painter and sculptor, was one of the three talented daughters of Thomas Mason JP, who lived near Port Arthur church, Tasmania, in the late 1880s and 1890s. The large murals in two niches on either side of the entrance to the Commandant’s House at Port Arthur (at that time the Carnarvon Hotel) are almost certainly her work. James Backhouse Walker described the Mason girls in 1895 as 'simple, nice girls [with] an enthusiasm for art’.
In 1894-95 they exhibited 'Portrait Crests, Candlesticks, etc., Port Arthur Pottery, hand-painted, [and] Bas Reliefs, Clay Modelling’ at the Hobart International Exhibition in the women’s industries section. The 'Port Arthur Pottery’ and sculptures in the exhibition were largely Heather’s work, baked in a kiln owned by an old Staffordshire potter who lived nearby. According to Moore, the 'Bas Reliefs’ depicted her father and friends playing golf and were her first efforts in the medium. Extant work includes a clay figure done with her sister Annie and James Price. The third sister, Veronica, was a poet, said by Moore to have published I Heard a Child Singing and Other Verses .
Heather Mason went to London in 1897, studied at the Slade School, and became a professional sculptor. She designed and modelled medals, which she exhibited at the Royal Academy (1907-11) and at the New Salon, Paris. Her bronze medallion, Pioneers (RA 1907, Salon 1908), inscribed round the rim 'Forever Alive Forever Forward Pioneers O Pioneers’, depicts three naked, head-and-shoulder-length, heroic male figures in profile marching tight-lipped into the future, armed with axe and hoe.
- Writers:
- Jack, R. Ian
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
