Edward Cairns Officer was born near Swan Hill in 1871. He studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in the School of Design (1893-94) and the Melbourne Art School of E Phillips Fox and Tudor St George Tucker. Officer departed Melbourne in 1895 and continued his artistic training at the Académie Julian in Paris. He was abroad for a period of five years during which he received guidance from the French landscape painter and engraver Henri-Joseph Harpignies. Officer worked at Etaples, on the north-west coast of France, and in the region of Normandy where he completed 'Autumn in Normandy’.
Edward Officer returned to Melbourne in 1900 and then settled at the family property Kallara in New South Wales. In 1903 he was awarded the Wynne Prize for landscape painting. He held an exhibition of landscapes in 1908 at the Guild Hall, Melbourne, which included views of Kallara, Normandy, Tasmania and Victoria.
Officer was a council member of the Victorian Artists’ Society (1911-12); exhibited with the VAS intermittently between 1894 and 1911; and was inaugural president of the Australian Art Association (1912). In 1916 Officer was appointed a trustee of the National Gallery of Victoria, a position he held until his death.
During the First World War, Officer contributed to the activities of the Red Cross and donated the proceeds from war-time exhibitions of his work to the organisation. He was a member of the Melbourne Savage Club (1911-21) and died at Macedon, Victoria, in 1921.
- Writers:
- Sullivan, Lisa
The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne
- Date written:
- 2012
- Last updated:
- 2012
