Helen Ogilvie facts for kids
Helen Elizabeth Ogilvie (born May 4, 1902, in Corowa – died August 1, 1993, in Melbourne) was an Australian artist. She was also a gallery director, cartoonist, painter, and printmaker. Helen is famous for her early linocuts and woodcuts, and later for her oil paintings of old Australian buildings.
Contents
Early Life and Art Training
Helen Ogilvie was born in Corowa, New South Wales. She grew up in the countryside and often sketched with her mother, Henrietta, who was a watercolour artist. In 1920, her family moved to Melbourne.
Helen studied art at the National Gallery School from 1922 to 1925. She didn't really like the old-fashioned way they taught art there. In her last year, her style changed a bit because of George Bell, who was a drawing teacher for a short time. While at school, she joined the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors and started showing her art in 1924.
Starting Her Art Career
In 1928, Helen saw a book of Claude Flight's Modernist linocuts. This inspired her to create many linocuts and woodcuts from the 1930s onwards. People praised her work in a 1932 art show, noting her skill in cutting and her "artistic ability for illustrative design."
Many women artists started making relief prints, but Helen couldn't afford to study overseas like Eveline Syme and Ethel Spowers. When she began wood engraving in the 1930s, her friend Eric Thake, who was also an artist, taught her. Helen focused on subjects she knew well, like farm animals, country scenes, and Australian plants and animals.
A curator named Sheridan Palmer described Helen as "a very independent and clever woman, who was sophisticated in a simple way. She could do many things, making useful objects from basic materials." To earn money during the Depression, she also made bookplates, greeting cards, and calendars. In 1933, she had a joint art show with printmaker Anne Montgomery.
Helen also had good connections at Melbourne University and the National Gallery of Victoria. She made drawings for books by Joseph Burke, Ursula Hoff, and Russell Grimwade. Buttons with her designs were even sold to help raise money for new buildings at Melbourne University in 1955.
Working During the War
During World War II and after, Helen worked for the Red Cross at Heidelberg Military Hospital. She taught patients how to do lino-cutting, wood-cutting, and basket-making. In 1948, Helen helped set up a school to train people to teach handicrafts for Red Cross therapy services.
Becoming a Gallery Director
Helen was very helpful to new artists. In 1949, Stanley Coe asked her to become one of Australia's first women gallery directors. She created an art exhibition space upstairs in his design shop on Bourke Street, Melbourne. Artist Tate Adams called it "the only bright spot in town for modern art."
From 1949 to 1955, Helen organized many shows for new and exciting artists. She got advice from her friends Ursula Hoff, Arnold Shore, and Alan McCulloch. She showed works by famous artists like John Brack, Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman, and Clifton Pugh.
The first show in February 1950 featured twenty artists from Victoria who were connected to George Bell. The National Gallery of Victoria bought many important modern artworks from the Stanley Coe Gallery during this time.
While she was a gallery director, Helen's own art was chosen to decorate the ship Oronsay in 1950. In 1954, her work was shown with Tate Adams and Kenneth Hood at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This encouraged her to focus more on her own art again.
Time in London
After leaving her job as gallery director, Helen's oil paintings of old country buildings were shown at the gallery, which was now called the Peter Bray. She was already well-known in Australia, and her art was bought by the National Gallery of Victoria. She even bought a house in Melbourne.
In 1956, she moved to London. She got involved in the Crafts Revival movement there. To make a living, she designed modern lampshades using Japanese papers. She sold them to wealthy customers of interior designer David Hicks.
While overseas, she sketched the English countryside. She also traveled through Italy for 11 weeks with her friend Hattie Alexander. Even though she sketched European places, she didn't show those artworks. Instead, she kept painting small studies of Australian country buildings from memory and her old sketches. She had two successful solo shows of these paintings in London, and one show of 34 paintings sold out completely!
Back in Australia
Helen returned to Australia in 1963. She continued to paint and draw simple rural buildings, knowing that many were disappearing. She often talked about how Australia didn't protect these old buildings as well as the UK did. While many Australian artists followed European trends, Helen focused on Australian subjects. She wanted to create a new style of Australian printmaking and art.
However, her later paintings didn't get as much praise in Australia as her earlier prints. By the late 1970s, she was creating less art but still loved the art world. Her last solo exhibition that she could attend opened on her 89th birthday in May 1991, at a gallery in Canberra.
Helen Ogilvie passed away suddenly in Melbourne on August 1, 1993.
Her Art Legacy
Not many art critics wrote about Helen's work, mostly just her prints. They would praise her "fine impressions" or her "skillful" lino-cutting. Later, in 1995, a critic named Robert Nelson reviewed a show of her work. He said that her paintings had some weaknesses, but her linocuts of flowers showed "decorative flair."
Even so, her art, especially her printmaking, has become more popular and appreciated since then. Her work has been shown in many important exhibitions about Australian women artists.
Art Exhibitions
Solo Shows
- 1948, May: Exhibition of watercolour drawings
- 1956, April: Paintings, Peter Bray Gallery, Melbourne
- 1963, February/March: Australian Country Dwellings, London
- 1967, March: Leicester Galleries, London
- 1968, September: Joint show with David Rose, Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
- 1968, October: Helen Ogilvie Paintings, Leveson Street Gallery, North Melbourne
- 1972, from May 3: Macquarie Galleries (joint show with Nancy Borlase)
- 1974, June 2–13: Leveson Street Gallery, Melbourne.
- 1979, July 11–30: Solo show with Trevor Weekes and Denese Oates, Macquarie Galleries
- 1982, October 1–31: Project 39: Women's imprint, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
- 1991, May: Australian Girls Own Gallery, Canberra
Group Shows
- 1924, November 18–27: An Exhibition Of Etchings & Drawings, Sydney
- 1932, April 5–16: With Sybil Andrews, Cyril Power, Ethel Spowers, Eveline Syme, Eric Thake, and others, Everyman's Library, Melbourne
- 1932, to October 29: Helen Ogilvie, Peggie Crombie, Helen Boyd, paintings and prints. Collins House, Melbourne.
- 1933: New Melbourne Art Club exhibition, Sedon Galleries, Melbourne
- 1934: The centenary art exhibition, Commonwealth Bank Chambers, Melbourne.
- 1954, November: Helen Ogilvie, Tate Adams, Kenneth Hood, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
- 1954: With Braund, Blackman, Brack, Shannon, Nine Victorian Artists, Peter Bay Gallery.
- 1964, August: With Lady Williams, Geoff Jones, Guelda Pyke, and others of the Melbourne Contemporary Artists, Argus Gallery
- 1978, April 1–May 7: Cicadas and gumnuts – The Society of Arts and Crafts 1906–1935, Art Gallery of New South Wales
- 1981/2, November 1981 – January 1982: Tasmania visited, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
- 2019, May 18 – August 4: Becoming Modern : Australian women artists 1920–1950, Art Gallery of Ballarat
Shows After Her Death
Solo
- 1995: All this I knew, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat, VIC. (This show traveled to other places too.)
- 1995/6, December 15 – January 14: Helen Ogilvie Retrospective, McClelland Art Gallery, Langwarrin
Included In
- 1995, March 5 – April 30: Australian Women Printmakers 1910–1940, Castlemaine Art Museum, Castlemaine, VIC
- 1995, March 8 – April 2: The Women's View: Australian women artists in the Bendigo Art Gallery, 1888–1995, Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, VIC
- 2000/1, November 24, 2000 – February 25, 2001: Modern Australian Women: paintings and prints 1925–1945, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, SA. (This show then traveled around Australia.)
- 2011/12, October 20, 2011 – December 15, 2012: Look, Look Again, highlights from the Cruthers Collection of Women's Art (CCWA), Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA
Art Collections
Helen Ogilvie's artworks can be found in many important art collections, including:
- Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
- Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, TAS
- Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, TAS
- Castlemaine Art Museum, Castlemaine, VIC
- Benalla Art Gallery, Benalla, VIC
- City of Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat, VIC
- University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC
- La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, VIC
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, VIC
- National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
- Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
- Queensland Art Gallery
- Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne, VIC
- Cruthers Collection of Women's Art at the University of Western Australia
