painter, was the youngest of three daughters in a family which travelled from Cornwall to New Zealand before settling in Melbourne. Winifred studied at the National Gallery School, winning first prizes in 1907 and 1910 for full figure painting (Antique School), second in 1909 (after Vida Lahey, q.v.) for a three-quarter length portrait and equal second in 1910 for a three-quarter length portrait. She won first and second prizes in 1909 for her painting from the nude. She exhibited Study of a Head (2 gns) and Study of a Lady in Grey (4 gns) with the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1909, and Portrait (8 gns) in 1910, her address in the catalogue being Lansell Road, Toorak.
In 1911 she was awarded the National Gallery’s prestigious Travelling Scholarship. The V.A.S. (Victorian Artists’ Society) (February 1912) recorded her win and noted that she intended to bypass Paris and 'proceed direct to London’. In March it reported on an exhibition of her work in her Melbourne studio at Templecourt on 2 February, which contained 'about 60 examples in oils, watercolours and drawings in pencil and pastel’. From the issue of 1 April comes news of her farewell dinner and the note: 'Miss Honey left for London on the GMS Grosser Kunfuerst on Saturday 23 March’.
In December she was recorded as working at her studio in Chelsea, London. According to a relative, she studied at the Slade. She also seems to have studied at the Royal Academy Schools, and she had work hung in its annual exhibitions. An article of December 1920 by 'L.B.T.’ (presumably her former Gallery School colleague, Lawrence B. Tayler) stated that Honey also studied in France and in Holland. She specialised in 'figure work, subject interiors, and the nude allied to landscape’ ('flesh and blood in all its true beauty’). The paintings reproduced are described as
brilliant in colour and wonderfully broad and direct in handling; they are joyous things to possess insomuch as they radiate sunshine, open air and vigour.
During World War I Honey attempted to go to France to depict Australians serving there, but the powers-that-be would not hear of her risking her life, as they deemed, 'unnecessarily’. After working in oils in the manner of John Singer Sargent—the family recollecting a 'kimono painting’ and a self portrait titled Grief —Honey turned almost exclusively to watercolours.
During the 1930s she worked as a commercial artist. She produced magazine covers, reportedly for the Bystander among others. She also published postcards of her work (e.g. a full-length portrait of a lady in a long white dress) which brought in some income. Honey rarely exhibited; relatives contacted in 1984 did not remember her exhibiting or selling much from her London studios at Pembroke Walk, Kensington, and Oakley Road, Chelsea. She never returned to Australia, dying on 27 December 1944 as the result of an accident; she apparently slipped on some ice on Christmas Day and a car ran into her.
- Writers:
- Scheding, Stephen
Note: Primary
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
