Nora Heysen

Nora Heysen was born in 1911 in Hahndorf, South Australia, and studied at the School of Fine Arts. A talented still life and portrait painter, she won numerous prizes and by the age of twenty her work had been acquired by the state art galleries in Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia.

Heysen’s successful 1933 solo exhibition at the Royal South Australian Society of Arts provided her with funds to study abroad. She lived in London for most of her three-and-a-half years away, and her approach to painting colour and light changed following meetings with the painter and etcher Orovida Pissarro.

After returning to Adelaide in late 1937, she settled in Sydney the following year and shot to fame when she became the first woman and the youngest ever artist to win the Archibald Prize. In 1943 she was appointed an official war artist. Despite a seventy-five- year career, she experienced industry neglect, which was later remedied by a successful retrospective at the National Library of Australia in 2000. Its critical success erased her lifelong doubt about being an artist in ‘her own right’.

Fun Fact

Nora Heysen is the daughter of the revered landscape painter, Sir Hans Heysen, also in AGSA’s permanent collection

Listen to Fierce Girls: Nora Heysen

Although Heysen made many still life paintings across her long career, it is her contribution to portraiture that is arguably her greatest legacy. This talent is evident here in Ruth. With her arms crossed and wearing a direct yet compelling gaze, Ruth is one of Heysen’s most famous portraits and a strong symbol of Australian femininity.

The contrast between the economically applied brushstrokes of the backgrounded landscape and the careful rendering of the sitter captures a dynamic combination of influences: a palette drawn from regional South Australia; the pose paying tribute to Renaissance Madonnas; and Heysen’s own Germanic heritage referenced in the young girl’s braids. Heysen’s pastiche extends to the sitter herself, whose name was not Ruth, but Rhonda. Ruth becomes a symbolic portrait – an image of youth, health and agrarian fertility in twentieth-century Australia.

Text by Tracey Lock, Curator of Australian Art

Listen

  • Tracey Lock discusses Nora Heysen's painting 'Ruth'

  • Elle Freak speaks on the work of Nora Heysen in Archie 100

Nora Heysen, born Hahndorf, South Australia 11 January 1911, died Sydney, New South Wales 30 December 2003, Spring Flowers, c.1956, Sydney, oil on canvas on board, 44.0 x 36.5 cm (sight); South Australian Government Grant 1956, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.

  • In 1943 Heysen was the first woman artist to be appointed as an official war artist, commissioned to depict the women's war effort. Official war artists continue to be commissioned by the Australian War Memorial and play a significant role in Australia’s interpretation of wartime history. Investigate Australian war artists who have been commissioned under this scheme since the First World War to today. How has their role and style changed over time?
  • Examine the portraits Heysen painted of women during the war. What do you think she was trying to communicate about these women?

Nora Heysen, born Hahndorf, South Australia 11 January 1911, died Sydney, New South Wales 30 December 2003, Self-portrait, 1954, Sydney, oil on canvas, 89.0 x 66.5 cm; South Australian Government Grant 1994, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, © Lou Klepac.

  • Photograph a still life at home. Perhaps capture the family dinner table before, during, and after, a meal. Use this photograph to paint your own still life.
  • Ruth is layered with iconography. Heysen’s choice of a biblical name for her subject and posing the sitter allude to Christian iconography, in the form of a Florentine Madonna. The tilt of the young girl’s head, her high forehead, the simple neckline of her dress and the bare Italianate landscape and clear sky, pay homage to the Italian Renaissance painter, Raphael. Heysen’s own Germanic heritage referenced in the young girl’s braids. Create a self portrait that includes iconography that represents who you are. Perhaps the background of your painting could include essence of where you or your family are from and perhaps your appearance could be altered to include symbols that represent who you are.

Nora Heysen, born Hahndorf, South Australia 11 January 1911, died Sydney, New South Wales 30 December 2003, The red cabbage, 1933, Hahndorf, South Australia, oil on canvas, 40.7 x 56.5 cm; Elizabeth and Tom Hunter Bequest 2009, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, © Lou Klepac.