Margaret Preston facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Margaret Preston
Margaret Preston outside her home in Berowra, 1936.
Born	Margaret Rose McPherson (1875-04-29)29 April 1875 Port Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Died	28 May 1963(1963-05-28) (aged 88) Mosman, New South Wales, Australia
Nationality	Australian
Known for	Artworks
Style	Modernism
Spouse(s)	William George "Bill" Preston

Margaret Rose Preston (born April 29, 1875 – died May 28, 1963) was an important Australian painter and printmaker. She is known as one of Australia's top modern artists of the early 1900s. Margaret Preston wanted to create a unique Australian art style. She was also one of the first non-Indigenous Australian artists to use Aboriginal designs in her work.

Early Life and Art School

Margaret Rose Preston was born on April 29, 1875, in Port Adelaide, Australia. Her father, David McPherson, was a Scottish marine engineer. Her mother was Prudence McPherson. Margaret was the first child, and her sister Ethelwynne was born in 1877. Her family called her Rose, but she started using Margaret in her mid-30s.

In 1885, Margaret's family moved to Sydney. She went to Fort Street Girls' High School for two years. Margaret showed an early interest in art, starting with painting on china. She then took private art classes with William Lister Lister.

When she was 52, Margaret wrote about her childhood and love for art. She described her first visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales at age 12:

"a big, quiet, nice smelling place with a lot of pictures hanging on the walls and here and there students sitting on high stools copying at easels. [My] first impression was not of the beauty of wonder of the pictures, but how nice it must be to sit on a high stool with people giving you 'looks' as they went by... This visit led [me] to the decision to be an artist."

After her classes with Lister, Margaret studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. She learned from Frederick McCubbin from 1889 to 1894. Her studies stopped for a short time in 1894–95 because her father was sick and then passed away. When she returned to school, she worked with Bernard Hall. She really liked painting still lifes (pictures of objects) more than people. In 1897, she won a scholarship for still life painting, which gave her a year of free lessons.

In 1898, she moved to Adelaide's School of Design. There, she studied with H. P. Gill and Hans Heysen.

Margaret Preston as a Teacher

Early in her career, especially before she got married, Margaret taught art. This helped her support herself and her family. She started teaching private students while still at Adelaide's School of Design. She opened her own art studio in 1899. Later, she taught at St Peter's College and Presbyterian Ladies' College in Adelaide.

Some of her famous students included Bessie Davidson, Gladys Reynell, and Stella Bowen. Stella Bowen called Margaret "a red-headed little firebrand of a woman, who was not only an excellent painter, but a most inspiring teacher." Gladys Reynell and Stella Bowen took her classes in 1908.

Art Career and Modernism

Traveling and New Ideas (1904–1907; 1912)

After her mother died in 1903, Margaret Preston and her friend Bessie Davidson traveled to Europe. They stayed there from 1904 to 1907. They visited Munich and Paris, and also took shorter trips to Italy, Spain, Holland, and Africa. In Munich, Margaret briefly studied at the Government Art School for Women. However, she did not like the German teaching or art style. She once said, "Half of German art is mad and vicious, and a good deal is dull."

Paris suited Margaret better. She showed her art in the Paris Salon in 1905 and 1906. Her art style was becoming more "Modernist." This means she was influenced by new art ideas. She was inspired by French Postimpressionist artists like Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Henri Matisse. She also loved Japanese art and design, which she saw at the Musée Guimet. From Japanese art, she learned to use uneven (asymmetrical) designs. She also focused on plants and appreciated how patterns could organize a picture. She began to try to make her own work "decoration without ornamentation."

Margaret returned to Australia in 1907. She shared a studio with Bessie Davidson. They had a joint art show, and the National Gallery of South Australia bought her painting Onions (1905). In 1911, Margaret was asked to paint a portrait of Catherine Helen Spence for the National Gallery of South Australia.

In 1912, Margaret went back to France (Paris and Brittany) with Gladys Reynell. But when World War I started, they moved to Great Britain. There, Margaret studied pottery and modern design at Roger Fry's Omega Workshops. Later, she and Reynell taught pottery and basket-weaving. This was therapy for soldiers who had shell shock at the Seale Hayne Military Hospital in Devonshire. She showed her art in both London and Paris during this time.

From these studies in Europe, Margaret Preston came back to Australia with new, modern art ideas. Modernist artists liked to analyze design, find the basic shapes, and simplify the space in their pictures. These ideas became key parts of her art. You can see the influence of her European studies in her 1927 still life painting Implement Blue. It has geometric shapes, soft colors, and strong lighting.

Mosman Years and Australian Identity (1919–1932)

In 1919, Margaret went to America for an art show. On her way back to Australia, she met William George "Bill" Preston. He was a former soldier. They married on December 31, 1919. Bill was a calm person, which balanced Margaret's strong personality. They were very devoted to each other. Bill was a successful businessman, which gave Margaret the money to focus on her art and travel a lot.

The Prestons settled in Mosman, a suburb of Sydney, in 1920. Mosman is a harbor town that has attracted many artists and writers. The Prestons lived in Mosman from 1920 to 1963, except for seven years in Berowra during the 1930s.

During her time in Mosman, Margaret became known as the most important Australian woman artist of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1920, the Art Gallery of New South Wales bought her 1915 painting Summer. Margaret was a founding member of the Contemporary Group in 1926. In 1929, the Art Gallery of New South Wales asked her to paint a Self portrait (1930). This was the first time the Gallery asked a woman artist to paint a self-portrait. In the 1930s, she joined the Anthropological Society of New South Wales.

Margaret joined the Society of Artists. She became friends with its president, Sydney Ure Smith. He was an important editor and publisher of art magazines like Art in Australia. Margaret wrote many articles in Ure Smith's publications. She shared her ideas about Australian art, especially the need for a unique Australian art style. She believed artists should not just copy European art.

In a 1925 article called 'The Indigenous Art of Australia', she wrote:

"In wishing to rid myself of the mannerisms of a country other than my own I have gone to the art of a people who had never seen or known anything different from themselves, and were accustomed always to use the same symbols to express themselves. These are the Australian aboriginals, and it is only from the art of such people in any land that a national art can spring."

She used Aboriginal designs in her own art, like relief prints from shields and carved wooden grave markers. She even made some with colored wool on hessian woolpack. Margaret wrote many articles about art for Ure Smith's magazines and the Society of Artists yearbooks. Ure Smith gave her more space than any other artist. He even dedicated three whole issues to her work.

Margaret also used women's magazines to share her art and ideas. Readers of Woman's World in April 1929 were encouraged to keep the magazine covers with Preston's art and frame them.

Prints and Australian Flora

Margaret Preston's woodcuts, linocuts, and monotypes show her amazing ability to create new, modern art. She had tried etching in England, but her best work was in woodcuts. These prints were cheap to make, which helped her sell her art to more people.

Margaret made over 400 known prints. Most of her surviving prints show Australian native plants. She wanted to create art that was truly Australian. Flowers like the banksia, waratah, gum blossom, and wheelflower gave her ideas for her bold, uneven designs.

Mosman and its surroundings also appeared in many of Margaret's prints. One of their apartments had views of Mosman Bay and Mosman Bridge. These views appeared in many of her prints. Another apartment had views of Sydney Harbor. These inspired famous works like Sydney Head I (1925), Sydney Head II (1925), and Harbour Foreshore (1925). The harbor also appears in Circular Quay (1925) and The Bridge from the North Shore (1932). She also made landscape prints, such as Red Cross Fete (1920) and Edwards Beach Balmoral (1929).

Margaret liked to try new techniques. She usually printed her images in black and then added color by hand. She felt that printmaking helped keep her art fresh. She wrote: "Whenever I thought I was slipping in my art, I went into crafts–woodcuts, monotypes, stencils and etchings. I find it clears my brain."

Paintings and Unique Styles

Mosman also appears in many of Margaret Preston's paintings that are not still lifes. Two paintings, Japanese Submarine Exhibition (1942) and Children's Corner at the Zoo (1944–46), are painted in a simple, childlike style. This showed an interest in children's art at the time. Japanese Submarine Exhibition shows a funny look at the fear and anti-Japanese feelings during the war years in Australia.

Berowra Years and Indigenous Influence (1932–1939)

From 1932 to 1939, the Prestons lived in Berowra, a bush suburb. They had two terrier dogs there. In Berowra, Margaret focused even more on creating a national identity in Australian art. She continued to use and adapt Australian Indigenous art. She used Aboriginal designs and natural colors in her work. This style continued even after she left Berowra. You can see it in later works like The Brown Pot (1940) and Manly Pines (1953). Margaret won a silver medal at the Exposition Internationale in Paris in 1937. That same year, she became a founding member of the Australian Academy of Art.

Return to Mosman (1939–1963)

After seven years in Berowra, the Prestons moved back to Mosman. They stayed there until Margaret Preston's death on May 28, 1963. Her later works continued to build on the Aboriginal themes she developed in Berowra. Her very last works had religious themes. This might have been because of the Blake Prize, an art award for religious art, which started in 1951. In the 1950s, she made a series of gouache stencils based on religious subjects.

Collections and Exhibitions

Many art galleries around Australia have collections of Margaret Preston's work. These include the National Gallery of Australia, the Queensland Art Gallery, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of South Australia, and the National Gallery of Victoria.

A special exhibition called Margaret Preston, Australian printmaker was held at the National Gallery of Australia from December 2004 to April 2005. It showed many of the gallery's etchings, woodcuts, masonite cuts, monotypes, and stencils by the artist.

In 2012, some of Margaret Preston's works were chosen by curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev to be shown at documenta (13) in Kassel, Germany.

Images for kids

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  Margaret Preston outside her home in Berowra, 1936.

See also

In Spanish: Margaret Preston para niños

• Australian art