PAINT LIKE A GIRL

As an exhibition tours the country, we revisit the incredible – and unsung – career of Australia's first female Archibald Prize winner, Nora Heysen.

- TIFFANY DUNK

In 1938, the art world was in an uproar.

Nora Heysen had just taken out the coveted Archibald Prize, the most prestigious portrait painting competition in the country. She was the first woman and, aged 28, the youngest artist to do so.

Art, at the time, was seen as a man's game. This was summed up by aggrieved fellow artist Max Meldrum, whose own work had been pipped at the post by Nora's portrait of Madame Elink Schuurman, the French wife of the Dutch consul-general to Australia. “A great artist has to tread a lonely road,” Max opined. “He needs all the manly qualities – courage, strength and endurance. He becomes great only by exerting himself to the limit of his strength the whole time. I believe that such a life is unnatural and impossible for a woman.

“If I were a woman I would certainly prefer raising a healthy family to a career in art. Men and women are differently constituted. Women are more closely attached to the physical things of life. They are not to blame. They cannot help it, and to expect them to do some things equally as well as men is sheer lunacy.”

“He was very threatened by Nora’s award,” explains Tracey Lock, curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA).

“The prize money was life-changing. And the male artists who had traditionally seen themselves as the income providers for their family felt very much cut off at the knees to think that a woman would be awarded that amount of money, which today would be around $60,000. There was a huge outcry.”