Travis Webber ( 1900 - 1968)

Travis Webber (1900-1968)
Webber was born in Adelaide, South Australia and studied under the influential Sydney artist Antonio Dattilo-Rubbo who introduced many 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. Other students included Norah Simpson, Frank Hinder, Grace Cossington Smith, Donald Friend, Roy De Maistre, James Ranalph Jackson, war artist Roy Hodgkinson, Archibald Prize winner Arthur Murch, social realist Roy Dalgarno and Tom Bass the sculptor. Webber established himself as one of the Nation’s most successful and prolific landscape artists. He held countless successful solo exhibitions across four states during the 1930s and 1940s, winning the Society of Artists prize numerous times, and had several works acquired by the Queensland Art Gallery, Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of South Australia.