Painter

William Boissevain is an extremely gifted artist who has devoted the majority of his life to capturing still life and nuance of the female form.

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Boissevain was born in New York in 1927. As the son of a Dutch diplomat he spent the majority of his youth living in foreign and exotic cities including America, Asia and Peru. The most dramatic of his adventures was a passage to Shanghai shortly after occupation by the Japanese: the Boissevains were eventually declared diplomatic prisoners and evacuated to England. Sometime later his mother emigrated to Perth, WA, and Boissevain, on a visit to Australia, also decided to settle in the west. From this time Boissevain began to establish his reputation as one of Western Australians most talented artists.

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William Boissevain has developed unique methods and techniques to capture the essence and position of the models and sitters. Primarily, his figurative works are layers of rich pastels and charcoal atop colourful oil glazes.

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Influenced by some of the greatest painters in European modern history such as Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Matisse, Boissevain recollects the time he spent wandering the vast corridors of the Louvre, studying works by such masterful artists. His drawings reflect the precision and skill of the great French masters while also embedded with spontaneity of colour, line and form.

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