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Nora Heysen’s great claim to fame is that she was the first woman to win the Archibald Prize. Typically, the Archibald being the Archibald, the decision drew much controversy, with painter Max Meldrum criticising the result saying that women could not be expected to paint as well as men!
Heysen won in 1938 with her portrait of Madame Elink Schuurman and later scored another breakthrough when she became the first woman war artist.
Nora Heysen had impeccable credentials. She was born in 1911 in Hahndorf, South Australia, the fourth of eight children of renowned artist Hans Heysen and wife Selma. She grew up in a family of artists, studied at the School of Fine Arts in North Adelaide under F. Millward, and travelled extensively in Britain and Europe where she was influenced by Lucien Pisarro and Fantin Latour.
After returning to Sydney she was appointed official war artist in 1943. She served in New Guinea until 1946 and there met her future husband, Dr Robert Black, an authority on tropical diseases.
Her early paintings displayed mature technical skill for one so young. Her flexible brushstrokes and meticulous attention to detail developed into a freer style over the years, as she worked hard to capture the vivid first impression.
Although she possessed a remarkable talent as a portrait painter, Heysen is best known for her still-life paintings of flowers, stemming from her early memories of Hahndorf.
She had numerous solo, group and retrospective exhibitions, and her works are in all the major Australian galleries, as well as many corporate and private collections.
In 1998, Nora Heysen received the Australia Council’s Award for Achievement in the Arts and later the Order of Australia.
She died in 2003, aged 92.
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