SEMINAR: THE WOMEN WHO PAINTED MOSMAN
SEMINAR Friday 19 May, 10am–1pm, Grand Hall, Mosman Art Gallery
Stand aside, chaps. These are the women who changed the story of Australian art.
Margaret Preston, Hilda Rix Nicholas, Grace Cossington Smith and Ethel Carrick Fox were leaders in the artistic hotbed that was the lower North Shore after World War I, rivalling their male colleagues in inspiration, experimentation and technique, especially their innovative use of colour.
Denise Mimmocchi, senior curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and curator of the 2017 exhibition O’Keeffe, Preston, Cossington Smith – Making Modernism, will describe how Preston and Rix Nicholas found healing and creative renewal in Mosman after devastating war experiences in Europe.
Preston worked with shell-shocked soldiers in Devon, but for Rix Nicholas the war years were particularly tragic. Leaving France in 1914 to take refuge in London, she lost first her sister, then her mother, and finally her husband Captain George Matson Nicholas in battle only five weeks after their marriage.
Claire Eggleston, senior librarian at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, will explore the transformative influence of the Mosman-based Theosophy movement (still headquartered at the Manor in Iluka Road) in the work of Grace Cossington Smith, Ethel Carrick Fox and other Australian artists.
Both speakers are passionate about their subjects so it will be an unmissable occasion.
Made possible by a Mosman Council Community Grant
Entry is FREE to members and non- members but booking required. BOOK HERE