“Two Soldiers” by Hilda Rix Nicholas, 1918, #QueenslandArtGallery. Here is another of this #Australian artist’s magnificent pieces. Simple yet moving, it captures the human quality of soldiers in war. #fwwhist #wwI #WW1 #combatart #RixNicholas #ANZAC #ANZACs
"Grand mère" was painted by Australian artist Hilda Rix Nicholas in Étaples, Northern France. Executed in the open air, the artwork depicts an elderly fair-skinned peasant woman, wearing a black dress, brown apron, and white bonnet, in a blossoming garden of red and pink flowers. Rix Nicholas sets the subject of the painting firmly in the frontal plane of a luminously colorful background, an influence of post-impressionist Paris. Short brushstrokes of thickly applied paint animate the pictorial surface and showcase the artist's skill. Though she was born and passed away in Australia, Rix Nicholas's works during time in France and Morocco were acquired by the French government, exhibited in the Salon and the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français, and she was elected an Associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1926. Hilda Rix Nicholas made a significant contribution to Australian art in the period between the First and Second World Wars with her nationalist landscapes and spirited portraits of soldiers. In France she also achieved a remarkable level of success and recognition for an Australian artist, particularly for her "orientalist" and pastoral subject paintings and drawings. In 1928, Rix Nicholas returned to Australia an international success story. She resumed painting landscapes, which were met with mixed reviews in Australia; her work was criticized as ‘pseudo masculine’ in Home magazine. In 1928, she remarried and moved to Knockalong Cottage in the Monaro district of New South Wales. Distance from major cities, along with gender barriers in the art world, and the challenge of balancing roles of wife, mother and artist, made it difficult for Rix Nicholas to continue her career in Australia. Neither conservative nor modernist in an avant-garde sense, she fell out of favor with the contemporary art scene in the 1930s and 40s. Her eyesight also began to deteriorate and she last exhibited in 1947. She died August 3, 1961 at the age of 77.
Grand-mère (Grandmother) by Hilda Rix Nicholas (Australian) - Oil on canvas / c. 1914 - Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia) #womeninart #art #oilpainting #HildaRixNicholas #RixNicholas #womensart #womanartist #femaleartist #AustralianArtist #ArtGalleryofNSW #ArtGalleryofNewSouthWales
