William Dargie was born in
Footscray, Victoria, the first son of Andrew Dargie and Adelaide (née Sargent). His younger brother,
Horrie Dargie, was a noted Australian musician and
harmonicist. for which Dargie won the 1945 Archibald Prize When he was young, he met important Australian artists such as
Arthur Streeton and
Tom Roberts. During World War II, he served with the
Australian Army in the
Middle East,
New Guinea,
India and
Burma, rising to the rank of
Captain. He was digging a trench in
Tobruk,
Libya, when he was informed that he had won the Archibald Prize in 1942. More than 500 of his paintings, drawings and sketches are in the collection of the
Australian War Memorial,
Canberra. In December 1954, he was commissioned by
Melbourne industrialist James P. Beveridge to paint
Australia's official portrait of the Queen, who posed for him at
Buckingham Palace. That was the first of two portraits he created of the Queen. The second, a replica of the first, was painted as "insurance" in case the first was lost in transit to Australia. The original hangs in Australia's
Parliament House, while the replica is displayed in the
National Museum of Australia. The "
wattle painting", as it became known, was well received by the Australian public, and became one of the most recognisable and treasured examples of 20th-century Australian portraiture. Shortly after its completion, colour prints were made available and the work took on the status of official portrait. For many postwar immigrants, that portrait was their first encounter with an artwork by an Australian artist, because it was reproduced on Australian naturalisation papers from the mid-1950s. Under the terms of the 1954 Australian Citizenship Convention, a print of the work was generally present in local town halls, where many naturalisation ceremonies took place. Dargie painted the
Duke of Edinburgh in 1956, as well as official portraits of two Australian
Prime Ministers: Sir
Arthur Fadden and Sir
John McEwen. Other famous Australians who sat for him included Sir
Charles Kingsford Smith, Dame
Enid Lyons and
Margaret Court. Other commissions included General
John Baker,
Chief of the
Australian Defence Force. He held positions on several gallery boards, serving on the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board for twenty years. Between 1946 and 1953, he was head of the Victorian Art School at the
National Gallery of Victoria. While he is best known for his portraits, he also painted other works, such as smaller interior views, landscapes and still lifes. William Dargie died in
Melbourne on 26 July 2003, aged 91, two months after the death of his wife Lady Dargie (née Kathleen Howlitt). He was a
Freemason. == Archibald Prize ==