Celebrating Hollick

On the first Saturday in March 1930, Miss Ruth Hollick and Miss Dorothy Izard held an event at their photographic studio in Collins Street, Melbourne to honour the approaching marriage of Miss Lucy Washington. As the invitation shows: ‘some dancing’ was also encouraged.

Ninety-one years and one week later, in acknowledgement of International Women’s Day on 8 March, I am inviting readers to meet the highly-regarded but now largely forgotten Ruth Hollick.

Born near Williamstown in March 1883, Ruth Miriam Hollick was the last of 13 children to Harry Ebenezer Hollick, a civil servant, and Frances Jane (née Cole) Hollick. Raised in Moonee Ponds, Hollick studied art at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School from 1902 to 1906. Although friendly with her teacher Fred McCubbin, Hollick’s interest lay in photography – an artform that was not offered at the school.

Self-taught, and working from her home-based darkroom, Hollick’s photographic skills developed, and in 1908 she bought a small motorcar and travelled around rural Victoria promoting herself as a freelance photographer specialising in portraits of children and families. Working mostly outdoors with a field camera, Hollick’s travels took in the Riverina and the Western District of Victoria over a couple of years.

Back in Melbourne, Hollick turned to studio photography – initially working from her parent’s home assisted by her personal and professional partner, Dorothy Izard. In the period leading up to the First World War, Hollick’s work assumed a confident stylishness, characterised by her dramatic composition, skillful use of both natural and studio lighting and plain backgrounds. Her photographs were often used in advertising and published in the ‘Bulletin’ and ‘Lone Hand’.

When established photographer, Mina Moore, retired in 1918, Hollick took over her studio in the Auditorium Building in Collins Street. When this became too small, Hollick then moved into an entire floor in Chartres House down the road. By 1920, Hollick was gaining international recognition and she exhibited at the London Salon of Photography (1920), in the colonial exhibitions of the Royal Photograhpic Society of Great Britain (1925 and 1927) and in the Chicago Photographic Exhibition (1927).

During the 1920s, Hollick and Pegg Clarke were Melbourne’s leading photographers and shared most of the commissions for the ‘The Home’ and ‘Australian’ magazines. While Hollick specialised in portraiture, Clarke was known for her photographs of gardens and landscapes. Both Hollick and Clarke were friends from art school days and Clarke’s partner, artist Dora Wilson, made up the formidable foursome of creative women.

‘The Home’ commenced publication in 1920 and was an international style magazine in the mould of Vogue. Hollick provided portraits of debutantes, society weddings and children – which are some of the earliest images of fashion photography in Australia.

In 1928, Hollick held a solo exhibition of her portraits of children and in 1929, she was the only woman whose work was accepted for the Melbourne Exhibition of Pictorial Photography. Three years later, Hollick was again showing in London as one of six Melbourne Camera Club members in the Amateur Photographer Overseas Exhibition. By this time, she had won six silver and numerous bronze awards for her work. Nellie Melba and Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch were among the people who commissioned portraits by her.

The Depression in the 1930s forced Hollick to give up her city studio and she resumed work at home in Moonee Ponds with Izard’s assistance. While her forte was studio portraiture – particularly studies of children – she also resumed making country photographic trips.

In 1950, Hollick and Izard travelled overseas for the first time and, on their return, retired to live in Heidelberg where Hollick stopped practicing photography over the next few years at the age of 75 years. Hollick died aged 94 and left behind a large body of work which is now held primarily in the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the State Library of Victoria (which has more than a thousand prints, glass and flexible negatives).

The National Gallery of Victoria has 35 photographs by Hollick in the collection. Most of these demonstrate her great skill as a photographic portraitist. Described as a pictorialist by art historians, Hollick advertised herself as an ‘art photographer’ who used light to create soft, atmospheric scenes. Her images of children capture a spontaneity and depth which provide a real sense of the personality of her sitters.

Hollick’s Chartres House studio was a fashionable location for a number of parties for Hollick’s wide circle of friends from the art world. Hollick was renowned as ‘a hardworker though not a businesswoman: she enjoyed spending, good dressing and parties’. Not surprisingly, artist Jesse Traill was an enthusiastic attendee at Lucy’s evening event.

However, presumably this was only one of the celebrations that Ruth and Dorothy organised for Lucy (possibly Hollick’s niece) as there is a photograph of Lucy drinking tea with a group of friends in the photographers’ studio prior to her nuptials. Could this have been the ‘after party’? (Twenty-four year old Lucy married Philip Crosbie the following weekend at All Saints Church, Sandringham).