Australian Lesbian Artists of the Early Twentieth Century

Born in Portland in southwest Victoria, Agnes Goodsir (1864–1939) initially painted still lifes before applying herself to the challenge of portraiture. During the late 19th century she studied at the Bendigo School of Mines in Victoria under the tutelage of the artist Arthur Woodward, who insisted that students be exposed to international cultural circles. Goodsir set her sights on Great Britain and France, venturing overseas to “find herself” at the mature age of 36. She enrolled at the Parisian art schools of the day: the Académie Delécluse, the Académie Colarossi, and the Académie Julian. Her works were featured in the seasonal salons of Paris, gaining her significant attention and resulting in a steady flow of commissions. She moved to London (where she also exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Royal Institute) prior to the onset of the First World War. Resettling in Paris in 1921, Goodsir made her home in Rue de l’Odeon on the Left Bank with her companion and muse, Rachel Dunn, who appeared in many of her paintings. In 1926, Goodsir was made a member of France's Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, one of few Australians to receive the honour. She returned to Australia in 1927 for several months, bringing a large selection of her work for solo exhibitions in both Melbourne and Sydney, and receiving significant media attention as a result. Goodsir died in Paris in 1939, leaving the majority of her estate to Dunn.

Janet Agnes Cumbrae Stewart (1883-1960) was a successful Australian painter born in Brighton, Victoria. Most well-known for her female nudes, she was considered one of the leading pastel artists of her generation. Originally trained at the Melbourne National Gallery School under the tutelage of Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall, Stewart participated in the First Exhibition of Women's Work in Melbourne in 1907. She left Australia for London in 1922, holding her first solo exhibition at Walkers Gallery in London in 1924, where her work *A Young Woman Seated on the Bed* was acquired for the Royal Collection, possibly at the request of Queen Mary. In the 1920s and 30s she travelled extensively, exhibiting in France, Britain and Italy while continuing to present solo shows in Melbourne, Brisbane, South Australia and Sydney. She returned to Australia with her "companion" Miss Argemore Farrington Bellairs ("Billy") on board the Dutch ship Meliskerk from Antwerp in 1937. According to Peter Di Sciasco, Billy was a "distinctive and enterprising woman of independent means who dressed in masculine attire". The pair lived together in South Yarra and at a property in Hurstbridge until Cumbrae Stewart's death in 1960. Her work is held in numerous collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia, the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Bendigo Regional Gallery, the Royal Collection London and the Museo del Novocento in Milan. Despite her achievements during her lifetime, her work has been sparsely exhibited in Australia.

Margaret Rose Preston (1875–1963) was one of Australia’s most significant painters and a key figure in the development of modern art in Sydney from the 1920s to the 1950s. Preston championed a distinctly Australian style that was at times controversially based on elements of modernist, Aboriginal and Asian art. Born in Adelaide, Preston went on to study at the National Gallery of Victoria school from 1893–94 and 1896–97, and then at the Adelaide School of Design in 1898. Her first relationship was with artist Bessie Davidson, a former pupil, and the pair travelled and studied in Europe together extensively for several years before returning to Adelaide and leasing a studio together in 1907. After their relationship ended, Preston went back to France and Brittany in 1912 with her ‘intimate companion’, the artist and potter Gladys Reynell, whom she had also taught in Adelaide. It was on her return to Australia in 1919 that she met her future husband, William George Preston, and the pair were married later the same year. Settling in Sydney, Preston worked on her now well-known still life paintings that resonate with the avant-garde art in Europe, characterised by bold geometric shapes and black outlines. Preston would go on to travel extensively throughout the Pacific, Asia, India and Africa where she gained an interest in non-European art and culture. These styles and motifs were incorporated into her paintings as she sought to create a visual language that engaged Australia’s place within the Asia Pacific region.

Mary Cockburn Mercer (1882–1963) was an Australian painter prominent in the interwar period who became known for her decadent nudes. Born in Scotland, Mercer grew up in the Western Districts of Victoria, Australia until moving to Europe with her mother as a young teenager to complete her education. At seventeen Mercer ran away to Paris where she lived a bohemian life in Montparnasse, making friends with numerous artists including Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall. During the 1920s Mercer worked at L’Académie Lhote in Paris as a studio assistant. During this time Mercer became intimate with Janet Cumbrae Stewart, a relationship that would reignite many years later in Melbourne, Australia. During Mercer’s time in France, much like other Australians including Grace Crowley and Dorrit Black, she was influenced by André Lhote’s teachings that promoted Cubism and combinations of basic geometric forms. Before returning to Australia in 1938, Mercer lived in Cassis, on the island of Capri, Spain, Tahiti and an island off Guam where she met the painter, Ian Fairweather. After returning to Melbourne, Mercer rented an apartment on Bourke Street where she lived and held art classes, her students included Lina Bryans and Colin McCahon. Mercer exhibited her work with the Contemporary Art Society, often shocking audiences with her frank depiction of sexuality. In 1953 Mercer returned to France where she would stay until she died in 1963.

Grace Crowley (1890-1979) was a key Sydney Modernist painter in the inter-war period who studied in Paris under the cubist artists André Lhôte and Albert Gleizes. Her paintings have been categorised as modified academic cubism based on planar geometry and dynamic symmetry. Together with her collaborator and close friend Ralph Balson, she is often credited with introducing abstract painting to Australia. In 1907 Crowley moved to Sydney to study painting part-time at the Julian Ashton Art School, where from 1915 she studied and taught alongside Anne Dangar. In their many letters, Dangar referred to Crowley affectionately as her "dear Smudge", and the pair were believed to have been in a relationship between 1915 and 1929. They spend several years together in France from 1926 and 1929, where they both studied painting. Peter DiScascio notes that "Dangar’s niece, Norah Singleton, recalled their parodies of conventional gender roles both in private conversation and public appearances.” In 1930 Crowley returned to Sydney and held her first solo exhibition at Dorrit Black’s Modern Art Centre in 1932. Crowley exhibited her first fully abstract painting in 1942, later becoming an internationally recognised abstract painter with her work being included in *Dictionary of Abstract Painting* by the Belgian art historian Michel Seuphor in 1957. In 1971 Crowley was forced to vacate her George Street studio in Sydney, consequently, only a small body of her work exists, many of which are held in public collections. Crowley’s paintings have been recognised in retrospectives at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney in 1975 and in 2006 at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Crowley died on 21 April 1979 in Sydney.

Gladys Reynell (1881–1956) was one of South Australia's earliest potters and is known for her bold modernist style and her preference for working with native clays. In Adelaide she studied painting with Margaret Rose Preston, who became a close friend. In 1912 they went to Europe, living and studying in Paris and Brittany and enjoying an idyllic life as artists until 1913 when they moved to live and paint in London; they also taught in Ireland. Gladys exhibited with the Old Salon in Paris, with several English groups, and at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and the Walker Gallery, Liverpool. Reynell's work anticipated that of the influential English studio potter Bernard Leach. She espoused the English Arts and Craft Movement's ideals concerning the handcraft ethic, and the integrity and tradition of early craftsmen. She investigated and emulated the work of Gottlieb Zoerner, an early South Australian potter. Preston and Reynell lived, worked, travelled and exhibited together, and shared an intimate relationship from around 1911 until 1919. Both artists married shortly after their return to Australia, Preston in 1919, Reynell in 1922. Reynell's closeness to Margaret Preston is evident in Reynell's designs; the colour, form and primitivism. Reynell decorated her earthenware teapots, mugs, vases, plates, bowls and jugs, utilizing traditional English slipware and sgraffito techniques to produce abstract patterns, and to illustrate Australian fauna and flora, and local country and farm scenes which reveal her gentleness and warmth. Much of her work was finished with the characteristic rich 'Reynella blue' slip.