(b Melbourne, 26 March 1912; d Melbourne, 23 July 1949). Australian painter and writer. He left the Royal Australian Naval College without graduating at the end of 1929. Some years spent as a farmhand ended when his father committed suicide in 1932. After a few years spent in sport and travelling, at his sister’s suggestion he attended the Grosvenor Art School in London in 1935–6. He returned to Melbourne and studied at the school run by George Bell, where he became a close friend of Russell Drysdale, who like Purves Smith did not have to work for a living and experienced leisure not as freedom but rather as a cause for self-doubt.