painter, was born in Portland, Victoria, on 18 June 1864, second daughter and fifth of the eleven children of David James Cook Goodsir, the Commissioner of Customs at Melbourne, and Elizabeth Archer, née Tomlins. Her entire art training in Australia was with Arthur T. Woodward at the Bendigo School of Mines, where she was a student in 1898-99. In 1899 an art union of her work was held at Bendigo to help her go to Paris, where she first studied at the Acad é mie Del é cluse [Delacluse acc. Quinlan, p.25]. Later studies were at Colarossi’s, where she completed her first self portrait in 1900 and won a bronze medal in 1901 for a nude torso; with Jean Paul Laurens at the Acad é mie Julian, where she was twice placed first in Composition; and at the Acad é mie de la Grande Chaumi è re under Lucien Simeon , where she won the 1904 silver medal for portraiture.
Goodsir remained in Paris until 1905, exhibiting with the Old Salon in 1901-2 and with the New Salon in 1902-4. Then she made a six-month trip home to Victoria. She returned to London in 1906, where she mainly lived until after WWI. (She was included in the 'Australians abroad’ section of the 1907 Melbourne Women’s Work Exhibition.) From 1913 she exhibited regularly at the Royal Institute; in 1916 {1913 acc. Quinlan} she became an Associate of the Royal West of England Academy where she continued to exhibit until 1922, showing three paintings in 1919. She was first hung at the Royal Academy in 1914 ( Divorced ); in 1915 she showed A letter from the Front , subsequently retitled Girl on Couch (Bendigo AG).
By 1921 Goodsir had both a London and Paris address. She apparently alternated between the two for a couple of years, then settled permanently in Paris (18 rue de l’Odéon). She lived with a companion, Rachel Dunn, also her model for several paintings, including The Chinese Skirt 1933 (AGNSW), Girl with Cigarette c.1925 (Bendigo AG), The Letter 1926 (NGV) and Morning Tea c.1925 (col. Rosemary Neilson), according to Quinlan (p.50). She exhibited regularly with the New Salon, having four paintings hung in the 1922 exhibition, six in 1931, and being awarded a silver medal in 1924 for her painting, The Red Cloak . After 1911 she also showed at the Salon des Ind é pendants . From 1921 she also exhibited with the Soci é t é Nationale des Beaux Arts , being elected an associ éin 1923. In 1926, with five paintings in the exhibition, she had the distinction of being made a soci é taire . She held private exhibitions in both London and Paris and her work was 'invited’ to Italy, Belgium and Africa. In 1924 she was included in the 'Australian Artists in Europe’ exhibition in London. In 1938 she lent four oils to the sesquicentennial exhibition ’150 Years of Australian Art’ at the NSW National Art Gallery: Type of the Latin Quarter (which had been offered for sale in Sydney in 1927 at 200 gns, her top price), The Chinese Skirt , Gladiolus and Hungarian Vases (50 gns in 1927).
Agnes Goodsir worked mainly in oils. Although she painted many genre pieces, still lifes and interiors, her primary interest and best work was in portraiture. Among those who sat for her were the actor Dame Ellen Terry, the violinist Katherine Goodson, the philosopher Bertrand Russell, Count Leo Tolstoy (his 1925 portrait was shown in Australia in 1927, for sale at 100 gns), Countess Pinci (also shown in Sydney, but not for sale) and, reportedly, Mussolini. Her work shows a conservative receptivity to trends of the Paris art scene she knew and seems to owe as much to English painting of the period. Her portraits are notable for their strength of composition and drawing, their lively decorative qualities, tonal breadth and contemporaneity. Her watercolours were mainly Parisian streetscapes.
In 1927 Agnes Goodsir returned to Australia for a solo exhibition at the Fine Arts Gallery, Melbourne, and at Sydney’s Macquarie Galleries. She painted local landscapes and undertook portrait commissions, including one of A.B. ('Banjo’) Paterson for the Mitchell Library and another of Eadith Walker for the Thomas Walker Hospital at Concord, NSW. She returned to Europe on 12 November 1927 and died in Paris on 11 August 1939, aged seventy-five. Her last exhibition was held at the Cooling Galleries, New Bond Street, London, in May 1938, where she showed 64 paintings, 56 being still life subjects. She left all her paintings to Rachel, who immediately sent about 40 to Agnes’s family in Australia; others went to Daryl Lindsay in 1947 to be distributed to Australian public galleries.
- Writers:
- Cusack, Frank
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
