Description
Adelaide Perry was part of the Modernist art movement in Australia and one of the innovative women printmakers between the wars. This biography explores her life and work over a period when the lives of women changed radically.
Adelaide studied at the National Gallery School in Melbourne and won the travelling scholarship in 1920 to study at the Royal Academy of Art in London. She taught first at Julian Ashton’s Sydney School of Art before establishing the Adelaide Perry School of Drawing and Painting where she mentored a number of significant Australian artists.
The Adelaide Perry Gallery has been named in her honour and holds the prestigious Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing each year, continuing this remarkable Australian woman artist and teacher’s legacy.
Author information
Jo Oliver is a writer and printmaker. She holds a Master of Arts and has worked for many years in oral history and historical research. Four children’s picture books Jo wrote and illustrated have been published. Each of her books uses printmaking as an illustration medium and her love of the printmaking process was her initial connection with the work of Jessie Traill.
Jo received a Creative Fellowship from the State Library Victoria to research and to write about Jessie Traill using her extensive papers held in the collection. Other sources included Tom Roberts collection and the Anderson papers from State Library of NSW. Jo travelled within Australia and to France and the United Kingdom to find out more about Jessie Traill’s life, meet people who knew her and see places she lived and worked. Jo has spoken about her research at the National Gallery of Australia and State Library of NSW and Victoria.
Jo has an ongoing interest in life stories and is currently researching a new biography about another Australian woman artist.
