Bessie Gibson

Last updated

Elizabeth Dickson Gibson (1868 - 1961) was an Australian artist. [1]

Contents

Early life

Gibson was born on 16 May 1868 in Ipswich, Queensland, the daughter of bank manager James Gibson and Anne Bush Blair (née Copeland). [1] [2] The family moved to Manley, Brisbane when her father retired. She was taught art by prominent local artist Godfrey Rivers at the Brisbane Technical College from 1899 to 1905. [1]

Inspired to study art abroad, her family financed a three-year study trip to Paris. Gibson left Australia in September 1905 and had established herself in Montparnasse, Paris by May 1906 where she lived until 1939. [1]

Career

Gibson was not a part of the avant-garde art scene of early twentieth century Paris. Instead, she worked within the conservative world of the Royal Academy and Salon exhibitions. [1]

Later life

Gibson left Paris in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II and spent the war years in England engaged in Red Cross work. When peace was declared she returned to Paris. [3]

Returning to Australia in 1947, Gibson's work was almost unknown in Australia, despite recognition of the work of contemporary female expatriates. This is probably because of her shyness and her Queensland background. [1]

Her work is now in several State galleries, the National Gallery of Australia and in private collections. She died in a Brisbane convalescent home on 13 July 1961 and was cremated.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Olley</span> Australian artist (1923–2011)

Margaret Hannah Olley was an Australian painter. She was the subject of more than ninety solo exhibitions.

Elizabeth Ann Dewar Churcher was an Australian arts administrator, best known as director of the National Gallery of Australia from 1990 to 1997. She was also a painter in her own right earlier in her life.

Davida Frances Allen is an Australian painter, filmmaker and writer.

Elisabeth Cummings is an Australian artist known for her large abstract paintings and printmaking. She has won numerous awards including Fleurieu Art Prize, The Portia Geach Portrait Prize, The Mosman Art Prize, and The Tattersalls Art Prize. Her work is owned in permanent collections across Australia including Artbank, The Queensland Art Gallery, The Gold Coast City Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She is notable for receiving recognition later in her career, considered by the Australian Art Collector as one of the 50 most collectible Australian Artists.

Julie Rrap is an Australian contemporary artist who was raised on the Gold Coast in Queensland She was born Julie Parr, and reversed her name to express her sense of opposition. Since the mid-1970's she has worked in photography, painting, sculpture, video and performance. Julie's work expresses her interest in images of the body, especially the female body. She has participated in many exhibitions in Australia and abroad, won many awards, and is represented in major public and private collection in Australia and New Zealand, as well as in Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, France, and the U.S.A.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethel Carrick</span> English Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painter

Ethel Carrick, later Ethel Carrick Fox was an English Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painter. Much of her career was spent in France and in Australia, where she was associated with the movement known as the Heidelberg School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hilda Rix Nicholas</span> Australian artist (1884–1961)

Hilda Rix Nicholas was an Australian artist. Born in the Victorian city of Ballarat, she studied under a leading Australian Impressionist, Frederick McCubbin, at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School from 1902 to 1905 and was an early member of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors. Following the death of her father in 1907, Rix, her only sibling Elsie and her mother travelled to Europe where she undertook further study, first in London and then Paris. Her teachers during the period included John Hassall, Richard Emil Miller and Théophile Steinlen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vida Lahey</span> Australian artist (1882—1968)

Frances Vida Lahey MBE (1882—1968) was a prominent artist in Queensland, Australia. She exhibited widely from 1902 until 1965.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judy Watson</span> Australian artist

Judy Watson is an Australian Waanyi multi-media artist who works in print-making, painting, video and installation. Her work often examines Indigenous Australian histories, and she has received a number of high profile commissions for public spaces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edith Susan Boyd</span> Australian artist, writer (1880–1961)

Edith Susan Gerard Anderson, who became Edith Susan Boyd when she married, was an Australian artist, dramatist, and painter. She was also known for being a model for the artist Emanuel Phillips Fox, notably in his 1912 painting Nasturtiums.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caroline Barker (artist)</span> Australian artist

Caroline Barker (1894–1988) was an Australian artist. She is best known for her portraits and still life. The Museum of Brisbane holds a large collection of her works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janet Cumbrae Stewart</span> Australian painter

Janet Agnes Cumbrae Stewart was an Australian painter. She spent the 1920s and 1930s painting in Britain, France and Italy.

Nell is an Australian artist working across performance, installation, video, painting and sculpture. In 2013, she won the University of Queensland Self-Portrait Award. In 2017, she was inducted into the Maitland City Hall of Fame in the category of The Arts.

Gwendolyn Muriel Grant (1877-1968) was an Australian artist, who worked mostly in portrait work in the Impressionist style. Many of her works have coastal or beach scenes, in addition to formal portraits and she was part of a vanguard of women exhibiting their work in Australia.

Normana Wight is an Australian artist, best known as a painter and printmaker.

Helen Haenke (1916–1978) was an Australian artist, poet and playwright whose work was part of an emerging literary community in south-east Queensland in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Ann Thomson is an Australian painter and sculptor. She is best known for her large-scale public commissions Ebb Tide (1987) for the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre and Australia Felix (1992) for the Seville World Expo. In 1998 she won the [Art Gallery of New South Wales' Wynne Prize. Her work is held in national and international collections, including: the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcastle, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid and Villa Haiss Museum, Germany.

Anne Wallace is an Australian painter. Her works have appeared in major exhibitions and are held in major collections.

Madonna Pearl Staunton was an artist and poet who lived in Brisbane. She is known for her works on Australian Modernism.

Cristina Asquith Baker (1868–1960) was an Australian artist known for her paintings and lithographs. She studied with Frederick McCubbin, one of the key artists of the Australian impressionist Heidelberg school, but she was independent and did not tie herself to a single school of thought. She twice studied abroad, in Paris and London, gaining expertise in various other forms of artistic expression such as lithography and carpet-making.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Underhill, Nancy D, H. (1981). Gibson, Elizabeth Dickson (Bessie) (1868–1961). Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
  2. "Family history research service". Queensland Government Births, deaths, marriages and divorces. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
  3. "42 YEARS ABROAD". The Telegraph . Queensland, Australia. 1 September 1947. p. 7 (CITY FINAL LAST MINUTE NEWS). Retrieved 9 March 2019 via National Library of Australia.