Design and Art Australia Online

miniature painter and sculptor, was born at Grappenhall, Cheshire, daughter of Alfred T. Dakin. She studied art under Stanhope Forbes and at the Manchester School of Art where she won the King’s Prize. She became an associate member of the Royal Society of Miniaturists in 1908 and a full member in 1918. Rose Dakin was reputedly the only female miniaturist in Britain making an income of over four figures from her work. Later she travelled throughout Malaya and India painting portraits, including Indian royalty. She was also a sculptor; her commissions included a monument to Professor Cleghorn for the cathedral at Calcutta and a reredos for the Diocesan School in Darjeeling.

Dakin followed her fiancé, Surgeon Captain Charles Gayer Phipps RN, to the Australia Station, married him at Leura (NSW) in 1924 and briefly assumed his surname professionally. That June Rose Phipps held an exhibition of her oil paintings, pastels, etchings and watercolours, including portraits and landscapes of scenes in India, at the Sackville Art Gallery, Melbourne. She set up a studio in her Melbourne home where she executed miniatures on commission, including one for the Country Women’s Association of their first president, Nancy Munro. In 1925 Phipps became a member of the Victorian Artists’ Society.

Phipps and her husband settled back in England, then returned to Australia with their young son in 1930 for an extended visit and settled at Vaucluse. When interviewed and photographed for B.P. Magazine (March-May 1930), which illustrated her miniature Fairy Story (a young girl reading a book), it was noted that a back injury had cut short her career as a sculptor and that she now confined herself to producing miniatures and coloured pencil portraits. In 1931 she addressed the Sydney Lyceum Club, urging it to follow the 'virile methods’ of the London Lyceum Club Art Circle in exhibiting members’ work.

As 'Rose M. Dakin’, Phipps exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon and at exhibitions in Canada and Chile. Her hobbies included dancing and needlework.

Writers:

Lennon, Jane

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011