Dattilo Rubbo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anthony or Antonio Dattilo Rubbo (or Dattilo-Rubbo) (22 June 1870 - 1 June 1955) was an Italian artist and art teacher active in Australia from 1897.
Born in Naples in 1870 and arriving in Australia in 1897, Datillo Rubbo was not a great artist - "muddy genre portraits of very wrinkled old Tuscan peasants were his strong suit," according to critic Robert Hughes - but he was an inspiring art teacher, responsible for introducing a whole generation of Australian painters to modernism through his art school (opened in 1898) and his classes at the Royal Art Society of New South Wales. In contrast to nearly all other art teachers in Australia at the time, he was not a reactionary, and encouraged his students to experiment with styles as radically different from his own as Post-Impressionism and Cubism. He was a flamboyant character who believed in championing his students to the hilt; indeed, in 1916 he challenged a committee member of the Royal Art Society to a duel because he had refused to hang a Post-Impressionist landscape by his pupil Roland Wakelin. Other students included Norah Simpson, Grace Cossington Smith (whom Datillo Rubbo referred to affectionately as 'Mrs Van Gogh'), Donald Friend ("Aha Donaldo, always the barocco; rub it out, boy, rub it out!"), Roy De Maistre, war artist Roy Hodgkinson, Archibald Prize winner Arthur Murch, social realist Roy Dalgarno, and more.
