Hughes was briefly involved in the original Sydney version of Oz magazine and wrote art criticism for Nation and The Sunday Mirror. Hughes, an aspiring artist and poet, abandoned his university endeavours to become first a cartoonist and then an art critic for the Sydney periodical The Observer, edited by Donald Horne. Among the group were Germaine Greer and Clive James. At university, he associated with the Sydney "Push" – a group of artists, writers, intellectuals and drinkers. Growing up in Rose Bay, Sydney, Hughes was educated at Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview before studying arts and then architecture at the University of Sydney. He had another brother Geoffrey and one sister, Constance. His elder brother was Australian politician Thomas Eyre Forrest Hughes, the father of former Sydney Lord Mayor Lucy Turnbull, the wife of former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. His mother was Margaret Eyre Sealy, née Vidal. He died from lung cancer when Robert was aged 12.
Hughes's father, Geoffrey Forrest Hughes, was a pilot in the First World War, with later careers as a solicitor and company director.
His father and paternal grandfather were lawyers. His writing was noted for its power and elegance.
Known for his contentious critiques of art and artists, Hughes was generally conservative in his tastes, although he did not belong to a particular philosophical camp. He is also known for his best seller The Fatal Shore (1986), a study of the British convict system in early Australian history. Hughes earned widespread recognition for his book and television series on modern art, The Shock of the New, and for his longstanding position as art critic with TIME magazine. He was described in 1997 by Robert Boynton of The New York Times as "the most famous art critic in the world." Robert Studley Forrest Hughes AO (28 July 1938 – 6 August 2012) was an Australian-born art critic, writer, and producer of television documentaries.
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