The first three …

Ten years ago the National Gallery of Victoria recognised the under-representation of female artists in the collection and began to actively pursue the acquisition of works by both local and international female creatives.  This led to the publication in 2020 of She Persists – a book of 34 essays which is a cross-cultural exploration of women’s contribution to art and design history based on influential works held in the NGV Collection. Today, visitors are impressed with the number of art objects on display which complement, enhance, and jostle with works by their male counterparts.

As noted in She Persists, although opening in 1861, it wasn’t until 1872 that the NGV purchased its first works by female artists: four botanical watercolour paintings by a ‘Miss Blythe’, a Victorian genre painting by Kate Gray, and a religious work by Edith Courtauld.  Fortunately, John Gregory’s website Before Felton (see: www.beforefelton.com) is an excellent resource to look at the early collecting habits of the NGV.

Born in Essex, England, ‘Miss Blythe’ is Eliza Blyth (1820-94) a painter and art teacher who worked in Hobart from around 1855-83. One of nineteen children from a farming family, she migrated to colonial Tasmania in 1848 following several of her siblings. Travelling on board the Himalaya she received some art instruction from her chaperone, Bishop Francis Russell Nixon, the first Anglican bishop of Tasmania who was a skilled watercolourist.

After running her own school for twenty years teaching watercolour, drawing and sketching to women, Miss Blyth was appointed art mistress at the Hutchins School for Boys – a position she occupied from 1876-83.

Miss Blyth’s primary subject matters were flowers and landscapes and she regularly exhibited in Tasmania and on the mainland. Recognized as a talented and prolific artist, she was particularly regarded for her floral works which ranged from single stem specimens to more complex groupings incorporating elegantly arranged flowers. In the Intercolonial Exhibition in Melbourne in 1866 her watercolours of Tasmanian wildflowers were awarded a medal. It is perhaps these works that encouraged acquisition by the NGV.

Miss Blyth died at home in Tasmania in 1894, but her works can still be seen in the State Library of Tasmania’s Allport Heritage Collection and in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ballarat (which also houses a leatherbound folio of twenty of her artworks). While the works in the NGV collection remain ‘unidentified, present location unknown’ it is possible to purchase Eliza Blyth greeting cards from Gowans & Son printers in New South Wales (see: www.gowansprint.com).

Over the past decade there has been considerable interest in documenting the ‘forgotten or overlooked’ female artists in Victorian England. And, despite there being a reasonable secondary art market presence for Kate Gray (more than 40 works are listed as selling on artnet.com) and inclusion in at least two public collections – there is very little information about this British artist. There is no wikipedia entry, no available biographical details in art databases, and no analysis of her art practice. Nevertheless, she was impressive enough for John Ruskin, the influential art and social critic during the Victorian era, to recommend her inclusion in the collection of the NGV.

Gray’s works have titles like: The watchful mother, The watchful sister,  Young girl in her Sunday best, Saying her prayers, and Blowing bubbles. Her works were often inscribed with thoughts like: “O men with sisters dear, O men mothers and wives; It is not linen you are wearing out, but human creatures lives” – a less than subtle reprimand about the lot of Victorian women!

Her work in the NGV collection is Child playing grandmother and is a lovely and loving portrait of a fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked young girl attired in bonnet, with gloves and furry muff clutching an umbrella, who engages thoughtfully with the viewer while presumably ‘channelling’ her beloved grandparent. It was a lovely inclusion in the NGV collection by Ruskin.

Interestingly, if the NGV would like to add to their collection of paintings by Kate Gray, one is currently listed for sale on Ebay by helpclearmyclutter located in New Jersey, USA. Titled Girl with bunny from 1878 and priced at USD399.00 it would provide a lovely companion piece to the work currently in the collection (www.ebay.com/itm/274872477756).

Much less prolific, but much more influential during her lifetime, was Edith Courtauld (also known as Edith Arendrup). Born in 1846 in Essex, Courtauld was the younger child and only daughter of John Minton Courtauld, a junior partner in wealthy mill-owner Samuel Courtauld’s silk and crepe enterprise. Later, in 1932, Samuel’s great-nephew and namesake established the Courtauld Institute (the major centre for the study of the history and conservation of art and architecture in the United Kingdom).

Edith Courtauld was artistic and her ambition was to have a career as an artist. After only one term at the National Art School in South Kensington in 1866, her landscape artist uncle George Hering invited her to use a small studio in St Johns Wood. There she met the leading Royal Academician John Herbert who gave her valuable instruction.

Herbert was a convert to Roman Catholicism and his religious paintings of the 1840s inspired the early works of the Pre-Raphaelites whom he supported. In 1850, he was commissioned to paint a set of Biblical frescoes for the new Houses of Parliament. After much difficulty, only one fresco was completed – Moses bringing down the Tablets of the Law. A large replica of this work on canvas was acquired by National Gallery of Victoria in 1878 and restored as a Public Conservation Project by the NGV in 2016 (see: www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/conservation-live-the-john-herbert-public-conservation-project/).

In 1870 Herbert was appointed alongside John Ruskin to advise on purchases. He is connected with five acquistions including Druidical monuments at dawn in the Isle of Arran by George Hering in 1872. By the late 1860s Courtauld was exhibiting landscapes and religious pictures at the Royal Academy. Her 1871 Memories of the First Palm Sunday was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria also on advice from Herbert.

The following year Courtauld visited Egypt where she met Lieutenant Søren Adolph Arendrup, a 38 year old widower and Danish officer who was serving as artillery adviser to the Egyptian army. They married a year later in 1873 and settled in Cairo where she gave birth to a daughter Agnes and a son Axel.

Despite her artistic successes, marriage and children, the 1870s were a tragic time for Courtauld. Her only brother Julian had died suddenly in 1870 and her mother was killed in a riding accident. Agnes died soon after birth and her husband was killed in 1875 leading a small Egyptian army into Ethiopia. Widowed at the age of twenty-nine Courtauld returned to England with Axel and her two step-daughters. A year later her father died unexpectedly in Switzerland.

Courtauld coped with these distressing events with the help of her deep religious faith. Brought up a Unitarian, she converted to Roman Catholicism after her brother’s death. Her conversion changed her life dramatically and she became determined to spread her new faith in Wimbledon where she was now living. In 1877 she opened a small chapel in her house and, as her congregation grew, she purchased land and was instrumental in the building of a new church in 1887. The large church was built in a prominent position on the slopes of Edge Hill and she commissioned a young architect, Frederick Walters, to design it in the late Decorated Gothic style. The Jesuits of Roehampton assumed control on the understanding that a day school would open in Wimbeldon. As the number of Catholics increased rapidly, the district was described as ‘a hot-bed of Jesuit Popery’.  During this period Courtauld continued to paint and, in 1881, exhibited three works under the title ‘Christ’s Appeal’ in a private gallery in New Bond Street.

In 1896, Courtauld’s son Axel died of typhoid and, with no further family responsibilities, Courtauld sold her house and joined the religious order the Daughters of Mary. For the next thirty years she worked among the poor in the East End of London and in Ireland retiring to her old home, now a convent run by Franciscan nuns, at the age of seventy-nine in 1925. Nine years later, Courtauld died in her sleep following a stroke and was buried in the grounds of the convent.

Edith Courtauld was remembered for her artistic abilities, her skill as a horsewoman and most importantly for her impressive graciousness, dignity, and deep sympathy for all who were suffering. Eventually her life would be documented in R. Milward’s biography Triumph over tragedy: the life of Edith Arendrup published in 1991.

Courtauld’s painting in the NGV collection is a fitting tribute to both her artistic ability and to her religious commitment. It is, as one reviewer described her art, “Replete with religious sentiment of the loftiest and purest kind”.

The first three female artists included in the National Gallery of Victoria collection provide a diverse and important glimpse of the areas of interest and creative endeavours of women in the late 19th century. I think Ruskin and Herbert made good and worthwhile choices.