It is an all too common trope, that women in the arts are neglected in their lifetime, forgotten when they die, only to have their work resurrected decades after their death. Clarice Becket is the “poster child” for this worn out story.
The daughter of a Bank Manager, you can imagine, looking at her at age 18, the expectations for a young woman of her social class.
She studied art with leading Australian artist Frederick McCubbin from 1914-16 and later with ‘Tonalist’ painter Max Meldrum. By 1926, she was creating landscapes unprecedented in Australian art for their “radical simplicity”, and from 1930, she experimented further with a broader colour palette and more challenging compositions.
In 1935, while painting the sea off Beaumaris during a winter storm, Beckett contracted pneumonia and died four days later, aged 48. (Wikipedia)
You can read and see more about her work in an earlier post of mine here.
I didn’t have much luck finding photos of Clarice to work from. This one, which I’m guessing is from the late 1920’s early 1930’s, at least shows her in her preferred occupation, painting at Beaumaris, where so much of her work was made.
