The Kitchen

During her lifetime Clarice Beckett was denied the use of a dedicated painting studio. She had asked for a studio to be made available for her in the family’s newly designed home at Beaumaris. Her request was ignored and, when the family moved in 1919, her father declared that ‘the kitchen table would do’.

Her kitchen studio was also the room in which she painted her still lifes. It was also where she assembled her paintings – side by side along the skirting boards – to assess them before installing her exhibitions. She staged successive solo exhibitions at the Athenaeum Gallery in Melbourne between 1923 and 1933. The still lifes she exhibited were among her most admired works.