Design and Art Australia Online

painter, was the elder sister of Alice and Milly Hambidge . She also worked in Adelaide, showing work regularly in the SA Society of Arts’ annual exhibitions and, later, in the Society’s Federal Exhibitions. A review of the 9th annual Federal Exhibition by various 'art correspondents’ in 'The Art of the Year’, Lone Hand (1 April 1910, 678), noted:

“As painters of pretty miniatures, we have to look to the Misses Hambidge, who are well represented this year. Occasionally, their miniatures express real charm; but when the same stippled method is applied to a large watercolour like “Fireside Reflections,” the result is lamentably weak. Here all form has been sacrificed to a doll-like finish. After all, the study of characteristic form is the basis of all good pictures; fine colour is but an embellishment; and the sooner our Australian painters acquire that belief, the sooner will we develop a national school of painting.”

An illustrated article in the Lone Hand of July 1914 headed 'Three Adelaide Artists’ described the Hambidge sisters as a 'family well dowered with talent’ (their brother Bert was a caricaturist who contributed to the Bulletin and the article claimed they were related to the noted American illustrator Jay Hambidge). The sisters were praised as portraitists whose models

“have been many and varied, among them Hadji Mullah the Mohammedan high priest [painted in 1895 by Helen] ... who must have wondered what had come to him that he allowed himself to be painted by a woman.”

In 1902 Helen and Milly Hambidge were elected Fellows of the SA Society of Arts.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1999

Last updated:

2011