The Mirror and the Palette by Jennifer Higgie

Author:Jennifer Higgie [Higgie, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: art, Women Artists, history, General, Biography & Autobiography, Artists; Architects; Photographers
ISBN: 9781643138046
Google: chEeEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2021-10-05T23:35:59.871460+00:00

Holmes must have been harsh, as he wrote her a letter of apology, but within a month he had died. Nora was deeply depressed. She was broke, disheartened, cold. She told her parents that she ‘felt all the faith and heart taken out of me’. Her father sent her some money and she enrolled in the Byam Shaw School of Art – something that Holmes had suggested she do – to start all over again. In old age, she remembered her time in London, and her struggle to make a name for herself, beyond that of her father’s. She tells the story of deciding to change her name to ‘Norah H’ but when she sent some paintings back to Australia, her father assumed she had made a mistake and corrected her signature. She also tried to show her work to some galleries on Bond Street, but they were ‘very, very distant and haughty’ and not interested in a ‘little Australian upstart’. With so little encouragement, and in such isolation, her skin thickened. She learned to trust her instincts and to embrace her solitude.

In 1994 a self-portrait by Nora was found, still rolled up in her studio. Down and Out in London was, in 1937, the last painting she completed in England. It’s a melancholy, low-key scene: Nora, half seated on a kitchen bench, gazes into the distance. Her right sleeve is rolled up; she is surrounded by the detritus of domesticity; washing on a line above a stove behind her, a large bowl, a kettle, an empty glass. There is no indication that she is an artist. She looks tired, deflated. The only flowers are reproductions; faded images of lost blooms on a tablecloth. It’s telling that she depicts herself in a kitchen – the room that no doubt many men would have preferred her to stay in. But, despite the melancholy scene, she didn’t give up. Self-portraits can be a form of exorcism.

In late 1937 she and Evie travelled through Italy looking at paintings. She wrote to her parents that: ‘I feel now sure of what I want. I only need the time and quiet to work it out for myself.’ She returned to Australia and stayed at The Cedars for a few months where she painted another self-portrait. Gone is the dejection of her London painting. Against a pale yellow background – a nod, perhaps, to the welcome heat of the Antipodean sunshine – she looks directly at us: she is dressed in a blue cardigan, buttoned to her neck. Her brown hair is pulled back. Her gaze is steady. She is young, strong, straightforward. She is unbowed.

In 1938 she moved to Sydney. For her twenty-seventh birthday her father gave her a book on the work of Botticelli.

When she arrived in the city, in stark contrast to London, the artist, publisher and promotor Sydney Ure Smith ‘was a very great help’ to Nora and with his encouragement she joined the Society of Artists. He introduced her to countless

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.