First woman to win the Archibald Prize in 1938, first as war artist: Nora Heysen departs from her father Hans's style
Nora Heysen's 1934 self portrait. (She is reputed to have painted more self portraits than Rembrandt.) At right: A later Nora Heysen work, Quinces (1991).
Nora Heysen portrait courtesy National Portrait Gallery of Australia
Nora Heysen was the first woman to win the Archibald portrait prize in 1938 and the first woman appointed as an Australian war artist during World War II.
These was just two aspects of Nora asserting herself as an artist out of the shadow of her famous father Hans. Although she grew up working with her father at The Cedars studio near Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills, studying the masters of European art (such as Vemeer and Constable) that he revered, Nora would eventually break with that tradition – in style but not skills.
Born in 1911 as the fourth of Hans and Selma Heysen’s eight children (her job among the farm tasks for the children was milking the cows), Nora had to walk a mile to catch the train for her art classes in Adelaide at the School of Fine Arts, North Adelaide, 1926-30, under F. Millward Grey. Hans Heysen encouraged Nora to exhibit with the Society of Arts in Sydney and, by 20, she had works in state galleries.
Two years later in 1933, Nora won the Melrose prize for portraiture in Adelaide and her first solo exhibition at the Royal South Australian Society of Arts galleries. She exhibited portraits, still lifes and many drawings, with most of her works sold.
Nora Heysen left for Europe in 1934, with her parents and three sisters for a while before she settled alone into a flat in Kensington, London, while she studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Her loneliness in London was broken temporarily by meeting Everton Stokes, a sculptor from Adelaide.
A more significant encounter in England was with artist Orovida Pissaro, also the daughter of a famous artist: post-impressionist Lucien Pissarro, whose father was Camille Pissarro. Nora’s contact with Lucien Pissarro, who’d been a friend of Van Gogh and had known Cézanne through his father, made Nora reassess her painting. She left behind the smooth Renaissance style for a more broken handling of paint and give up all the earth colours as advised by Lucien and Orovida and influenced by visits to Paris.
But Heysen had her confidence shaken by criticism of her work from one of her early inspirations, National Gallery director Charles Holmes, who she was prompted to meet by her father: another Holmes admirer. She did take Holmes advice to give up landscapes and switch to the Bryan Shaw School.
Nora came home to Hahndorf more interested in impressionism and post impressionism. She continued with two days a week at the School of Fine Arts while during the remaining time she painted in her studio, a converted shed, at The Cedars. This time produced her 1938 self portrait, Corn Cobs and the very post impressionist From the kitchen window, The Cedars.
This change in style and attitude created an artistic gulf with her father and she decided to move to Sydney. World War II interrupted her career but created the professional opportunity as Australian war artist in New Guinea where she met and fell in love with tropical medical specialist Dr Robert Black. Because he was married, they weren’t able to marry until 1953 and move to “The Chalet” at Hunters Hill, Sydney – a version of The Cedars.
Nora remained true to the draughting skills of her father, making her irrelevant to the trend for abstract painting in the 1970s. She was rediscovered from “comfortable obscurity” in the 1980s when she agreed to a small book by art curator/author Lou Klepac with a retrospective of her work at the S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney. The exhibition attracted a lot of attention (and buyers), especially in South Australia.
A new energy saw Nora Heysen painting into her 1990s when she received an Australia Council award for achievement in the arts and the Order of Australia.
