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- THE
GENTLE ARTS:
- Australia’s
women pioneers in the fields of literature, music and fine art
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- Jane
Elizabeth Currie, the wife of WA's first postmaster, is Australia's
first-named woman artist painting a watercolour Our First Hut
on Garden Island in 1829. The first Australian-born woman to have
an international professional career as a painter was Adelaide
Ironside who studied in Rome from 1856. Margaret Thomas, the first
woman sculptor in Australia exhibited a portrait bust at Melbourne's
Victorian Society of Arts in 1857, while Florence-trained Thea
Cowan is considered the first Australian-born woman sculptor,
returning to Sydney in 1895. During World War I, painter Clara
Southern was the first female member and committee member of the
Australian Art Association and a member of the Melbourne Society
of Women Painters and Sculptors, the first of its kind in Australia
(founded 1909). Nora Heysen, the first female recipient of the
prestigious Archibald Prize for portraiture in 1938, was the first
woman Official War artist, stationed in New Guinea and Borneo
between 1943-46.
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- Elizabeth
MacFarrell Australia's first female newspaper editor, began working
on the Perth Gazette in 1846 while Californian Cora Anna Weekes,
the first woman magazine editor in Australia was appointed to
Sydney’s Spectator in 1858. Harriet Clisby and Caroline Dexter
published just two numbers of the Interpreter in 1861, said to
be the first magazine published by women in Australia. Louisa
Lawson’s Dawn, issued from 1888-1905, was the first Australian
monthly magazine devoted entirely to women’s interests. Under
the name “Vesta“ the journalist Stella Allan introduced
the first woman’s page “Woman to Woman“ in 1908
in an Australian daily paper and was one of the first three women
members of the Australian Journalist’s Association. Sydney
arts graduate, Beatrice Davis became Australia’s first full-time
professional book editor when she joined Angus & Robertson
in 1937.
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- The
first woman to be employed in an Australian museum was probably
Jane Tost, first female taxidermist, who joined the Hobart Town
Museum in 1856. Trained at London’s British Museum, she later
worked at the Australian Museum in Sydney. Despite being top out
of 42 students in the library test of 1899, Nita Kibble, first
woman librarian at the State Library of NSW probably gained her
appointment by deliberately signing her name using her initials.
She was immediately accepted as it was assumed she was a man.
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- In
1938, Peggy Glanville-Hicks was the first Australian composer
to be represented at an International Society for Contemporary
Music Festival in London. In recent years, two Australian women
have established a successful international conducting career,
a traditionally male-dominated domain. In
1994 Melbourne-born Nicollette Fraillon became the first Australian
woman to conduct an ABC orchestra and the first woman to be chief
conductor of a major European symphony orchestra, Amsterdam's
Royal Netherlands Ballet Company. Sydneysider,
Simone Young is the first woman to conduct in the major opera
houses of Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Munich.
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- First
women in the art world...
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 - By
permission of the National Library of
Australia
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- ALICE
NORTHCOTE
- She
arranged the first ever exhibition of Australian
women’s art held at the Exhibition
building, Melbourne in 1907 during her
husband’s term as Governor General of
Australia.
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- First
women writers and editors...
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 - Mitchell
Library, State Library of
NSW
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- CAROLINE
LOUISA ATKINSON (1834-1872)
- Born
in Berrima NSW, she contributed many natural
history articles to Sydney papers and journals
becoming the first Australian born woman
novelist when she published Gertrude the
Emigrant: A Tale of Colonial Life (“by
an Australian Lady“) in 1857.
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 - Photo
by Reis Scannell. Copyright John Wiley &
Sons Australia
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- OODGEROO
NOONUCCAL (KATH WALKER née RUSKA)
(1920-1993)
- Self-educated
from the age of 13 through her employers’
libraries when a domestic servant, this member
of the Noonuccal tribe on Queensland’s
Stradbroke Island, Moreton Bay wrote the
anthology of poetry We Are Going
published by Brisbane’s Jacaranda Press in
1964, becoming the first Aboriginal poet to go
into print.
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- First
women in the field of
music...
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 - The
Grainger Museum, University of
Melbourne
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- MONA
McBURNEY (1862-1932)
- Australia’s
first music graduate, seen here on the occasion
of the first Australian women’s art
exhibition of 1907, was the first woman to have
her opera (The Dalmatian: composed 1905)
performed in public at the Playhouse, Melbourne
25-26 June 1926.
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 - Courtesy
of Elizabeth Todd
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- ELIZABETH
TODD (b1918)
- The
first female Senior Lecturer in any discipline
at Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music
appointed in 1968, she later became the first
woman President of the NSW Music Teachers
Association and the first woman adjudicator at
several nationwide Eisteddfods.
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- First
women in the museum and library
field...
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 - Courtesy
of Mrs Elizabeth
Simpson
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- ELIZABETH
SIMPSON (b1910)
- A
University of Adelaide science graduate and chief demonstrator
in their Zoology department during the 1930s, she became the first
woman to be appointed to the Board of the South Australian Museum
in 1952 on which she served until 1984.
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 - Courtesy
of Betty Churcher
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- BETTY
CHURCHER (b1931)
- First
woman director of a state gallery when appointed
director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia
from 1987-1990, she went on to head the
prestigious National Gallery of Australia in
Canberra.
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 - Mitchell
Library, State Library of
NSW
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- NITA
KIBBLE (1879-1972)
- The
first woman librarian at the State Library of
NSW in 1899, she set up the Library’s first
research department in 1918 and was appointed
Principal Research Officer the following year, a
post she held until her retirement in
1943.
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