Sister Mary Brady

Last updated

Sister Mary Brady (1922-2014) was an Australian portrait artist and Dominican sister. A three-time winner of the Portia Geach Memorial Award for portraiture, Brady was also a regular finalist in the Archibald, Sulman and Wynne Prizes.

Contents

Early life

Born in Tamworth in 1922 to saddler, John Brady and dressmaker, Emily Loder she extensively practiced painting through self-study, although received critiques from well-known artists such as Joshua Smith and Norman Carter throughout her career. [1] [2]

Under the encouragement of the then Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Hal Missingham, she first entered her work in the Archibald Prize in 1947. [3] Following her family's move to Sydney in 1950, she became more active in the art community, showcasing her work with the Contemporary Art Society and Blaxland Galleries. [1]

When in her late teens whilst volunteering for the Red Cross, she met Mother Margaret Mary Lyons who recognised and encouraged her talent. Brady’s mentorship under Mother Margaret Mary Lyons helped shape her career and led to influential connections in the art community. [4] In 1967, she entered the Dominican Order. [1] She continued to paint under her name 'Mary Brady' but became known as Sister Margaret Mary in Dominican circles. [5] [6]

Career

Brady won the Portia Geach Prize three times in the years 1966, 1971, and 1975. She was also a finalist in the Archibald Prize from 1946 to 1966, often with two entries. [1] [7] In 1964 Brady was awarded the Hunters Hill Prize for Landscape, highlighting her skills beyond portraiture.

Over her lifetime, Brady was painted many well known Australians including George Johnston, Manning Clark, Bernard Mills, Barbara Holborow, Miriam Hyde (1985), and Larry Sitsky (1971). [1] [3] [8] Some of her paintings are held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, National Library of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, and many other public and private collections. [9] [10] [11]

In 2010 Brady's painting “Mary MacKillop Friend and Educator to the Poor” was chosen by the Sisters of St Joseph to officially represent St Mary MacKillop's canonisation, and is used extensively to illustrate their faith in their schools in Australasia. [1]

Sister Mary Brady died in 2014. [12]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archibald Prize</span> Australian portraiture prize

The Archibald Prize is an Australian portraiture art prize for painting, generally seen as the most prestigious portrait prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after the receipt of a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor of The Bulletin who died in 1919. It is administered by the trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and awarded for "the best portrait, preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics, painted by an artist resident in Australia during the twelve months preceding the date fixed by the trustees for sending in the pictures". The Archibald Prize has been awarded annually since 1921 and since July 2015 the prize has been AU$100,000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wendy Sharpe</span> Australian artist (born 1960)

Wendy Sharpe is an Australian artist who lives and works in Sydney and Paris. She has had many solo exhibitions nationally and internationally, been awarded many national awards and artist residencies for her work, and was an official Australian war artist to East Timor in 1999–2000.

Jenny Sages is an Archibald Prize People's Choice Award winning Australian artist. She is known for her abstract landscape paintings and portraits. She arrived in Australia in 1948. After being expelled from East Sydney Technical College, Jenny moved to New York to study at Franklin School of Art. She was a freelance writer and illustrator for Vogue Australia until the 1980s before starting full-time painting in 1985 at the age of 52. Her career transformation was greatly influenced by a trip to Kimberley, Western Australia, where she felt enchanted by the local indigenous culture. Her unique style is created using wax and pigments and the minimal use of brushes.

Josonia Palaitis is an Australian artist living in Sydney, Australia. She won the 1994 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize with a portrait of her father artist John Mills. In 1995 she won the Archibald Prize People's Choice award with a portrait of Bill Leak.

Marina Finlay was an Australian actress who in 1990 left acting to be an artist.

The Portia Geach Memorial Award is an annual prize for Australian female portraitists. The Award was established in 1961 as a testamentary trust by Florence Kate Geach, sister of Australian painter Portia Geach, with an initial endowment of AU£12,000. The first prize given under the aegis of the Award was made in 1965, comprising a £1,000 prize to Jean Appleton for a self-portrait. In 2015, the Award was worth A$30,000.

Fiona Lowry is an Australian painter who airbrushes pale colours to portray landscapes with people in them. The landscapes are beautiful and ambiguous, provoking the dangerous side of wilderness. Lowry also paints portraits and won the 2014 Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales with a portrait of Penelope Seidler. She is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, as well as the state galleries of Australia and in private collections.

Danelle Bergstrom is an Australian visual artist known for landscapes and portraits of significant Australians and International figures.

Tsering Hannaford is an Australian artist. In 2012 Tsering and her father Robert Hannaford were the "first father and daughter to show concurrently in Salon des Refusés, an exhibition of Archibald entries", and in 2015 they were the first father and daughter selected as finalists for the Archibald Prize. Tsering is a great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Susannah Hannaford.

Kerrie Lester was an Australian artist who was a frequent finalist in the Archibald Prize for portraiture, although she never won the main prize.

Melissa Beowulf is an Australian artist, specialising in portraiture. She grew up in Sydney, Australia and moved to Canberra in the late 1980s, later working between both Woollahra and Canberra.

Yvette Coppersmith is an Australian painter; she specialises in portraiture and still life. In 2018 she won the Archibald Prize with a self-portrait, in the style of George Lambert.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portia Geach</span> Australian artist, feminist (1873–1959)

Portia Swanston Geach was an Australian artist and feminist. She was a founder and a president of the New South Wales Housewives' Association, as well as a president of the Federal Association of Australian Housewives. The Portia Geach Memorial Award, established by a legacy from Geach's sister, is Australia's most significant prize for Australian female portrait artists.

Sally Robinson is an English-born Australian artist. She has had a long career as a portrait artist and designer, painter and printmaker, teacher and lecturer. Her work is represented in private and public collections around Australia.

Kit (Christine) Hiller is a Tasmanian artist, now working principally in the mediums of linocut print and oil painting. She is a three-time winner of the Portia Geach Memorial Award, a portraiture prize for Australian women artists, and has been a finalist in the Archibald Prize for Portraiture five times. Hiller is widely known for her vividly coloured linocut prints of nature subjects, particularly flora and birds. She also paints large-scale portraits and landscapes of North-West Tasmania, where she lives.

Annette Bezor, born Annette Bateman, was an Australian painter and feminist, who lived and worked in Adelaide, South Australia. She was known for appropriating classical and pop culture images of women and using them to create stylised representations of them, often sexually charged images but not pandering to the male gaze and thereby highlighting society's attitudes towards women. Her work won significant commercial and critical success.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jo Caddy</span> American-Australian painter and ceramicist

Josephine Caddy was an American-Australian painter and ceramicist, who worked in the media of acrylic, oil, printmaking, drawing, and ceramics. She focused on portraiture in both her paintings and ceramics, including "people pots", vases featuring human faces.

Loribelle Spirovski is a visual artist who was born in Manila, Philippines and lives in Sydney, Australia. She is known for her portrait paintings, which often incorporate elements of surrealism and photorealism. She graduated from the University of New South Wales in 2012 with a Bachelor of Art Education, and has exhibited in Australia, Europe, the UK and the United States. She is married to the Australian classical pianist Simon Tedeschi.

Shay Docking (1928–1998) was an Australian artist who specialised in landscape drawing.

Jude Rae is an Australian artist. She has exhibited, predominantly in Australia and New Zealand, since the 1980s, and is famous for her still life paintings, large scale interiors, and portraits.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Hellwig, Elizabeth (13 February 2015). "Sister Mary Brady obituary: Talented artist who painted Mary MacKillop was also a fine golfer". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 14 January 2025.
  2. ↑ "Archibald Prize Archibald 1962 work: Artist's mother by Mary Brady". www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
  3. 1 2 "Sister Mary Brady, b. 1922". National Portrait Gallery people. Retrieved 14 January 2025.
  4. ↑ maryannadair (19 September 2015). "De Profundis to Larry Sitsky and Mary Brady". MaryAnn Adair's 'Is it art' Blog. Retrieved 14 January 2025.
  5. ↑ "Effects of lower tariffs stressed". The Canberra Times . Vol. 45, no. 12, 876. Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 30 July 1971. p. 1. Retrieved 15 January 2025– via National Library of Australia.
  6. ↑ "Nun wins $2,000 art prize". The Canberra Times . Vol. 45, no. 12, 862. Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 14 July 1971. p. 1. Retrieved 15 January 2025– via National Library of Australia.
  7. ↑ "Archibald Prize Archibald 1963 work: Peter Summerton by Mary Brady". www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
  8. ↑ "Show 'not just dead white males'". The Canberra Times . Vol. 70, no. 22, 000. Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 12 July 1995. p. 2. Retrieved 15 January 2025– via National Library of Australia.
  9. ↑ "My search results from University of Sydney Archives". University of Sydney Archives. Retrieved 14 January 2025.
  10. ↑ "Archibald Prize Archibald 1959 work: Mrs Frank Brady by Mary Brady". www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au. Retrieved 14 January 2025.
  11. ↑ "Portrait of Miriam Hyde [picture]". Trove. Retrieved 14 January 2025.
  12. ↑ "Sister Mary Brady". Design and Art Australia Online.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.