painter, etcher and monumental mason, was born Violet Emma Alomes in Forcett, Tasmania, in 1886. A painter by training and a monumental mason by chance, she studied art with Lucien Dechaineux at Hobart Technical College in 1928 and 1931-32, later sharing a studio with fellow students Mildred Lovett , Florence Rodway , Edith Holmes , Dorothy Stoner and Ethel M. Nicholls. It was presumably during this period that Holmes painted her portrait. She took private classes with Max Meldrum in 1936-39, travelling regularly to his Melbourne studio from Hobart.
In 1939-40 her work was included in the exhibition, 'International Women: Painters, Sculptors, Gravers’, held by the National Council of Women of the United States at Riverside Museum, New York. She painted in oils and watercolours, made etchings, and was an active member of the Art Society of Tasmania, exhibiting with it from 1932 to 1975; in 1936-52 she was a member of its Council. She also joined the Hobart Soroptomist Club and the First Settler League (her great-grandfather, a Royal Marine, had arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in the Calcutta in 1804).
Violet married Amos William Vimpany, a monumental mason and another former student of Hobart Technical College (1897-1902); they had two daughters, Gwendolene and Violet. After her husband’s sudden death in 1945, Violet Vimpany took over his stonemasonry business. In 1973 she was named one of Tasmania’s Women of Achievement. Having sold the business in 1969 and retired definitively in 1973, she died at Hobart on 2 March 1979.
- Writers:
- Steggall, Susan
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
