{"id":2025,"date":"2017-05-22T09:20:10","date_gmt":"2017-05-21T22:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=2025"},"modified":"2017-06-19T12:28:25","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T01:58:25","slug":"discovering-dobell-helena-rubenstein-28-may","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2017\/05\/discovering-dobell-helena-rubenstein-28-may\/","title":{"rendered":"Discovering Dobell: Helena Rubenstein"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opening this coming\u00a0weekend, the <\/em>Discovering Dobell exhibition at Tarrawarra \u2013 and its accompanying book <\/a>\u2013 features the artist\u2019s\u00a0controversial and recognisable portraits of\u00a0Joshua Smith, Dame Mary Gilmore and, as we see here, Helena\u00a0Rubinstein, alongside other vital strands of his\u00a0output,\u00a0introducing\u00a0the creative achievements\u00a0of this great Australian painter for a new\u00a0generation of art lovers.<\/em><\/p>\n

The cosmetics manufacturer Helena Rubinstein became an obsession for William Dobell. He\u00a0fretted over her portrait for six years, producing many versions in an effort to portray what he\u00a0considered an allusive personality. She had led a chequered and colourful career. Having arrived\u00a0in Australia from Poland in 1902, and speaking almost no English, she went to live with relatives\u00a0who ran a store in the rural Victorian town of Coleraine. Affected by Australia\u2019s dry heat,\u00a0Rubinstein tried to make a moisturiser by experimenting with lanolin, which was in plentiful\u00a0supply in the sheep district. Within twelve months she was selling homemade beauty creams\u00a0to an expanding clientele; a Collins Street cosmetics salon opened in Melbourne the following\u00a0year, then she expanded to Sydney. Leaving her sister running Australian operations, Rubinstein\u00a0moved to London in 1908 and progressively became one of the leading cosmetics manufacturer\u00a0\u2013 and richest women \u2013 in the world.<\/p>\n

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Helena Rubinstein<\/h6>\n

Helena Rubinstein was in her late eighties when William Dobell began work on her portrait.\u00a0Having made several drawings in her Sydney hotel room, he went home to Wangi and dashed\u00a0down five very small oil sketches on board, which conveyed her posture and skin pallor. He\u00a0thought about them for some time, actually several months, then made an initial large portrait.\u00a0There would be seven more in following years.<\/p>\n

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Sketch portrait of Helena Rubinstein 1957<\/h6>\n
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Study for \u2018Helena Rubenstein\u2019 1960<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/div>\n

What baffled the artist is how Rubinstein had alternate personalities\u00a0she applied to situations as needed. In personal terms he found her shy and\u00a0diffident, but in the workplace she was an efficient and resourceful businesswoman:\u00a0the private and the public Helena Rubinstein were so different.\u00a0<\/span>How\u00a0to convey this psychological complexity via a painting? Added to this paradox\u00a0was her size, because Rubinstein was a tiny 4 feet 10 inches (147 centimetres),\u00a0although by pressure of personality she seemed taller, even large-framed. The\u00a0solution he reached was to contrast her delicate face (carefully made-up, eyes\u00a0distracted, quite feminine) with her powerful hands (very large, professional\u00a0looking, strong). Each informs us about the sitter\u2019s temperament. Rubinstein\u00a0may appear in different gowns, different jewellery, different interiors across the\u00a0eight finished portraits; and Dobell\u2019s summary brushwork alters as he presents\u00a0the sitter as either vulnerable or tough, that is, as either a private person or\u00a0canny executive. But underpinning all is the \u2018character\u2019 of face and of hands,\u00a0and what they reveal about the inner life of Rubenstein and her strength.<\/p>\n

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Helena Rubinstein 1957<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/div>\n

Find out more about <\/em>Discovering Dobell here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Opening this coming\u00a0weekend, the Discovering Dobell exhibition at Tarrawarra \u2013 and its accompanying book \u2013 features the artist\u2019s\u00a0controversial and recognisable portraits of\u00a0Joshua Smith, Dame Mary Gilmore and, as we see here, Helena\u00a0Rubinstein, alongside other vital strands of his\u00a0output,\u00a0introducing\u00a0the creative achievements\u00a0of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[356,693,695,694,692],"class_list":["post-2025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-extract","tag-art","tag-discovering-dobell","tag-exhibition","tag-portraiture","tag-william-dobell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-wF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2025"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2136,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions\/2136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}