Design and Art Australia Online

painter, was born near Kyneton, Victoria on 3 October 1860, daughter of local farmers John Southern and Jane, née Elliott. Clara reportedly began her art training in Melbourne as a pupil of Mme Berthe Mouchette, painter, schoolmistress and a founder of the Victorian Alliance Franç aise . She studied at the National Gallery of Victoria’s Art Schools in 1883-87 under Frederick McCubbin and George Folingsby. Fellow students included Josephine Muntz-Adams, Jane Sutherland, A. M. E. Vale, Emanuel Phillips Fox and Arthur Streeton. Nicknamed 'Panther’ for her lithe beauty, Clara Southern was admitted on 23 January 1886 as one of the early women members of the students’ Buonarotti Society. Later, she took lessons from Walter Withers at his home in Heidelberg. From mid-1888 until 1898 she shared a teaching studio with Jane Sutherland in Grosvenor Chambers, 9 Collins Street. In August 1889 the Melbourne newspaper Table Talk described her as one of a 'trio of lady artists’ (the others being Sutherland and Jane Price) who had 'caught the “impression” fever, and show a great variety of charming little sketches, which however are not intended for exhibition’.

Southern presumably joined her Grosvenor Chambers neighbours on weekend painting excursions to the Eaglemont artists’ camp. She exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1889-1917 and served on its council for some years. She was the first woman member of the Australian Art Association and the first woman to serve on its committee. She also belonged to the Lyceum Club and to the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors.

In 1905, aged forty-five, she married John Flinn, a miner. The couple moved to Blythebank at Warrandyte where Clara became a central figure in a community of artists later to include Jo Sweatman, Louis McCubbin, Penleigh Boyd, Harold Herbert, Charles Wheeler and Frank Crozier. She contributed to the Artists’ Bushfire Relief Fund exhibition and to a 1934 exhibition in aid of the Hermannsburg Water Supply in Central Australia organised by Violet Teague and her half sister Una. Now working as Mrs Flinn, she lived and painted in Warrandyte until her death on 15 December 1940 at the age of eighty.

Writers:

Clark, Jane

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011