Valley.

Bacon said that Robinson “redefined the landscape, particularly in the subtropics”.

“The great towering gums reminded him of the columns in Gothic cathedrals, and he wanted to try and capture that,” Bacon said.

“The other thing I loved about him was his humour. The two Archibald Prize winners, they’re hilarious pictures.

“He was a national treasure and one of our greatest artists, in the league of Margaret Olley, Jeffrey Smart and Arthur Boyd.”

Vanessa Van Ooyen, director of the William Robinson Gallery, said she was “very, very fond” of him.

“It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve looked at an artwork of his, I find something in it. I’ve always kind of approached Bill’s work as an exercise in slow looking,” she said.

In the catalogue for the gallery’s upcoming show Reflections, Van Ooyen writes that Robinson “records the precise moment when observation becomes participation, when the boundary between observer and observed begins to blur”.

Writer Evan Hughes, son of late Sydney art dealer Ray Hughes, said that Robinson was the best Australian painter his father had ever worked with.

“William Robinson has been in and out of fashion and yet his talent as one of the finest oil painters and most whimsical and thoughtful draughtsmen of the last 40 years is undisputed,” Hughes said.

“Robinson is one of the greats.”

Robinson died at the Wesley Hospital in Auchenflower following a brief illness.

Bacon said he was talking about Robinson in Sydney the night he died.

“Somebody said to me, ‘who do you reckon is the greatest living Australian artist?’ I said, ‘Oh, Bill Robinson, definitely’.”

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