The 'Frontier' speaks back: Two Australian artists working in Paris and London

The two women artists who are the subject of this paper, Hilda Rix and Nora Heysen, worked from the 1900s to the 1940s in cosmopolitan Paris and London, at a time when it was almost obligatory to do so. This was part of the career pathway of any aspiring artist then, and as long-time 'expatriat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Portal (Sydney, N.S.W.) N.S.W.), 2013-07, Vol.10 (2), p.1-16
Main Author: Speck, Catherine Margaret
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Artists
Attitudes
Australia
Career development
Careers
Cities
Cosmopolitanism
Expatriates
Females
gender
Humanities
Internationalism
London
London, England
metropolis
Modernism
Nineteenth Century
Paris
Patronage
Professional ethics
Travel
Women artists
Work Experience
Working Women
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Summary:The two women artists who are the subject of this paper, Hilda Rix and Nora Heysen, worked from the 1900s to the 1940s in cosmopolitan Paris and London, at a time when it was almost obligatory to do so. This was part of the career pathway of any aspiring artist then, and as long-time 'expatriate' Geoffrey Batchen commented recently, 'Australians of ambition have always left to work and gain experience overseas. This is especially so for our better artists' (2007: 11). While that is so, it was Australian women artists in particular who circumvented a restrictive masculinism in local visual arts patronage, and headed overseas to develop their modern practice in this era. This expatriate group included not just Rix and Heysen, but Thea Proctor, Margaret Preston, Gladys Reynell, Dorrit Black, Grace Crowley and Anne Dangar, amongst others, and it is widely acknowledged that these women, in the main, ushered in modernism to Australia. This situation of women being the purveyors of modern style is a unique Australian phenomenon linked to travel, expatriatism and suffrage (Jordan 1994: 30).
ISSN:1449-2490
1449-2490
DOI:10.5130/portal.v10i2.2377