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painter, printmaker, embroiderer, radio presenter and programmer, social worker, public speaker and arts administrator, was born in Sydney on 1 July 1889 into a distinguished legal family descended from the colonial solicitor Robert Owen. Her father, (Sir) Langer Owen, and her brother, William Francis, both served as judges of the NSW Supreme Court. Gladys inherited a fluency in public speaking and a tenacity in advocacy and lobbying. Like her father, her mother (until her death in 1917) and, after 1925, her stepmother, Hilda, she played a major role in the work of the Australian Red Cross—a founder in 1913 and Hon. Secretary in 1914-27 of the NSW Branch; she was awarded the OBE for her work in 1918.

Owen received some art training from Dattilo Rubbo, Aline Cusack and Gerald Fitzgerald, and at the Technical College. She exhibited with the RAS in 1908. Three watercolours (a still life and two flower paintings) were shown in the Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne in 1907. In 1909, although the youngest of the six women participants, she originated the 'Exhibition of Pictures of Flowers and Flower Gardens’ in Sydney which led to the founding of the NSW Society of Women Painters the following year. Until 1935, when it became the Women’s Industrial Society, she was a member, serving on its council in 1912-22. She was also active in the Australian Watercolour Institute (1925-31).

Having studied relief printing under Thea Proctor , Owen worked briefly in the late 1920s-30s in copper engraving, a less popular medium than wood or linocuts for the many women printmakers in Sydney between the wars. In 1926-30 she studied printmaking under Iain MacNab at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London and travelled, particularly in Italy. After returning to Sydney in 1930, she joined the Painter-Etchers Society. Gladys had independent means to support both her art practice and her lifelong passion for travel. She remained single until 1932, then became the second wife of the architect and artist John D. Moore (widowed in 1931).

She continued to exhibit virtually annually until 1960. As well as solo exhibitions in 1938 and 1939, she held joint shows with Alice Norton in 1920 and Ethel Spowers in 1932. Late solo exhibitions included 'Vanishing Sydney’ at David Jones Art Gallery in 1954, followed by two more on the same theme at the Macquarie Galleries in 1957 and 1959. She occasionally exhibited her tapestry work but considered this a hobby.

Owen wrote articles for the Sydney Morning Herald in the 1930s and published a book with journalist Hilda Abbott on the rural crisis in the wheat industry. In 1933 she began her long association with ABC radio as a full-time presenter of the Women’s Session. The appointment was attacked in Parliament as political, given her active campaigning for the Nationalists, but nevertheless lasted until 1936. She then continued in various executive, administrative, research and broadcasting roles; just days before she died on 18 July 1960, she did a book review for ABC television.

After her death, Owen’s artistic reputation suffered something of an eclipse. The Garden Path , a view of Double Bay shown with the Women Painters in 1919, was transferred from the Art Gallery of NSW to the Mitchell Library in 1967. However, Scott Erickson organised a memorial exhibition for the Red Cross in 1976 (the catalogue remains the major source of information on Owen) and the Mitchell Library held an exhibition of her work in 1977.

Writers:

Newton, Gael

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

1992