Fans of television’s FBI whodunit series Criminal Minds are used to the formula that calls for an insightful quote setting up each episode.

But only the keen Australian ear or that of an art lover would have caught the attribution at the head of the recent A Thousand Words episode.

As the show’s David Rossi character intoned: ‘‘A sincere artist tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing. – painter William Dobell.’’

It might have been more apparent had the voice-over pronounced it ‘‘Doe-bell’’ rather than ‘‘Dobble’’ (leaving us to wonder what they would have made of Wangi Wangi).

By small coincidence, here in Newcastle, where the artist was born 111 years ago this month, Elizabeth (Liz) Donaldson of Hamilton was making her own contribution to the ‘‘living thing’’ that is Dobell’s story.

The retired schoolteacher and sometime habitué of Wangi Wangi was preparing to launch William Dobell – An Artist’s Life, a handsomely rendered account of the man and his metier. Like Dobell’s formidable work ethic, Donaldson’s effort exceeded her own ambitions. With most accounts out of print, she had set out to produce a booklet, a ready reckoner if you like on who the hell was Bill Dobell and why he remains so important.

The result is something way beyond that – not merely a treatment of the public Dobell and his signature paintings, but an intimate insight to the shy, brilliant, sensitive, driven individual regarded as Australia’s finest portrait artist responsible for a prodigious volume of work, much of it unfamiliar to the public eye. The book displays more than 100 images, a mere fraction of his lifetime output, yet collectively stunning in scope, style and subject matter.

You think you know Dobell, the world-famous painter? Before you answer that, take a close look at this book, study the range of his creativity and ask yourself: among all the arts, has the region produced a more important figure?

The lake shore at Wangi was the last great anchorage in Bill Dobell’s life. As home and refuge it inspired many of his finest works and launched enduring friendships.

In unpretentious Wangi, for so long a holiday destination for mining families, like one of those old wooden inboards you see dragged up beyond the high-tide mark, Bill hove to. When not painting he became a regular at the local pub, drinking schooners with fishermen and miners. It was to Wangi that the author Donaldson turned for unrealised aspects of the Dobell tale.

‘‘There are so many stories about him in Wangi. Sorting the mythology from the reality was the real challenge,’’ says the writer who will donate all proceeds from the book to the Dobell Foundation.

We’re seated outdoors at Allawah, better known as Dobell House, his residence and studio for the last great chapter of his life. On this spring morning the sun fairly blasts off its white walls. The view across the sheltered bay is a replica snapshot of his White Boats, rendered in the years before his death. Today, as then, the wind is out of the west, the bows of the craft at anchor pointing faithfully into the breeze. The timeless nature of this image offers a glimpse of what Dobell meant by his art as a ‘‘living thing’’.

In her delving, Donaldson rediscovered a bloke she wishes she had known in his prime.

‘‘I found a man I very much would have liked to have sat down and yarned with,’’ she says.

A thumbnail of the artist depicts a 40-year career that took him from Sydney Art School on a scholarship to London and Europe where he stayed 10 years before returning to make a massive impact on the Australian scene as the first painter to win both the Wynne Prize for landscape and the Archibald Prize for portraiture in the same year. The watershed event in his life occurred in 1944 via an infamous court case mounted by fellow artists claiming his winning Archibald entry of Joshua Smith was a caricature and not a portrait. The case was eventually dismissed but it was a pyrrhic victory that came at great cost to Dobell’s health and happiness.

Descriptions of Dobell in the post-trial period suggest a man suffering a breakdown or, at least, deep depression. He was cared for by his spinster sister Alice. The stress manifest itself in the form of dermatitis. As Dobell noted later: ‘‘The skin peeled off me.’’

His ‘‘nerves’’, as he called it, caused him to lose the use of one leg for an extended period and the dermatitis resulted in permanent damage to the sight in one eye. He thought he would never paint again. As Donaldson notes: ‘‘He was at the lowest point of his life.’’

The crisis had brought him to his family’s modest holiday retreat on the quiet shores of western Lake Macquarie. It was here he found refuge, recaptured his confidence and strength. And, for the closing 25 years of his life, it was at Allawah – Aboriginal for to stay or rest – that he produced such a mass of work it choked his upstairs studio, forcing him downstairs to paint.

‘‘Dobell now spent the most of his time at Wangi,’’ Donaldson writes, ‘‘a relaxed and informal life that suited his mood. He spent time with his immediate and extended family – his brothers and sisters and his large number of nieces and nephews.’’

Here were the subjects of his creative recovery: the landscape as depicted in the 1948 Wynne Prize-winning Storm approaching Wangi, and the figures, notably his nephew Robert Stephenson, he of Wangi Boy fame, and his niece shown in the relatively unknown Suzanne and goldfish, a scene cast on Allawah’s eastern verandah. Yet, he did venture back to Sydney where he managed to meet a narrow deadline with his sumptuous portrait of Margaret Olley. It won the 1948 Archibald. The Wynne-Archibald double was a remarkable achievement. As Donaldson notes: ‘‘Dobell had regained his dignity and had re-won his position in the Australian art scene.’’

Wangi provided the intersection for Dobell and Donaldson. Liz and architect husband Bob had retired to a renovated holiday home just along the foreshore from Allawah. Better known by then as Dobell House, it had been bought and administered by the Sir William Dobell Memorial Committee, a collective of Wangi supporters. Bob and Liz would bring their skills as architect and archivist to the project. After a decade as a volunteer, Liz started on the book.

Her research led from Dobell’s birthplace at the corner of Bull and Corlette streets in Cooks Hill, to Sydney, London, country Devon, Bruges, Paris, and The Hague. Along the way it noted the influences of Rembrandt, Renoir, Van Eyck, Goya, Turner, Constable, Van Gogh, Soutine, Tintoretto and Ingres on the young artist who had started out wanting to be a cartoonist while first training as an architect. The writer follows him aboard a ship in Naples on his 1938 return to Australia and throughout the stunning creative journey that foundered on the Archibald controversy. The yarn-telling in her narrative says much about the man.

Take Dobell and money. No living Australian painter ever generated so much for his original talent as Dobell but, from the outset, money always seemed the least of his concerns. As a young man he was searching through his pockets to find the cash for a round of drinks when he discovered three unopened pay packets. When he packed up his Kings Cross flat, friends found two cheques dated 1944 under the carpet.

In 1950, Hal Missingham, Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, drove to Wangi to collect a receipt from Dobell (who never opened his mail) for the sale of his portrait of Margaret Olley to the gallery for £800. Instead, they got on the squirt at the Wangi pub. Missingham was climbing back into his car for the return trip when Dobell asked him what had been the purpose of the visit. Only then did Missingham remember. So, they went back inside for Dobell to write out a receipt. There on the mantlepiece Missingham discovered an unopened envelope. The original cheque was still inside.

Then there was the time when drinking mates dropped around to play on his pool table only to discover that the balls would not drop into the pockets. The artist had used them as a repository for banknotes.

When he sent his beloved Jaguar to Trigg’s Motors of Toronto for a service, an apprentice accidentally set it on fire. Dobell decided to trade the charred Jag on a new one. Instead of cashing in one of his valuable paintings, he took out a loan to complete the purchase, enlisting the Wangi postmaster as guarantor. Donaldson manages to capture the sense of destiny that seemingly decreed Dobell’s existence. It explains how this modest man pursued an egalitarian life but still made friends with the most influential people of his time including the Duke of Edinburgh, Helena Rubinstein, Sir Edward Hallstrom, Dame Mary Gilmore, the Governor General Lord de L’isle, Dame Zara Holt and author Patrick White.

The Ham Funeral, the White play, was inspired by Dobell’s The Dead Landlord, which captures a true event of 1936 when the artist’s London landlady asked her tenant to give her a hand with the body of her deceased husband.

When Dobell broke his watch while working as a member of the Civil Construction Corps during the war, he offered a jeweller a painting in exchange for a new timepiece. The jeweller, in turn, owed Sydney surgeon Dr Edward McMahon money for a consultation. The jeweller thought the surgeon might accept the painting in lieu of the fee. McMahon reluctantly agreed and took delivery of a study of a mother and child. Years later, as a distinguished senior surgeon, McMahon would regard the painting as the best remuneration he had ever received.

In 1957, Dobell was diagnosed with cancer and referred to a surgeon. Dr Edward McMahon removed the lower two-thirds of the bowel and, in a second operation, removed the lymph glands in the groin to prevent the cancer from spreading.

During Dobell’s hospital stay throughout January 1958, McMahon, often dressed in his surgical gown, visited the patient every day.

In 1959, a rejuvenated Dobell entered his new painting in the Archibald.

The portrait of his saviour, Dr E.G. McMahon in surgical gown, won first prize.

As for the private Dobell, his innate shyness meant his personal life remained as private as he could manage. He hated being in the public eye.

Any number of texts on gay Sydney insist that he was homosexual. His friend Patrick White, who was gay, saw in Dobell’s work ‘‘flashes of homosexual brilliance and insight’’. As one writer noted: ‘‘It was known among Dobell’s own bohemian and gay circle that he was actively homosexual, though he kept it hidden from the public. Gay men then had to live furtive lives, as homosexuality was illegal.’’

Yet, as Liz Donaldson points out, in his William Dobell, A Biographical and Critical Study (1981), biographer and artist James Gleeson, who was gay, made no mention of the subject’s sexuality.

‘‘It’s irrelevant,’’ Donaldson insists. ‘‘Had there been a central relationship in his life – whether hetero or homosexual – that had a real bearing on his work, then that would have been relevant. But that’s not the case.’’

By innuendo rather than stated fact, certain media coverage of the 1944 court case hinted that he was gay, a development that may have caused the publicity-shy Dobell great distress. His discomfort might have been compounded by the position he held as an admired artist among conservative Australian society at a time when homosexuality was still illegal.

On a rare occasion when Dobell talked of his private life he told an interviewer about an engagement to a girl when he was quite young. It didn’t work out. From that point he remained a bachelor.

Donaldson: ‘‘A lot of people say Dobell’s male figures are homo-erotic, but he also painted female nudes.

‘‘If you lived in a place like Wangi and flirted with blokes, everybody would know. I found no evidence of that. In fact, his neighbour of 26 years claimed he wasn’t.’’

The image of the Wangi artist is that of a man moving beyond middle age, enjoying a beer, a smoke and a yarn with the regulars at the local pub. The subject of his alleged homosexuality is not a taboo around Wangi, says Donaldson, it’s just not relevant. The community accepted him as he was.

As if responding to the early instincts that led him to drawing cartoons, late in life he wandered back into caricature. Study for prawns and beer with fish and chips and Gentleman conversing with a prawn capture his risible take on life by the lake.

Donaldson offers three parting glimpses of the man. The first is an interview with Virginia Freeman in 1970 when he talks of energy and appeasement: ‘‘I paint as I want with no holds barred. I am more contented lately than I have been for a long time about my work. But not dangerously so.’’

Proof of the mood lay in the 1970 masterpiece, Thelma Clune. In 1946, still scarred by his caricature assassination, he had painted a straight-laced realistic portrait of her. The later effort was a tour de force of caricature, dashed off in a veritable fit of creativity, depicting his friend at her flamboyant finest.

The second is Dobell at his final public appearance, a black-tie opening night for a Newcastle exhibition.

‘‘Dobell was nervous and embarrassed. He managed to remember all the people he should thank and then, pausing, he smiled in his gentle, shy way and said: ‘I think that’s all I have to say except – yours sincerely Bill Dobell.’ ’’

The last image is that of the solitary man preparing his evening meal, his faithful cocker spaniels at his feet, when he suffers a massive heart attack and collapses there on his kitchen floor. The next morning, May 14, 1970, the local greengrocer Bill Hinton finds him lying where he fell. Nearby, its paint still wet, sits his final work, Helping Hand, a piece for charity depicting a strong, young hand reaching to grasp an older, frail hand.

A living thing.