Design and Art Australia Online

Mavis Lightly (nee Allen) was born in Collie on 2 December 1911, died on 12 December 1998 and is notable for having been an inaugural foundation member of the Busselton Society of Arts.

Mavis was the granddaughter of an engineer from the well-known Irish engineering firm, W.H. Allen. They provided engines from Belfast to mining companies in Queenstown, Tasmania, and Cue, Day Dawn and Collie in Western Australia.

Her father immigrated to Australia as a 16-year-old with his father, who in an ironic twist of fate died from snakebite soon after arrival.

Her father ended up in Collie selling engines and then ran a family garage in Busselton in the 1920s. Mavis was brought up in the family home behind the garage.

In an oral history interview recorded in 1985, Mrs Lightly recalls as a five-year old drawing a compelling picture of a Model-T Ford on the classroom blackboard which remained up for nearly a year.

At age 15 she was privately tutored by an English artist by the name of Baker. She left school then and as the eighth child by eight years she was looked after by other family members and not allowed to work.

This reflected the social and cultural norms at the time and the low expectations of women.

She married at 20, farming in the Vasse region and raising two children, Ian and Lynette.

In the recorded interview she describes her art practice as a pleasure and habit with no pressure to produce commercially sought after works. Like so many other women artists of the time she describes her art as “a casual hobby”.

After the Second World War, Mavis moved from the farm to Busselton becoming a serious painter and a student of Margaret Johnson. She used oil and with two small children had a passion for drawing on paper with charcoal being interested in all subjects – landscape, still life, and portraits.

“Margaret Johnson recognised I had some talent and took an interest in me,” Mavis told her social history interviewer in 1985.

Margaret G. Johnson, (1898 – 1967) was a Sri-Lankan born Australian portrait artist. Her father James Wood, was a Scotsman in Kadugannawa, Ceylon. She was one of seven children who all had an interest painting and drawing. At a young age her father immigrated to Western Australia and after completing her schooling in Perth was sent to the Glasgow School of Art at the tender age of fifteen, three years younger than the usual entrance age.

Margaret studied under Maurice Greiffenhagen and Professor McKeller, concentrating on painting and modelling. She completed her four-year course in three years and returned to Western Australia after the end of World War One and married.

As a portrait artist she specialised in portraiture painting especially watercolours but also had works in pencil, pastels and oil. Her portrait works are found in the National Gallery of Australia, Parliament House and at the Perth City Council. For example, her portrait of Prime Minister John Curtin hangs in the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

In 1934, her model for a portrait plaque of pioneering women’s activist and politician Edith Cowan was chosen from several local West Australian entries to be the choice for a memorial work on a clock tower in Kings Park, Perth honouring the trailblazer. The Edith Cowan bust is in high relief above a wreath of gum leaves and nuts cast in bronze and is visible today on the eastern face of the clock tower.

Ms Johnson was a member of the West Australian Society of Arts and taught Mavis Lightly at the Busselton Technical School.

Mavis had her first Art Exhibition in 1952 in the Country Women’s Association Hall, before the Busselton Arts Society was formed and every item was sold at prices ranging from five to 18 guineas.

This was followed by several other exhibitions.

“My early work can more than hold their own, even after art classes by Boissevain and Juniper and you develop your own style and my style has been retained largely due to that early influence of Margaret Johnston where I learnt the basics of distance, composition, colour, coordination and application, have your own colours but have your tonal values right,” she said.

Boissevain and Juniper are considered WA Art Royalty and their influence extends far beyond their extensive body of work because they also had longevity as art teachers.

For example, William 'Wim’ Boissevain (born 23 July 1927) was born Willem Geoffrey Boissevain in New York, son of Gideon Walrave 'Gi’ Boissevain who was in the Dutch diplomatic service.

With his roots in the Netherlands and international upbringing, he was drawn back to Europe and studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London and the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris.

Arriving in Australia in 1947 he became naturalised in 1949 and is well-known for his studio at Glen Forrest in the Darling Range near Perth.

Contrasting this Dutch heritage, Robert Litchfield Juniper, AM (7 January 1929 – 20 December 2012) had a broader art practice covering artist, art teacher, illustrator, painter, printmaker and sculptor and was born in the dusty light-filled wheat-belt town of Merredin in Western Australia.

Like Boissevain he was drawn to Europe and studied commercial art and industrial design at Beckenham School of Art in England and in a striking similarity was also a long-term resident in the Perth hills where he was involved with the Darlington Arts Festival.

The strong loyalty and admiration Mavis Lightly felt towards her female teachers and mentors like Johnson rather than men, demonstrates how early Australian women artists supported and nurtured each other.

In the first 'Art in the Park’, the longest running exhibition of its kind in Western Australia, held in Mitchell Park Busselton from the 19th to the 24th January 1960, Mavis Lightly had one oil and eight water colour works for sale, with her highest priced, an oil

called 'Winter Pattern’ selling for eight guineas, the second most expensive piece of art on offer.

Mavis Lightly won the $500 Tom Wardle Prize for oils at the 1968 Busselton Art Society Competition, reputed by Society Patron, Sir Claude Hotchin to be the richest art prize offered outside the Perth metropolitan area. Her entry, Still Life, oil on board, 370 × 475 mm is part of The Busselton Art Society collection, the largest private art collection in the South West of Western Australia.

“I also taught art, always all ladies,” Ms Lightly said. This reflects the economic necessity of women artists of the time supplementing the household income from other sources than pure art sales. History repeating itself, much like how Margaret Johnson had taught Mavis Lightly decades before.

White Camellias was purchased at a garage sale run by a charity group in 2017. The work is significant as it reflects the artists unique still life style and her depth of tonal colours.

The framing reflects the frugal nature of the period. A busy time as a farming mother raising toddlers, with a husband often away, and money more likely to be directed to other activities rather than framing.

“If it’s a complicated painting, I always have a simple frame,” she concludes in her oral history interview.

Retired stock and station agent and son, Ian Lightly gets a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes when he remembers how his mother’s artwork helped pay for his education.

Sales from his mother’s art practice helped fund expensive boarding school fees for Ian and his sister at Perth’s elite private schools, Hale and St Hilda’s, when cash flow from their Busselton farm was tight.

Writers:

ArtPhD

Date written:

2022

Last updated:

2022