Millward Grey expands from fine arts school to making a wider mark on Adelaide and South Australian image
Millward Grey (top right) who helped design the poster for South Australia's colonial centenary celebrations 1936 (left) and a tourism poster promoting Morialta in about 1942. Grey also had a major role in designing the state's previous coat of arms shown in the centenary poster.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia, National Gallery of Australia and National Library of Australia
(Frederick) Millward Grey, an English painter, etcher and art teacher, arrived in Adelaide in 1923 to join Fred C. Britton’s North Adelaide School of Fine Arts in Tynte Street. Britton had been appointed founding painting master of the school in1921 by Edith Napier Birks of Adelaide’s Birks store family.
Grey, who’d studied under Gerald Spencer Pryse at the Central School of Art in London, teamed with Britton in a well-received Adelaide art exhibition in 1924. Britton, who belonged to the South Australian Society of Arts but criticised a section of its members, moved to Sydney in 1927. Grey took over the school, with Nora Heysen (1926-30) a notable student.
Having married Beatrice Helen Fisher in 1929 and living in Jeffcott Street, North Adelaide, Grey became involved in making his mark on wider Adelaide and South Australia. His sketches were used in the design of the war memorial on North Terrace, Adelaide.
In 1935, Grey and The News cartoonist J. L. “Jack” Quayle shared first prize for a sketch commemorating South Australia's centenary. Around this time, Grey and another artist John Goodchild were commissioned by the South Australian Tourist Bureau to produce lithographed 1936 centenary posters extensively used on railway station billboards and elsewhere. Grey had a major role in designing South Australia's coat of arms, granted in 1936 (and replaced in 1984).
A mural by Grey of Piccadilly Circus graced the walls of the Piccadilly Theatre, North Adelaide. He designed the silver tea and coffee service made by the Kenwrick brothers as a wedding gift from South Australia to the Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh and the ceremonial chairs used by the royal couple during their official visit in 1954. He also designed the cairn and plaque memorial for Daisy Bates at Ooldea in western South Australia. In 1939, Grey stood for election to the Robe Ward of the Adelaide City Council but was defeated by H. G. Willcox.
Grey was acting principal of the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts during John Goodchild’s absence and in 1946 appointed to the position (later as director of the South Australian School of Art) until 1956. Grey was a member of the Royal South Australian Society of the Arts and in 1953 he was elected president after outgoing president Goodchild controversially named him as his fitting successor. He served as president 1953-56.