Antonio Dattilo Rubbo


Antonio Salvatore Dattilo Rubbo was an Italian-born artist and art teacher active in Australia from 1897.

Early life

Rubbo, or Dattilo-Rubbo, was born in Naples in 1870, and spent his early childhood in the Neapolitan municipality of Frattamaggiore. He studied painting under Domenico Morelli and Filippo Palizzi and after studying at Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Naples, earnt a Diploma of Professor of Drawing in Public Institutions.
Rubbo emigrated to Australia,arriving in Sydney in 1897.
From 1898 Rubbo taught in Sydney schools including St. Joseph's College, Hunters Hill, Kambala School, The Scots College, Newington College and Homebush Grammar School.

Career

Dattilo 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 and his classes at the Royal Art Society of New South Wales. He became a major competitor of Julian Ashton's art school movement.
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, Frank Hinder, Grace Cossington Smith, Donald Friend, Roy De Maistre, war artist Roy Hodgkinson, Archibald Prize winner Arthur Murch, social realist Roy Dalgarno, Tom Bass, and very probably Muriel Binney.
In 1924 he helped to found Manly Art Gallery and Historical Collection which holds over one hundred and thirty of his works, with a room in the gallery named in his honour in 1940.
In 1947 Dattilo Rubbo was commissioned to paint the official portrait of Australian Prime Minister, John Curtin.
He founded the Dante Aligheri Art and Literary Society, and in 1954 became a life member of the Society of Artists. When he retired, one of his teaching staff, Giuseppe Fontanelli Bissietta, known as a member of the Six Directions group, took over his "ADR" school in "Century House", 70 Pitt Street, Sydney.

Honours

In 1922, the Royal Art Society appointed their first eight Fellows, among them Dattilo-Rubbo, William Lister Lister, Charles Bryant, J. S. Watkins, Lawson Balfour, James R. Jackson, Sir John Langstaff and Margaret Preston.
A decade later in 1932, Rubbo was honoured with the title Cavaliere of the Order of the Crown of Italy.
He donated to the Municipality of Frattamaggiore six of his works, including a self-portrait, on the occasion of the National Painting Exhibition of 1955. He also contributed AUD£50 for the purchase of classically inspired paintings for a municipal art gallery to be established. In recognition of his generosity, the Municipality awarded him honorary citizenship and a gold medal, which arrived after his death.