It’s been several months since I went out with the Urban Sketchers Canberra group. The weather, being as cold as it is, didn’t seem to promise a large turnout, but I was wrong about that.
36 people in the group photo.
I decided to do a composite sketch, showing various aspects of the Gallery, starting with part of the building exterior.
The entrance to the Gallery
I then moved inside, collected a stool, and found a spot where I could see a cluster of other sketchers. I also decided to incorporate some quick sketches of two of the portraits into the background of my double page spread.
Sketching the sketchersWith some colour added
Because I couldn’t use my watercolours in the gallery, I moved to the ‘family’ room where messy art could happen.
The final double page spread.
I planned to add some elements from the cafe in the bottom right corner, but I ran out of time. Maybe I can do that another time.
Pauline Boty, (1938-1966), was an English artist and sole female member of the British pop art movement. Boty came to prominance through unlikely paths. Initially she studied stained glass and then collage at the Royal College of Art. She had wanted to join the painting department but was dissuaded from applying because of the low success rate of applications by female students.
Drawn from a still from the film Pop Goes the Easel by Ken Russell, 1962
Boty’s good looks attracted attention, earning her the nickname of ‘the Wimbledon Bardot’ referring to her likeness to the French film star. Her appearance in the Ken Russell documentary Pop Goes the Easel, in 1962, gave rise to a series of roles on the TV and stage and one in the film Alfie.
Pauline Boty, 1963 from a photograph by Lewis Morley
In 1959 three of Boty’s works were selected for the Young Contemporaries exhibition and in 1960 one of her stained glass works was selected for an Arts Council exhibition Modern Stained Glass. You can see her stained glass self portrait in the National Portrait Gallery London.
Throughout her studies and in addition to her acting, Boty continued working on her paintings, first showing her work in a small group show in 1961. My favourite painting of hers is The Only Blonde in the World, 1963, a portrait of Marilyn Monroe, is in collection the Tate Gallery.
Pauline Boty, 1964, from a photograph by David Bailey.
Boty married Clive Goodwin in 1963. In 1965 she became pregnant, but during an examination it was discovered that she had an aggressive cancer. Boty decided to forgo treatment as there could be no guarantee that her unborn child would survive. Her daughter, called Boty, was born in February 1966. Pauline Boty died of cancer in July of the same year.
Nora Heysen (1911-2003), was the first Australian woman to win the prestigious Archibald Prize for portraiture in 1938, for her portrait of Mme Elink Schuurman. At age 27 she was and remains, the youngest ever winner of the Archibald Prize. The Australian Women’s Weekly subsequently summarised this landmark achievement with an article entitled “Girl Painter Who Won Art Prize is also Good Cook”.
Nora Heysen, c. 1930s
Despite underwhelming assessments like that, Heysen was more than capable of holding her own when it came to making art. The daughter of one of Australia’s most popular landscape artists, Hans Heysen, she began her formal art training at the age of 15 and by the age of 20 had her work in the collection of three State galleries.
Sales from her first solo exhibition in 1933 funded further study in London (1934-37).
In 1944 Heysen made another breakthrough when she became the first Australian woman appointed as an Official War Artist*. In addition to her honorary rank as Captain, she was, with persistence and backing, even paid the same rate as male war artists!
Captain Nora Heysen in Papua New Guinea in 1944. Collection of the Australian War Memorial
One of my favourite portraits of her war service is of WAAAF cook, Corporal Joan Whipp.
Heysen married in 1953, but found her practice was disrupted. She and her husband divorced in 1976. By then her portraits and still life subjects had fallen out of fashion and her work was not recognised.
Later, while researching work on some of her father’s paintings, curator Lou Klepac saw her work, and recognised it’s quality. He mounted a major exhibition of Nora’s work in 1989. In conjunction with the National Library of Australia, Klepac held another successful exhibition of her work in 2000.
Heysen at age 92, at the Art Gallery of South Australia, standing in front of one of her father’s paintings.
Unlike so many other female artists Heysen did live to see her work regain it’s prominence. She died after a short illness in 2003.
*Both Iso Rae and Jessie Traill documented the First World War in France, but neither were given official status as Government appointed war artists.
Next up is Australian artist Grace Cossington-Smith, (1892-1984), whose early works showing the domestic life of Australia during the first World War brought her to prominence.
From a family photograph taken in 1915
Post WWI her bold use of colour shone in such works as The Laquer Room, 1936.
Cossington Smith is remembered for her light filled domestic interiors that became a feature of her later years.
Grace Cossington Smith, 1937 detail from a family photo, Art Gallery of New South Wales collection.
She had a major retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in the early 1970’s, then ceased painting. She died in 1984.
Cossington Smith captured by a street photographer, c. 1930-40. Collection of the Australian War Memorial.
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.
Clarice in 1931
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.
Clarice painting at Beaumaris
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.
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