oil and watercolour painter and miniaturist, was born in Hobart, Tasmania, eldest daughter of the five children of George Cherry , a professional photographer, and Matilda, née James. In 1877 after their parents had died the children moved to Geelong in Victoria and Ada found work with Johnstone & O’Shannessy as a photographic retoucher and colourist. She also began to work privately as a miniature painter. In 1900 one of her first miniatures, that of Nan Cherry {her sister or mother?}, was hung at the Royal Academy, London.
Ada Cherry married Saville Whiting and they had two children, Saville and Molly. While the children were still young, she divorced her husband, an alcoholic, and returned to work as a miniature painter in order to support the family. She worked quickly, painting up to three miniatures a week and never required more than three sittings. She worked only on ivory for her miniatures, for which she was renowned, and she also painted larger oil and watercolour portraits, landscapes, flower and still life studies. Two miniatures were shown at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1917, two at the Royal Hibernian Academy and two at the Paris Salon in 1934.
Ada Whiting lived and worked mainly in Melbourne, where she had a studio, although she spent the winters in Sydney. She exhibited portraits and flower paintings with the Victorian Artists Society from 1898 to 1916. Her 1922 oil on canvas board painting of mushrooms and dandelions (25 × 35 cm) offered Sotheby’s Sydney 25 August 2002, lot 223 (not illustrated in catalogue) was probably shown in the Spring Exhibition of the Victorian Artists’ Society, Melbourne 1922, either cat. 87 or else Mushrooms cat. 91. In 1901 she showed work at the Society of Artists Commonwealth Exhibition and with the Royal Art Society.
Exhibited at Victorian Academy of Arts in 1884, when her address was given as 33 Hoddle Street, North Richmond.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2011
