Rosaleen Norton facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Rosaleen Norton
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Rosaleen Norton, Kings Cross, Sydney, 21 June 1943, by Ivan, for PIX Magazine, State Library of New South Wales
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| Born | 2 October 1917 Dunedin, New Zealand
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| Died | 5 December 1979 (aged 62) Sydney, Australia
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| Nationality | Australian |
| Other names | Thorn, The Witch of Kings Cross |
| Occupation | Witch; Artist |
Rosaleen Miriam Norton (2 October 1917 – 5 December 1979), who used the name of Thorn, was a New Zealand-born Australian artist.
Her paintings, which have been compared to those of British occult artist Austin Osman Spare, often depicted images of supernatural entities such as pagan gods and demons.
Contents
Biography
Early life: 1917–1934
Norton was born in Dunedin to an English middle class, Anglican family who had moved to the country a number of years before. She was the third of three sisters and her siblings, Cecily and Phyllis, were each over a decade older than her. When she was eight, in June 1925, her family emigrated to Sydney. There they settled in Wolseley Street, in the wealthy northern suburb of Lindfield.
As a child, Rosaleen never liked being conventional, and disliked most other children, as well as authority figures, including her mother Beena, with whom her relationship was very strained. Her father Albert, who was a sailor, was regularly away from home, although provided enough of an income so that the Nortons were able to live comfortably.
Norton was enrolled at a Church of England girls' school, where she was eventually expelled for being disruptive and drawing images of demons, vampires and other such beings which the teachers claimed had a corrupting influence on other pupils. She subsequently began attending East Sydney Technical College, studying art under the sculptor Rayner Hoff, a man who encouraged her artistic talent and whom she greatly admired.
Early career: 1935–1948
Following her art college studies, Norton set herself up to become a professional writer, with the newspaper Smith's Weekly publishing a number of her horror stories in 1934, when she was sixteen, after which they gave her the job as a cadet journalist and then as an illustrator. However, her graphic illustrations were deemed too controversial, and she lost her job at the paper. Leaving Smith's Weekly, Norton moved out of her family home following the death of her mother, and sought employment as an artists' model, working for such painters as Norman Lindsay. To supplement this income, she also took up other forms of work, including as a hospital's kitchen maid, a waitress and a toy designer.
In 1935, Rosaleen met a man named Beresford Lionel Conroy and they married on 14 December 1940, before going on a hitch-hiking trip across Australia, from Sydney to Melbourne, and on through to Brisbane and Cairns. Returning to Sydney, Conroy enlisted as a commando and went off to serve in New Guinea during the Second World War. The couple divorced in 1951.
Now single once more, Norton began looking for illustration work once more, being employed by a monthly free-thinking magazine known as Pertinent, which had been founded in 1940 and which was edited by the poet Leon Batt. Batt admired Norton's work, which was being increasingly influenced by pagan themes, describing her as "an artist worthy of comparison with some of the best Continental, American and English contemporaries." Norton contributed poetry and a cover illustration to Batt's anthology Not for Fools: A Collection of Pertinent Verse (1941). In 1943 Norton exhibited her work with fellow artist Selina Muller in Sydney.
1949–1950
It was at Pertinent that she met a younger man named Gavin Greenlees (1930–1983). Greenlees had grown up in a middle-class family where he had developed an early interest in surrealism, and had become a relatively successful poet, having his work published in such newspapers as ABC Weekly and Australia Monthly. By mid-1949, the two had become good friends, and hitchhiked together to Melbourne, searching for a venue where Norton could hold an exhibition of her art. They settled on the University of Melbourne's Rowden White Library, where forty-six of her paintings, including Timeless Worlds, Merlin, Lucifer and The Initiate were put on public exhibition. However, the exhibition did not go well, and only two days after it had opened, police officers had surveyed the gallery. Norton was subsequently charged under the Police Offences Act of 1928. At the court case, held in Melbourne's Carlton Court, she was defended by A.L. Abrahams. She won the case, and was awarded £4/4/- in compensation from the police department.
Later life
Norton and Greenlees returned to Sydney, where they moved into the house at 179 Brougham Street. Here Norton associated with many of the locals, including Dulcie Deamer, the "Queen of Bohemia", whose book of poetry, The Silver Branch, included one of Norton's pictures. Several of the local cafes in the area, such as the Arabian, the Apollyon and the Kashmir, displayed some of her artworks, and she became a relatively well known figure in Kings Cross.
Norton died from colon cancer at the Sacred Heart Hospice for the Dying, in Darlinghurst, Sydney. Shortly before she died she is reported as saying: "I came into the world bravely; I'll go out bravely." A plaque dedicated to her has since been installed in Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross.
Legacy
Following her death, Norton's many paintings, which were owned by Don Deaton, a local printer and pub owner, were sold at auction to a single collector, Jack Parker, for £5000, who displayed them at his Southern Cross Hotel in St Peters, Sydney.
Walter Glover gained the rights to republish The Art of Rosaleen Norton, re-releasing it in a facsimile edition in 1982 with a new introduction by Nevill Drury and four colour plates that did not appear in the first edition. There was an 'edition deluxe' of the 1982 reprint, housed in an ivory slipcase and signed by the publisher; approximately 50 copies of this were printed. Following this, in 1984, he published A Supplement to the Art of Rosaleen Norton, which contained colour prints of nineteen of the works which had been featured in her 1949 Melbourne exhibition.
In 2000, an exhibition of Norton's paintings was held in Kings Cross, Sydney, organised by various enthusiasts including Keith Richmond, and Barry William Hale of the Australian Ordo Templi Orientis.
In 2012 Norton's work was included in the major exhibition "Windows to the Sacred", which was curated by Robert Buratti and toured Australian museums until 2016. The exhibition drew together drawings and paintings alongside work by Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare, surrealist James Gleeson and many others.
In 2013 the Teitan Press issued the first US edition of The Art of Rosaleen Norton, an edition which includes a 40-page introduction by Norton scholar Keith Richmond. Richmond is working on a full-length biography of Norton.
In 2017 an exhibition of Norton's artwork, curated by Robert Buratti and Aaron Lister, was exhibited at City Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand. This was the first major showing of the artist in her country of birth.
See also
In Spanish: Rosaleen Norton para niños
