Nora Heysen

Nora Heysen
Photograph of Heysen by Harold Cazneaux, 1939, Sydney
Born(1911-01-11)11 January 1911
Hahndorf, South Australia
Died30 December 2003(2003-12-30) (aged 92)
Sydney, Australia
EducationSchool of Fine Arts, Adelaide
Julian Ashton Art School, Sydney
Alma materCentral School of Art and Design, London
Known forFirst woman Australian war artist
First woman to win the Archibald Prize
Notable workMadame Elink Schuurman 1938
SpouseDr. Robert Black
AwardsMember of the Order of Australia
Melrose Prize for Portraiture
Archibald Prize
Australia Council Award for Achievement in the Arts

Nora Heysen, AM (11 January 1911 – 30 December 2003) was an Australian artist, the first woman to win the Archibald Prize in 1938 for portraiture and the first Australian woman appointed as an official war artist.

Early years

Heysen was born on 11 January 1911 in Hahndorf, South Australia, Australia, as the fourth child of landscape painter Hans Heysen and his wife Selma Heysen (née Bartels). She and was raised at The Cedars in Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills. Heysen and her siblings were taught painting at home by the artist and teacher Mary Anstie Overbury.[1] Heysen was the most artistically talented of her siblings and her parents encouraged her to drew and paint.[2]

Heysen studied art from 1926 to 1930 at the School of Fine Arts in Adelaide under F. Millward Grey.[3] Heysen sold paintings to the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1930. From 1930 to 1933, she continued to study two days a week at the school, and worked in her own studio the rest of the time. In 1931 she visited Sydney with her parents, and spent two weeks studying at the Julian Ashton Art School.[3]

Early career

In 1930, Heysen produced 24 pen, ink and wash drawings to illustrate a collection of legends by Katie Langloh Parker, titled Woggheeguy.[4]

Heysen's first solo exhibition was held in Sydney in 1933. In 1934 she travelled to London with her family, remaining in Europe after they returned home, until 1937 studying and painting at the Central School of Art and Design[1][2] under Bernard Meninsky.[4] She funded her studies in England with the proceeds of the solo exhibition in Sydney.[2]

Heysen missed her family while living in England, so invited her friend Everton Stokes (Evie), a sculpture student, to share her London flat.[2] She painted Evie while they were living together.[5] Heysen also wrote letters to her father about her studies and paintings she observed while visiting the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and Tate.[1]

When Heysen returned to Australia,[2] she returned briefly to Adelaide and then moved to Sydney.

Archibald Prize

In 1938, Heysen entered two portraits in the Archibald Prize. Her portrait of Madame Elink Schuurman was awarded the prize and she became the first woman to win the Archibald.[6] There was a controversy involving criticism of her win by painter Max Meldrum.[7]

War artist

On 12 October 1943, Heysen became the first woman to be appointed as an Australian war artist,[9][10] being granted the honorary rank of captain.[11] As Heysen said in a later interview about her role: "I was commissioned to depict the women's war effort. There was that restriction on what I did. So I was lent around to all the services, the air force, the navy and the army, to depict the women working at everything they did during the war".[12]

During her service Heysen completed over 170 works of art.[11] She was discharged from service in 1946 in New Guinea, where she had been stationed from April 1944.[9]

Family life and death

Following her discharge from war service, Heysen went to London and later returned to Sydney in 1948. While in New Guinea, she met Dr. Robert Black, whom she married in 1953.[4] She continued to paint, exhibit and travel with her husband. Her marriage ended in 1972.

Heysen died in Sydney on 30 December 2003.[4]

Reception

A 1939 article in The Australian Women's Weekly ran with the headline "Girl Painter Who Won Art Prize is also Good Cook",[11][13] and lists three of Heysen's favourite recipes along with her strategies for achieving domestic duties and leaving time for painting.

Heysen's works are currently held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Australian War Memorial, the National Library of Australia, the National Portrait Gallery and several state galleries.

A major retrospective exhibition of the work of daughter and father, Hans and Nora Heysen: Two Generations of Australian Art, was curated by the National Gallery of Victoria and displayed from March–July 2019. Reviewing it, Sydney Morning Herald critic John McDonald described Nora's career as a "fractured, stop-start affair",[14] but that in a "popular rethinking of the Heysen's place in local art history ... Nora's star has risen while her father's has declined."[14]

McDonald nominated as Nora's signature work her "breathtaking still life, Eggs (1927)" from the Hinton collection in the New England Regional Art Museum,[15] and described her Still Life of quinces (1933) from the same collection as "painted with the precision of an old master."[15]

Awards

In 1993 Heysen was awarded the Australia Council's Award for Achievement in the Arts and on 26 January 1998 she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her service to art.

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Hylton, Jane (2009). Nora Heysen: Light and Life. Wakefield Press. pp. 10, 13. ISBN 978-1-86254-840-4.
  2. ^ a b c d e Willoughby, Anne-Louise (13 March 2019). "Nora Heysen lived her life propelled by an all-consuming drive to draw or paint". Fremantle Press. Retrieved 15 March 2026.
  3. ^ a b "Australian Art: Artist: Heysen, Nora". Archived from the original on 10 July 2007. Retrieved 13 June 2007.
  4. ^ a b c d Wilkins, Lola (1995). "Nora Heysen b. 1911". Design and Art Australia. Retrieved 15 March 2025.
  5. ^ Gray, Anne (2010). Face: Australian Portraits, 1880-1960. National Gallery of Australia. p. 102. ISBN 978-0-642-33415-2.
  6. ^ a b "Archibald Prize". AGNSW prize record. Art Gallery of New South Wales. 1938. Retrieved 9 May 2016.
  7. ^ a b Dulaney, Michael (10 October 2021). "Archibald winner Nora Heysen was devastated by men telling her she painted 'the wrong way'". ABC News (Australia). Retrieved 13 June 2024.
  8. ^ "VFX94085 Captain Nora Heysen, Official war artist, Military History Section, Land Headquarters". www.awm.gov.au. Retrieved 15 March 2026.
  9. ^ a b c "Fifty Australians - Nora Heysen". Australian War Memorial. 5 February 2020. Retrieved 15 March 2026.
  10. ^ Spicer, Chrystopher J. (2012). Great Australian World Firsts: The things we made, the things we did. Allen & Unwin. p. 20. ISBN 978-1-74237-673-8.
  11. ^ a b c Mosse, Kate (18 September 2025). Feminist History for Every Day of the Year: 366 incredible women, from Boudica to Taylor Swift. Pan Macmillan. pp. 26–27. ISBN 978-1-5290-6623-4.
  12. ^ From an interview with Nora Heysen, 25 August 1994, Oral History Collection National Library of Australia.
  13. ^ "Girl Painter Who Won Art Prize is also Good Cook". The Australian Women's Weekly. National Library of Australia. 4 February 1939. p. 4. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  14. ^ a b John McDonald, The Parent Trap; Illuminating the art and relationship of Hans and Nora Heysen, Sydney Morning Herald March 30–31, 2019, Spectrum p. 10.
  15. ^ a b John McDonald, The Parent Trap; Illuminating the art and relationship of Hans and Nora Heysen, Sydney Morning Herald March 30–31, 2019, Spectrum p .11.
  16. ^ "Nora Heysen AM". Victorian Honour Roll of Women. Retrieved 15 March 2025.

References

Further reading

  • Hylton, Jane; Heysen, Nora, 1911–2003 (2009), Nora Heysen : light and life, Wakefield Press, ISBN 978-1-86254-840-4{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  • Mattingley, Christobel (March 2007). "Nora, daughter of Hans Heysen : artist in her own right". National Library of Australia News. XVII (6): 7–10.
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