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painter, was born on 24 May 1877 at Morningside, Ipswich, Queensland. Her mother was the daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman, Rev. Thomas Craig, who had come to Australia in 1851 from Ballyweany near Ballymena, County Antrim. Her father, Montague Henry Stanley, was the eldest son of the Scottish actor and artist Montague Talbot Stanley ARSA (1809-44). Her uncles were the Chief Engineer for Railways in Queensland, H.C. Stanley, and the Colonial Architect, F.D.G. Stanley. After her mother died in 1879, Gwendolyn was cared for by maternal aunts and uncles while her father continued his rural life as a station manager. According to Gwendolyn’s children, Gregor and Ann, her childhood was a happy one. Her school days were spent at Miss Clark’s school Kensington, in Toowong, Brisbane. In the late 1890s she studied art at the Brisbane Technical College, then spent five years at the National Gallery School, Melbourne (1907-11).

Gwendolyn’s challenging nature is evidenced by her 1906 solo exhibition at the Kent Buildings in Brisbane of work painted while she was a governess in far North Queensland in 1902-06, undoubtedly in preparation for her application to the National Gallery School. She first publicly showed her work at the 1899 exhibition of the Queensland Art Society (QAS). One artist who figured prominently at the QAS in 1900-13, often to the displeasure of reviewers, was William Gregory Grant (1876-1951), described by Lloyd Rees as the 'most dynamic painter’ in Brisbane in the 1910s. William and Gwendolyn married on 22 November 1915. Married life did not stifle her lifetime interest in painting. Not only was she an active member of the QAS, but she also continued to exhibit with the Victorian Artists’ Society and the Society of Women Painters (SWP) in Sydney. In all, she held fifteen solo exhibitions and four joint exhibitions with her husband. She was President of the Lyceum Club in the mid-1920s.

Gwendolyn’s reputation as a portrait painter was established in 1920-40. She regularly sent entries to the Archibald Prize. Her portraits of Sir James Blair and Professor Steele are at the University of Queensland and Winter Sunshine was purchased by the Queensland Art Gallery in 1938.

Contention did not overawe Gwendolyn. In 1912, in response to accusations that the figure of Samson in her major attempt at 'Grand Painting’, Softly Awakes My Heart, an Impression of Sansone e Delila (now lost), lacked 'pride in his chest measurements’, she replied that any perceived flaw was due to her failure to obtain a strongman 'able and willing to pose’ as subsidiary to Delilah. Newly returned to Brisbane from her Melbourne studies, her remarks ring with confident achievement and underline her forthright manner.

'Forthright’ and 'challenging’ also best describe her art reviews for the Brisbane Daily Mail during the 1920s, in which she encouraged aspiring artists to create an independent vision: 'Go out and study Nature with all your heart and mind … and there will be no need to imitate others’. Her works are a testament to such advice. Her many depictions of domestic subjects sprang more from models of female 'independence’ based on 'the notion of femininity of which the moral inspiration was the home and family’ (which typifies one type of member of the SWP, according to Philp) rather than from any admired painting. She embraced no radical modernist philosophy; her belief in the virtues of restraint, knowledge, study and, indeed, the moral significance and nobility of art, tempered her vision.

Gwendolyn Grant died, aged ninety-one, on 17 April 1968, in the same year as her friend 'Elizabeth’ ( Vida Lahey ).

Writers:

Bradbury, Keith

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011