The painting took a modernist approach to portraiture; a break with the realism favoured to that date by Archibald Prize entrants.

To me, a sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is living in itself, regardless of its subject.

So long as people expect paintings to be simply coloured photographs they get no individuality and in the case of portraits, no characterisation.

The real artist is striving to depict his subject’s character and to stress the caricature, but at least it is art which is alive.The modernist painting attracted vehement criticism and equally passionate praise.

[3] This award was contested in the Supreme Court of New South Wales by Mary Edwell-Burke and Joseph Wolinski on the grounds that the painting was not a portrait but rather a caricature.