Margaret Preston

Margaret Preston, born in Port Adelaide, South Australia in 1875 is one of Australia’s most celebrated modern artists. Her persistent experimentation resulted in a variety of works throughout her career including painting, printmaking, ceramics and textiles.

From 1888 to 1893 she undertook extensive artistic studies, including private lessons with the renowned landscape painter William Lister in Sydney and with the French painter Berthe Mouchette in Melbourne, following which she enrolled at the National Gallery Art School. Despite the school’s focus on landscape and figure painting at the time, Preston focused on still-life painting, paying homage to the long traditions of the still life genre, and in particular to the Dutch painters of the Golden Age.

Upon Preston’s return to Adelaide from Melbourne, she enrolled in the Adelaide School of Design, but also began conducting her own art classes. It was here that she first met Bessie Davidson, becoming friends and, for a time, close colleagues. By this time Preston had established herself as a tonal realist painter but after her first trip to Europe in 1904 with Davidson, she began to experiment more widely with colour. Preston visited Spain, Morocco and French Algiers, painting works en plein air to capture the vibrant and lively culture of each of these locations. [1]

After returning to Adelaide Preston and Davidson established a shared studio and in 1907 they held a joint exhibition featuring works of art they had painted during their time in Europe. Two of Preston’s works were later acquired by public institutions, including Nature morte (oignons) by the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Preston travelled to Europe again (1912-19) this time alongside fellow South Australian artist Gladys Reynell. The pair spent time in London and Ireland, expanding their artistic knowledge and creating important connections with artists from around the world. The artists worked side by side producing portraits, landscapes and still lifes in a range of media, processing the new developments they had witnessed in Paris and London. Preston had been teaching the modernist compositional principles of reduction and design, including an emphasis on brighter colour. This influence can be seen Reynell’s paintings.

By observing European post-impressionism as well as the work of Japanese printmakers, Preston became interested with decorative and abstract principles. Importantly, her work would later introduce European modernist artistic expression to Australian audiences. Preston created what she considered to be an Australian modern aesthetic. Across her oeuvre she engaged with Australian landscapes, wildflowers, and appropriated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander imagery in her quest to develop a national artistic identity. [2]

[1] Tansy Curtin, Margaret Preston and Bessie Davidson: South Australian vanguards, Dangerously Modern Catalogue, p. 59, 2025

[2] Ibid.

Preston enrolled in pottery lessons in late 1916 at London’s Camberwell School of Arts. Both Reynell and Preston took to pottery readily and by early 1917 were receiving private lessons at their Battersea studio in London where they had installed a portable second-hand wheel. They learnt all facets of pottery skills and this knowledge was put to practical use during World War I, when both artists accepted positions at Seale-Hayne Neurological Military Hospital, teaching craft to shell-shocked soldiers as part of their rehabilitation. [1]

Preston avoided ‘machine-made deadness’ to create functional domestic vessels, which aligned with the British Arts and Crafts philosophy and Roger Fry’s Omega Workshops.

Cup and saucer, 1917 by Preston, which has been dipped in a white tin glaze (also known as delftware or maiolica) and painted with gumtree flowers and leaves with a stippled pattern in cobalt, illustrates the range of techniques learnt at Camberwell School and at their studio. Studio pottery operated in a new hybrid role: connected to early modern art and assisting in dismantling the traditional hierarchies that separated decorative and fine art.

In late 1917 Reynell and Preston moved to the relative safety of Cornwall, likely worn down by the terrible nighttime air raids inflicted on London by the Germans. Cornwall was rich in clay, and a chance meeting with a gentleman beyond fighting years led them to establish their first pottery at Pentewan. [2] Remarkably, he taught them how to build a small wood-fired updraft kiln and how to make saggars to keep the pottery ‘safe’ as it was fired. The two women were fully fledged modern studio potters responsible for all stages of production: digging and processing local clay, then throwing, decorating and firing vessels. A little Butter dish, 1918, by Preston, illustrating an old house overlooking the harbour, is a rare survivor made of Pentewan clay. Armed with their new knowledge, the artists had the necessary skills to establish potteries in Devon and later at Reynella in South Australia.

Text by Robert Reason, Gladys Reynell and Margaret Preston: London and Adelaide ceramics, Dangerously Modern catalogue, p.192, 2025

[1] J. Thompson, South Australian Ceramics 1900-1950, The Art Gallery of South Australia, 1983, p. 28

[2] Unattributed author, ‘The moving finger: a visit to the Reynella Pottery’, Journal (Adelaide), 18 February 1922, p. 13.

Preston’s interest in Modernism led to her creating increasingly simplified designs with strong bold outlines, shapes and colours. She developed a particular interest in woodblock printing as she found these were an effective way to communicate ideas to a wide audience as prints were quick to produce and woodblocks were affordable to buy.

Preston was passionate about creating distinctly Australian art. Her woodblocks often depicted iconic Australian locations such as Circular Quay, or natural still life compositions of native flowers – in particular the banksia, as she was drawn to its shape and texture.

An avid painter, printmaker and designer, Preston was an early champion of Aboriginal art. She believed it to be key to unlocking a new and uniquely Australian art form. Its bold repeated forms and seemingly abstract mark-making directly inspired her work. In the hope of presenting a new and modern vision of Australia, Preston’s paintings and prints controversially incorporated these techniques and stylistic treatments, while emptying them of their spiritual and cultural significance.

Aboriginal landscape marks the extremity of Margaret Preston’s passionate advocacy for a national art style based on elements of Aboriginal art. Features of the Australian landscape are simplified and exaggerated using dots and dashes, offset by repeated blocks of flat earthy colour. The warm creams and red ochre tones, delineated with bold outlines, show the particular influence of bark paintings from Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, and shields from far North Queensland.

In the year that it was created, Aboriginal landscape was celebrated as an image of modern Australia and featured in both the Australia National Journal and in the major international travelling exhibition Art of Australia 1788–1941. Today the painting and Preston’s sincere attempts to promote Aboriginal art through the appropriation of its style are recognised as fraught with ethical and cultural complexities.

Text by Elle Freak, Associate Curator, Australian Paintings & Sculpture