AustLit

'Among the first decisions a biographer must face is where to start the narrative of their subject’s life and how to deal with chronology. Anne-Louise Willoughby chose to begin her biography of Australian artist Nora Heysen with a discussion of Transport driver, one of Heysen’s most celebrated paintings produced during Heysen’s stint as a war artist. Willoughby’s decision was sensible. It enabled her to stress from the outset that art was at the centre of Heysen’s life, and to signal some of her fundamental concerns. The aircraftwoman Heysen depicted is ‘a professional … strong, authoritative’, all of which applies to the artist herself. Willoughby’s biography celebrates Heysen’s considerable achievements, but it was also conceived as part of a larger project of restitution that redresses ‘the historical biases that have shadowed women’s contributions, in particular to Australian art’. The book adds to a slowly growing corpus of biographies of women artists; Jo Oliver’s Jessie Traill: A Biography, published in February 2020, is the most recent. In addition, it relates to institutional initiatives such as the National Gallery of Australia’s Know My Name exhibition (2020–21), which showcased the work of Australian women artists.' (Introduction)

'In 1938, Norah Heysen, the daughter of celebrated landscape painter Hans Heysen, won the Archibald Prize with a portrait of socialite Madame Elink Schuurman. A simple cameo will demonstrate what she was up against.'(Introduction)