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painter and teacher, was born in Cork, Ireland, daughter of Ambrose Jennings Sheppard. Always known as Kate, she came to Victoria with her parents in about 1852. By 1858 the family were living in Geelong and Kate was working as an assistant teacher with the Education Department. She was teaching at Ashby in 1860 and at St Mary’s, Geelong, from 1861. Instructed in drawing and painting by Edmund Sasse , by 1867 she was a licensed drawing teacher.

Catherine Elizabeth Sheppard gained public recognition in 1869 for her portrait in oils of the Very Rev. Dean Hayes, commissioned for St Augustine’s orphanage. It was greatly admired when exhibited at the Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition: the Geelong Advertiser noted on 26 February 1869 that 'this latest effort of this talented young lady entitled her to rank high among our colonial artists’, and, having singled her out on 4 March as 'the only lady artist’ represented, magnanimously acknowledged that 'the painting does not suffer in comparison with others as a work of art’. The portrait was also exhibited at the 1869 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition. It was still 'pronounced by connoisseurs to be of a high order’ in 1885, long after she had left Geelong. By this time the artist’s age was given as a precocious sixteen (rather than the realistic twenty-six) and this myth of Sheppard as a prodigy persisted throughout her long career. Two other major portrait commissions followed Dean Hayes : Portrait of Mother Xavier Maguire (Sacred Heart College, Geelong) and a portrait of Father Power which was disposed of by art union in 1872.

In 1874 Sheppard moved to Ballarat as senior assistant teacher at Redan state school; she was appointed head of Scarsdale school in 1878. In that year she was awarded an honourable mention for her painting of Byron’s Manfred , at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, as well as marrying Dr J. Streeter in Ballarat and changing her name. Kate Streeter was teaching at schools in Bendigo in 1883 and in Melbourne from 1884 to 1894. She continued to paint (exhibiting at the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition in 1888) and to conduct private drawing lessons from her studio in the Grand Hotel. She was herself a student at the National Gallery school in 1890-91. Her portrait of Rev. W.A. Quick, President of Queen’s College, University of Melbourne in 1888-1909, was commissioned in 1907 (Queen’s College, MU), and she also painted a portrait of the Chancellor of the University, Sir Anthony Brownless.

Because of ill health Streeter moved to Brisbane in 1921, where 'the climate of Queensland…quite restored her’. Two years later she held an exhibition at 363 Queen Street, showing a new life-size portrait commission, Dr Wallis Hoare , as well as her 1878 Paris success, Manfred . In reviewing the exhibition the Queenslander repeated the apocryphal tale that she was only sixteen when she painted Dean Hayes . Catherine Elizabeth Streeter died at Brisbane on 7 January 1930. Although known mainly as a portrait painter, Streeter also painted altar pieces ( The Sacred Heart 1870 and Assumption of the Virgin 1877) and landscapes (a view of the You-Yangs, exhibited 1891). Her self-portrait (DG) shows a distinguished and vital woman with palette and brushes, still at work in old age. A manuscript autobiography dating from the 1850s is mentioned by Moore.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011