Robert Hughes 28 July 1938 – 6 August 2012
Doris Downes Hughes has released this statement today in New York City concerning the death of her husband today 5.40 am Sydney time:-
“Robert S. F. Hughes AO 28 July 1938 – 6 August 2012
Robert Hughes passed away peacefully at 3.40 pm in New York on Monday 6 August at the Calvary Hospital in the Bronx New York City. He had just turned 74. He had been very ill for some time.
He will be greatly missed by his wife Doris Downes Hughes who was with him when he died and his family in Australia, including his brothers the Honourable Tom Hughes AO QC, Geoffrey Hughes, his sister Constance Crisp and his niece Lucy Hughes Turnbull AO and her husband the Honourable Malcolm Turnbull MP.
He also leaves two stepsons Freeborn Garrettson Jewett IV and Fielder Douglas Jewett. His son Danton Hughes tragically predeceased him.
Details of the funeral and memorial service will be advised in due course.”
19 Responses to “Robert Hughes 28 July 1938 – 6 August 2012”
Robert Hughes was a titan. Erudite, funny and passionate about the world his death leaves a huge space where he once existed.
Stephen Corvini
[...] Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull, who is married to Hughes’ niece, posted a statement from Hughes’s wife Doris on his website confirming the death. [...]
[...] Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull, who is married to Hughes’ niece, posted a statement from Hughes’s wife Doris on his website confirming the death. [...]
Every person interested in History, and every Australian regardless of interest in History, must read “The Fatal Shore” by Mr Hughes. Thank you, sir, for your book, and a deeper understanding of how my home came to be. My condolences to family and friends.
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Robert was an inspiration; he wrote from the heart and told the story of art with joyful intelligent passion. I loved arguing with him on and off the printed page. What has always struck me most about Hughes is his intellectual honesty. He was one of very few critics openly prepared to change his mind, particularly when reviewing a retrospective of American painter Lee Krasner, whom he’d previously dismissed as a shadow of her late husband Jackson Pollock. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,952269,00.html
Oh, for his wit. Quote: I’m a ‘heavy metal fan’.
Dear Mrs Turnbull,
My sincere condolences.
Robert Hughes was an Australian Treasure & shall be rembembered as such.
My thoughts are with your Family.
Kind Regards
Carolina Cabezas
Fullarton SA
Shock of the New and The Fatal Shore are magisterial works that marked Robert Hughes out as a towering intellect. A Jerk on One End and Things I didn’t Know offer us insight into the fundamental humanity and goodness of the man. Vale Robert and rest peacefully.
I left for work this morning and told my wife to “Say a prayer for Robert Hughes today” She said ” No, say thanks for Robert Hughes today”. She’s right. He was a hero of mine. He enriched my life. Thank you RH.
As an artist, I will never know what it is to be slammed or complimented by the man who taught me so much; the man I laughingly agreed with on so many issues in art. I light a candle for him. My condolences.
Robert Hughes gave us a superb popular history in “The Fatal Shore”. While he set out to tell a dramatic story of suffering and oppression, his intellectual honesty resulted in good history, notably the acknowledgement that most convicts lived under the protection of the rule of law away from Norfolk Island and Macquarie Harbour etc. What a contrast to the tendentious, pompous lies of Manning Clark! A pity Robert didn’t write more history, an antidote to the ‘black armband’ gang. When it’s my turn to deliver the intercessions in my Anglican church I will give thanks for his life.
Amongst his many accomplishments, The Shock of the New should be required reading for anyone interested in art. His contribution to public knowledge, understanding and debate was significant and much needed. Vale Robert Hughes and condolences to his family.
My father and I are very saddened to her of the passing of Robert Hughes. Robert’s contribution to the arts will leave a great legacy.
A great hero of mine that taught me so so much. A true Australian titan of a man. My thoughts and condolences to his family.
Most of us knew only of him as an author and presenter – therefore the fact that many of us are so saddened by his passing, is truly a measure of what he achieved these fields.
Bob was not only the greatest art critic of our age but also the bravest. More than that, he was a historian and cultural commentator who excelled at a time when cultural commentary counted. He expressed opinions of muscular certainty in words of vivid clarity that will live for future generations long after we have turned to dust. Generous, irreverent, politically incorrect, erudite, clear-sighted, funny, an irrepressible appetite for all the good things in life, sensitive and always painfully honest about everything, he leaves behind him a hole the size of Australia. R.I.P. Bob.
[...] statement from his wife, Doris Downes Hughes, released today from New York City said she was with her husband [...]
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