Noel Rubie

Alfred Noel Joseph Rubie (25 December 1901 – 13 July 1975) was an Australian modernist painter, portrait and commercial photographer, playwright and pharmacy proprietor who worked in Sydney during the 1920s and into the 1960s.

[7] He retired from his partnership with Hazel on 12 October 1938,[8] having set up Rubie, Noel, Pty., Ltd. industrial and commercial photographers with directors Arthur H. Dowse, Edwin Paterson and Ella M. Hamilton, only days before, with a capital of £2000 in £1 shares.

[17] His painting style aligned with that of other early modernists in Australia and, though of modest standing, is comparable to the work of artists such as Grace Cossington Smith, Roy De Maistre, and Roland Wakelin.

He first exhibited at Grosvenor Galleries in 1936 with reviews in The Sydney Morning Herald and with two of his male portraits These Yellow Sands and Not Amused illustrated in the November Art In Australia.

[19][20] Significant among these subjects were Lesley Pope (later Hazlitt) of The Piddingtons; actor Joy Youlden from the J. C. Williamson production of The Girl Friend; Margaret Doyle, first woman newsreader and national radio announcer in Australia; journalist Robin Dalton (née Eakin); and cellist Lois Simpson.

His portrait subjects also included actors Ed Devereaux[24] and Queenie Ashton,[25] radio personality Jack Davey and announcer Margaret Doyle, politician Hon.

Eric John Harrison,[26] soprano Kirsten Flagstad, contralto Essie Ackland,[27] actress and costume designer Thelma Afford,[28] physician Captain Gwen Lusby,[29] pianist Valda Aveling, dancers Eileen Kramer, Maria Azrova, Sono Osato, Hélène Kirsova and Roman Jasinski.Rubie was, with Max Dupain, David Moore and Laurence Le Guay, among a number of Australian photographers who had moved on from Pictorialism and were embracing Modernist tendencies, including montage and the New Realism as practiced in Europe and America.

Though that play was met with a poor review by The Bulletin,[42] he returned after WW2 in 1954 to produce the decor and costumes for Captain Brassbound's Conversion, which The Bulletin found "pleasing in the orthodox modern manner,"[43] while in an earlier issue of the magazine the writer of the 'Women's Letters' more emphatically praised how his "costumes and decor gave a lesson in emphasis to budding interior-decorative artists, for all the intense color was concentrated on the only woman in the cast, Lady Cicely Waynflete, played by Doris Fitton.

in The Sydney Morning Herald remarked on the energy of the production; "This was a "Phaedra" of violent mobility and flauntingly naked emotions; an effective piece of theatre with as much subtlety as a direct blow to the face," due to Rubie's "underlining and repeating what Racine was content to imply or state briefly" in his adaptation.

The figure has been developed with admirable smoothness of detail; and there is a plastic quality about It which is attractive; but the whole thing remains life a coloured photograph, devoid of emotion and personality.

[54]The Bulletin identifies his portrait of a young man Lyric in the October 1934 show of "young commercial artists" at the Grosvenor Galleries as the "most graceful thing in the show...for the lines sing,"[2] His first solo exhibition, at the Grosvenor Galleries, Sydney in 1936 was given a lengthy review in The Sydney Morning Herald in which the journalist considered him 'a rising star' despite still being in his twenties, before taking issue with his titles because "more conservative visitors, beholding such descriptions as Symbolical of Something and Synthetic Kurrajong, may impute to the pictures a shallow attempt at smartness which is not their true quality.

"[55] The Bulletin of 17 June also treated the exhibition at length, and in the same issue included a lively account of the opening in its Women's Letters; ...there are at least three Noel Rubies—a portraitist who excels in the representation of vigorous youth, delighting in smooth modelling and the most meticulous rendition of detail; ...another...who exercises a dramatic, character-revealing Sargentesque touch; a decorationist who seeks to find a significant pattern in landscape and other natural forms ... there is lucidity of purpose and a degree of achievement that makes the purpose clear...These Yellow Sands, owes something to Van Gogh in its ... luminous, vibrant background.

"[58] Rubie never married, and he enjoyed bachelorhood, yachting (in a black craft that he sold in 1948 to actor Grant Taylor),[59] entertaining,[60] and travel that included North Africa,[61] India,[32] Spain,[62] England, Tahiti, America[63] and Japan.

"[65] Wilfrid Thomas in the ABC Weekly recounted how after the War the photographer converted and combined 80-year-old semi-detached cottages into one residence at Kirribilli[64] that overlooked Sydney Harbour Bridge with a swimming-pool, a balcony designed to look like a ship's promenade deck, a 'Naughty ’Nineties' bar' with cedar-lined, crystal-lit discreet alcove, a lounge lined with books and a mural map of the world; and a music-room with a star-studded azure wall.