Australian Women - Modernist Artists

They were the modern women – able to vote and earn a living. They embraced their new freedoms and it translated into a unique, fresh artistic style. Australian women artists of the early 20th century were ahead of their male counterparts, who were still focused on upholding and preserving the classical British tradition.

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Instead of painting classical life studies from the model, historical paintings, the nationalistic “bush paintings” and the vast Australian landscapes in the impressionist style, Australian female modernists embraced the aesthetic of the everyday objects in their intricate arrangements of still lifes, the airy views of the industrialised city centres and the modern interiors of the fashionable department stores. Their portraits and self-portraits were daring, bold and refreshing.

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James Stewart MacDonald, art critic and director of the National Art Gallery of NSW somberly reflected in his 1933 speech “that since the war there had been a tremendous intrusion of women painters. They had always painted badly; very slick as students, but as soon as they got away from instructors they fell off and eventually disappeared”.

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Oh, how very wrong you were, Mr J. S. MacDonald, how very wrong.

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Hilda Rix Nicholas, Une Australienne, 1926

Margaret Preston, Western Australian gum blossom, 1928

Nora Heysen, Self portrait, 1932

Margaret Preston, Implement blue, 1927

Grace Cossington Smith, Things on an iron tray on the floor, circa 1928

Grace Cossington Smith, The reader, 1916

Grace Crowley, Woman (Annunciation), c.1939

Ethel Spowers, Swings, 1932

Grace Cossington Smith, The Lacquer Room, 1936

Hilda Rix Nicholas, The Summer House, circa 1933