Painter and gallery administrator, was born on 18 July 1902 in Edinburgh, eldest son of Alfred Richmond Campbell, commercial traveller, and his wife Isabella Jane, née Thompson. Educated in Edinburgh at George Watson’s College and at Wallasey Grammar School, Cheshire, England, in 1916 he migrated with his family to Brisbane, where he worked as a commercial artist. Determined to become a painter, he moved to Melbourne and from 1922 to 1940 lived mainly by his art. The success of his first solo exhibition at Sedon Galleries in 1928 enabled him to travel to Europe with Rupert Bunny [ ADB 7]. He lived in Paris and London and sketched through France, Spain, England and Scotland. Under the influence of Pissarro, Monet, Turner, de Wint and Wilson Steer his work became impressionistic and atmospheric, but he had to paint cheap portraits to make ends meet in the Depression and returned to Australia in 1932.

On 13 June 1933 Campbell married Jean Elizabeth, daughter of J.H. Young [ ADB 13] at Waverton, Sydney, then working as an assistant in her father’s Macquarie Galleries. They lived in Sydney and on islands off the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, which Campbell painted. By the 1950s he was regarded as a leading Australian watercolourist. Having taught part-time in Sydney, Campbell moved to Tasmania in 1941 to head the art department at Launceston Technical College. He was appointed curator of AGWA in 1947 and became president of the Perth Society of Artists. In 1949 he became first director of QAG, then director of the AGSA (1951-67). He was on the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board in Canberra from 1952 to 1972.

Campbell died in Royal Adelaide Hospital on 30 September 1972 and was cremated. Six retrospective exhibitions have been held since his death acc. Finnimore.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1999

Last updated:

2011