Art – ‘Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890-1940’ Art Gallery NSW

Agnes Goodsir Type of the Latin Quarter c1926, collection of David and Patricia Lorimer

This exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales celebrates the art and lives of 50 women artists in the 50 years before the Second World War.  They were members of a raft of woman artists who travelled to Europe in the early Twentieth Century to enhance their artistic and personal skills.

The work on show is inspiring.  The Exhibition remains open until 15 February 2026, so there is plenty of time for Brisbane members to enjoy the experience.

The artists featured include Hilda Rix Nicholas, Grace Cossington Smith, Margaret Preston, Eleanor Ritchie Harrison, Stella Marks, Helen Stewart, Bessie Davidson, Dorrit Black, Agnes Goodsir, Eileen Mayo and Grace Crowley.

The Exhibition was curated by the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Art Gallery of South Australia.  The website promotion – see below – includes the following:

The Exhibition title was inspired by the words of Thea Proctor, who returned to Sydney in the 1920s after almost two decades in London and was amazed to find her art labelled ‘Dangerously Modern’, considering herself simply of her time.  In adopting this title, this Exhibition celebrates the professional achievements of these women artists while highlighting the challenges they face, both at home and away.  Was it their art and ideas that were perceived as ‘dangerous’ – or the independent lives they dared to lead.  That so many of their successes remain little-known, we wonder if the danger has been to their legacies.

The selected artists – and thousands more worldwide – pursued the professional promise of London and the moral freedoms and training opportunities of Paris.  From a base in these cities, these artists travelled and exhibited their work widely, the skein of their global achievements and networks being almost impossible to comprehensively trace.  Working as artists, as well as writers, teachers, illustrators, activists and suffragists, these women supported one another.  Overcoming the challenges of distance, economics and prejudice of gender they often worked together as agents of change.

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Dangerously Modern reclaims Australian women artists as active participants in the creation and transmission of international modernism.  The period explored, 1890 to 1940, begins with the emergence of professional women artists who lobbied for equal rights and access to an art education equivalent to that of men.  It closes with the beginnings of the Second World War, which was followed by both social conservatism and new iterations of modernity.

Ethel Carrick In the Luxemburg Gardens Parish c 1908, National Gallery of Victoria, purchased 1949

The reader would do well to view this Exhibition, but if that is not possible, perusal of the website below remains a profitable endeavour.

The website link is here.