A Letter From The Publisher: Aug. 4, 1961

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AUSTRALIAN artist William Dobell, 61, a man of gentle manner but with an incisive painter's eye—as his April 4, 1960 cover of Australia's Prime Minister Menzies showed—likes to capture his subject's character in a way that a photograph cannot. He feared that South Viet Nam President Ngo Dinh Diem would be a "mandarin-like subject, whose face might not reveal his feelings.'' Instead, sketching his subject in the palace drawing room in Saigon, while Hong Kong Bureau Chief Stanley Karnow conducted his interview, Dobell found President Diem an animated, "rather pleasant and intense person,'' perhaps lacking in humor, with "a Father of His Country look.'' After making three sketches, the two shown here and the third that became the cover portrait, Dobell sat on a settee for three more hours, as Karnow's interview went on, smoking and making mental notes of Diem's demeanor.

It was Dobell's first visit to South Viet Nam, and among the many quick expressions recorded in his sketchbook is the river scene. Oriental in its simplicity and delicacy, reproduced below.