Design and Art Australia Online

painter and gold bullion embroiderer, was born in Sydney, second daughter of Lewis Steffanoni , a painter, illuminator and importer of Italian descent, who died when Sophie was seven – one of five Steffanoni children under nine. The business failed and the family was plunged into poverty. Sophie’s mother, Sarah Ann , rented a house at the Rocks where she continued the embroidery side of the business and took in lodgers. Sophie attended Fort Street School at the same time as Rose McPherson ( Margaret Preston ) and was at Sydney Girls’ High until 1888 with Ethel Turner and Louise Mack. Simultaneously, she helped her mother with the business; in 1886 one of her embroideries was included in the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, London.

Times were extremely hard for the family. Her brother William would take Sophie out in a small boat and fish (for food, not sport) while she painted oil sketches of ferries, sailing boats and views of Circular Quay-all unusual subjects for women at the time. Her first lessons in oil painting were with a Miss Zahieros in 1890. Three years later she became a pupil of Lister Lister (also Preston’s early teacher). She painted and sketched at many sites around the Harbour. A journal entry states:

Was too windy for anything so took the ferry to Mossman’s Bay and spent a quiet afternoon in a little gully near the head of the creek. I had taken my sketching materials and was not put off by such trifles as wind and rain, so I started to sketch a few rocks close at hand and Lalla held the parasol for me when it rained a little.

The artificial barrier between art and craft makes little sense in Sophie’s case. Many of her designs for the business were originals, including some of Australian wildflowers. In 1892 her embroidered Australian Coat of Arms was sent to the World Columbian Exhibition in Chicago where it was awarded a first prize. (It was also shown posthumously in the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne.) She would have considered herself a professional embroiderer, working on flags, regalia and uniforms most of the week, often until midnight. She painted on Saturdays. On Sundays (the maid’s day off) she cleaned the house and prepared breakfast for the boarders. Despite the heavy workload, Sophie exhibited paintings from 1895 to 1903 with the Art Society and was included in its Federation Exhibition of 1901. She regularly sold her paintings at a good price, the equivalent of three times a labourer’s weekly wage. The Bulletin spoke favourably of her work as did the newspaper critics. In 1903 her Paradise Hill, Blackheath was illustrated in the Sydney Mail . One critic especially admired her sea pieces: 'The glint of sunlit waves and spray; the rich-hued rock … are all painted with a hand that never errs’. Charles Conder appears the most obvious influence and they may have met through Sophie’s brother, Lewis junior, who was associated with the Lands Department when Conder was briefly in the office.

Unfortunately, just as Sophie was carving a career for herself she died of tuberculosis, aged thirty-two. She was buried next to her father in the Independent section of Rookwood Cemetery, a view of which she had painted not long before her death (p.c.). It was among the collection of her paintings and family embroidery that William later packed into three trunks that remained hidden in the wall of the laundry of his home until 1987.

In January 2000, Col Fullagar noted that in the old grave area around the Independent office at Rookwood is grave no.1884 containing the remains of L. Steffanoni – buried 1880 – and Essie A. Steffanoni – age 19 years. Grave No. 1886 (next to 1884 – numbering is similar to houses with odds on one side and evens the other) contains the body of Sophia Steffanoni – buried 1906 – and N. Reading – buried 1888, aged 73 years.

IMAGE Heritage section 8, plate 333. Harvest Time Threshing 1898, oil on canvas 33 × 49 cm; inscr. l.l. `Sophie Steffanoni/1898’. Private collection

Harvest Time Threshing , exhibited in the 19th annual Art Society Exhibition at Sydney in 1898, shows farm workers using a threshing machine to separate the grain, probably wheat, from the chaff. The figures manipulating the steam machine symbolise the encroachment of technology on agricultural pursuits; here man is no longer in harmony with nature but in control.

Sophie Steffanoni painted the world in which she moved, and she travelled widely-from Tasmania to the top of Mount Kosciusko. Often she stayed on farms owned by friends or relatives. Her canvases are small as they had to be portable, being painted en plein air . Some were finished at home, but most were not touched again. She often observed and recorded people at work and at leisure: residents of The Rocks engaged in everyday activities, small figures viewing awesome mountain scenes. Even when no figures are seen, her views often include an obviously inhabited home dwarfed by a magnificent and otherwise uninhabited landscape, while her seascapes usually show a distant boat. In such paintings Steffanoni shows an impressionist’s awareness of colour and light. The changing moods of the city skyline, smoke and clouds, are depicted in grey-lavender. In her Blackheath paintings she examines the effects of sunlight on the valleys, particularly the soft pink of waning light at dusk. In this painting, the foreground field of unharvested wheat contrasts with the stark native trees denuded of foliage in the background: the old land usage versus the new. The colour is that of strong summer golden light, the application of paint giving the effect of a rough, dry cro

Was her subject a social comment on the replacement of manual farm labourers with machinery in a time of Depression, as happened in the 1890s when the power of the unions was broken? Entries in her diary prove that she was very supportive of the unionists. In any case, this painting represents the reality of the changes affecting rural life. Unlike many images of the time, it does not depict the past, building the Australian myth-the glorification of the Australian bushman-an idealising a way of life long dead. Nor does the subject bear any relation to the drawing rooms and gardens painted by French women impressionists. Instead, it is a manifestation of the independent movement available to Australian women, their freedom to depict subjects that might be considered `masculine’ without fear of adverse comment.

Writers:

Butterfield, Annette

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

1992