Recent from talks
Margaret Preston
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Margaret Preston
Margaret Rose Preston (29 April 1875 – 28 May 1963) was an Australian painter, printmaker and writer on art who is regarded as one of Australia's leading modernists of the early 20th century. In her quest to foster an Australian "national art", she was also one of the first non-Indigenous Australian artists to use Aboriginal motifs in her work. Her works are distinctively signed MP.
Margaret Rose Preston was born on 29 April 1875 in Port Adelaide to David McPherson, a Scottish marine engineer, and Prudence Cleverdon McPherson, née Lyle. She was their first-born child; her sister Ethelwynne Lyle McPherson was born in 1877. The family called Margaret by her middle name (Rose), and it was only in her mid 30s that she began to use Margaret.
Preston's family moved to Sydney in 1885, where Preston attended Fort Street Girls' High School for two years. She showed a very early interest in art, first with china painting and then through private art classes with William Lister Lister. Preston would later, at the age of 52, write about her childhood and developing interest in art in the article "From Eggs to Electrolux," which ran in Sydney Ure Smith's Art in Australia in 1927. Although written in the third person, it offers glimpses of her legendarily strong personality. She describes her first visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales at the age of 12, recalling it as
Following her classes with Lister, Preston went on to study at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School under Frederick McCubbin from 1889 to 1894. Her studies were interrupted for a time in 1894–95 by her father's illness and death. When she returned to the school, she began working with Bernard Hall. She showed a strong preference for painting still lifes instead of people, and in 1897, she won the school's Still Life Scholarship, which afforded her a year's free tuition. In 1898, she transferred to Adelaide's School of Design, where she studied under H. P. Gill and Hans Heysen.
Early in Preston's career—especially before her marriage—she taught art to help support herself and her family. She began taking on private students while she was still at Adelaide's School of Design, setting up her own studio in 1899. She later taught at St Peter's College and at Presbyterian Ladies' College, both in Adelaide. Among her students were such notable artists as Bessie Davidson, Gladys Reynell, and Stella Bowen, who referred to her as "a red-headed little firebrand of a woman, who was not only an excellent painter, but a most inspiring teacher". Gladys Reynell and Stella Bowen attended her classes in 1908.
After her mother died in 1903, Preston and Bessie Davidson traveled to Europe, where they stayed from 1904 to 1907, with sojourns in Munich and Paris and shorter trips to Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, and Africa. In Munich, Preston briefly studied at the Government Art School for Women but was not taken with either German teaching methods or German aesthetics. She later commented, "Half of German art is mad and vicious, and a good deal is dull."
Paris suited Preston better, and she took part in the Paris Salon of 1905 and 1906. Her developing Modernist sensibility was influenced by French Postimpressionists such as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Henri Matisse as well as by Japanese art and design, which she encountered at the Musée Guimet. From Japanese art in particular she acquired a preference for asymmetrical composition, a focus on plants as subject matter, and an appreciation of pattern as an organizing method. She began to try to reduce her own work to "decoration without ornamentation".
Returning to Australia in 1907, Preston leased a studio with Bessie Davidson, and they put on a joint exhibition from which one of her paintings Onions (1905), was bought by the National Gallery of South Australia. In 1911, Preston was asked to paint a portrait of Catherine Spence for the National Gallery of South Australia. Preston went back to France (Paris and Brittany) in 1912 with Gladys Reynell, but when World War I broke out, they moved to Great Britain. There Preston studied pottery and the principles of Modernist design at Roger Fry's Omega Workshops. Later, she and Reynell taught pottery and basket-weaving as therapy for shell-shocked soldiers at the Seale Hayne Military Hospital in Devonshire. She exhibited her work in both London and Paris during this period.
Hub AI
Margaret Preston AI simulator
(@Margaret Preston_simulator)
Margaret Preston
Margaret Rose Preston (29 April 1875 – 28 May 1963) was an Australian painter, printmaker and writer on art who is regarded as one of Australia's leading modernists of the early 20th century. In her quest to foster an Australian "national art", she was also one of the first non-Indigenous Australian artists to use Aboriginal motifs in her work. Her works are distinctively signed MP.
Margaret Rose Preston was born on 29 April 1875 in Port Adelaide to David McPherson, a Scottish marine engineer, and Prudence Cleverdon McPherson, née Lyle. She was their first-born child; her sister Ethelwynne Lyle McPherson was born in 1877. The family called Margaret by her middle name (Rose), and it was only in her mid 30s that she began to use Margaret.
Preston's family moved to Sydney in 1885, where Preston attended Fort Street Girls' High School for two years. She showed a very early interest in art, first with china painting and then through private art classes with William Lister Lister. Preston would later, at the age of 52, write about her childhood and developing interest in art in the article "From Eggs to Electrolux," which ran in Sydney Ure Smith's Art in Australia in 1927. Although written in the third person, it offers glimpses of her legendarily strong personality. She describes her first visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales at the age of 12, recalling it as
Following her classes with Lister, Preston went on to study at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School under Frederick McCubbin from 1889 to 1894. Her studies were interrupted for a time in 1894–95 by her father's illness and death. When she returned to the school, she began working with Bernard Hall. She showed a strong preference for painting still lifes instead of people, and in 1897, she won the school's Still Life Scholarship, which afforded her a year's free tuition. In 1898, she transferred to Adelaide's School of Design, where she studied under H. P. Gill and Hans Heysen.
Early in Preston's career—especially before her marriage—she taught art to help support herself and her family. She began taking on private students while she was still at Adelaide's School of Design, setting up her own studio in 1899. She later taught at St Peter's College and at Presbyterian Ladies' College, both in Adelaide. Among her students were such notable artists as Bessie Davidson, Gladys Reynell, and Stella Bowen, who referred to her as "a red-headed little firebrand of a woman, who was not only an excellent painter, but a most inspiring teacher". Gladys Reynell and Stella Bowen attended her classes in 1908.
After her mother died in 1903, Preston and Bessie Davidson traveled to Europe, where they stayed from 1904 to 1907, with sojourns in Munich and Paris and shorter trips to Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, and Africa. In Munich, Preston briefly studied at the Government Art School for Women but was not taken with either German teaching methods or German aesthetics. She later commented, "Half of German art is mad and vicious, and a good deal is dull."
Paris suited Preston better, and she took part in the Paris Salon of 1905 and 1906. Her developing Modernist sensibility was influenced by French Postimpressionists such as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Henri Matisse as well as by Japanese art and design, which she encountered at the Musée Guimet. From Japanese art in particular she acquired a preference for asymmetrical composition, a focus on plants as subject matter, and an appreciation of pattern as an organizing method. She began to try to reduce her own work to "decoration without ornamentation".
Returning to Australia in 1907, Preston leased a studio with Bessie Davidson, and they put on a joint exhibition from which one of her paintings Onions (1905), was bought by the National Gallery of South Australia. In 1911, Preston was asked to paint a portrait of Catherine Spence for the National Gallery of South Australia. Preston went back to France (Paris and Brittany) in 1912 with Gladys Reynell, but when World War I broke out, they moved to Great Britain. There Preston studied pottery and the principles of Modernist design at Roger Fry's Omega Workshops. Later, she and Reynell taught pottery and basket-weaving as therapy for shell-shocked soldiers at the Seale Hayne Military Hospital in Devonshire. She exhibited her work in both London and Paris during this period.
Recent media