Design and Art Australia Online

Nancy Sayer was born on January 19, 1909 in Perth and died on September 21, 2005 in Adelaide. She was the daughter of Western Australia’s first Solicitor-General, William Frederik Sayer.

As a child, Nancy was brought up by a governess in Mundaring in the Perth Hills and then went to The Presbyterian Ladies’ College (informally known as PLC), an independent, day and boarding school predominantly for girls, situated in Peppermint Grove, a western suburb of Perth, Western Australia. She competed in various art competitions and won prizes in her school in Perth. Seeing that she was talented, her teacher wanted her to study art but her father wanted her to pursue the path of law.

She loved children, so Nancy trained as a kindergarten teacher, did a business course and later married and moved to Sydney, working as a stenographer.
It wasn’t until she was 50 that Nancy started her full-time career as an artist. Though an artist at heart, it was only after the death of her husband and mother that she could finally regain her freedom and expand her art practice.

Nancy joined The Society of Realist Arts in Sydney and used to go sketch classes three nights a week for three years to study life drawing. While Nancy travelled to Sydney and Mexico, it was back in her hometown in Perth, where she held an exhibition at the Hovea Gallery in 1963 and was spotted by Henry Froudhist who was well known in the WA art world as a painter and an outstanding art teacher. She studied fine arts under Froundhist who inspired her with the works of Sir Matthew Smith, as a British painter of nudes, still-life and landscape whom she admired as well as Edward Seago, Elioth Gruner and Horace Trenerry.

Nancy moved to South Australia in 1965 to Summertown and then Goolwa in 1967, she use to paint two to four hours a day. Unlike other people, Nancy is someone who prefers to paint on the spot. Later she stopped painting because of muscular degeneration and poor eyesight.

In 1997, she held a one-women exhibition at Kensington Gallery. In a newspaper article in The Adelaide Advertiser at the time, the headline read “No show Nancy has better things to do” and the article went on to describe how she deemed it more important to take her dog to obedience school rather than attend her first solo exhibition. “I’m interested in painting, not selling” she was quoted as saying as well as being uncomfortable having to mingle with the arty throng. She was re-discovered by artist and gallery owner, Ronald Adams who was struck by the quality of her work, especially still-life’s from the garden of flower, fruit and vegetables. “They impose themselves on you in the same way that the painted fruits do in a Cezanne still-life.”

Four of her works are held in the Fairview Private Art Collection in Perth and were exhibited at the Subiaco historic home as part of the Australian Heritage Festival and Perth Art Weekend featuring notable West Australian and South Australian women artists.
Nancy Sayer’s highly resolute, stubborn, honest, authentic yet self-confident personality comes out in her paintings.

Her niece, Suzanne Bellanger, a diabetes educator who lives at Albany on the south coast of Western Australia, had a very strong relationship with Nancy and now owns a large body of her work. “She was really prolific, often painting six oils in a day. She was critical yet had a good sense of humour. She wasn’t into big groups of people and was quite happy in her own company.”

“I loved her,“Bellanger says. We just had an affinity. She saw me as her daughter. She was a very brave women who didn’t need anyone else.”

“I love her still-life, it’s so direct, no fiddling around. It’s what she is known for. To me they’re realistic and colourful. The apples and the quinces they all go together. I would love everybody to see her paintings and am so proud of what she has been able to produce and she has left a wonderful legacy.”
In 1963, Nancy Sayer was the winner of the inaugural 6VA Albany Art Competition for an oil painting “King George Sound on a Spring Day”.

In a nod to her longevity as an artist, she backed this up 23 years later by winning the Shire Prize for the Albany Art Competition in 1986 for the oil painting “Bald Head – Albany”.

Writers:

ArtPhD
Michael Bogle

Date written:

2023

Last updated:

2025