DREYER, HILDA (1890-1950)

"Lindy Lou" (1934)
oil on board
43 x 33cm
signed lower left
*private collection, Burradoo
 
Hilda Bevil Dreyer is a lost, award-winning Australian artist. She was born in Newtown, with South African heritage. Her sister, Helen Margaret ("Madge"), was an accomplished opera singer who studied in Europe. Hilda started painting relatively late in life. She started training in the late 1920s, studying under acclaimed artist & tutor, James Lawson Balfour. As a supplement to her studies, she also ran a studio & a sketch club in connection to Balfour's classes. From the early 1930s, Dreyer was sharing a studio with fellow painter, Elaine Coghlan, & was a regular exhibiting member of the Society Of Women Painters, exhibiting alongside Frances Payne, Ethel Stephens, Bernice Edwell, Florence Rodway & Dora Wilson. When the society expanded in the mid 1930s, Hilda established the Women's Industrial Art Society with her dear friend, Frances Payne. The first exhibition in 1935 showcased the likes of Margaret Preston, Maud Sherwood, Margel Hinder, Thea Proctor & even Dame Laura Knight. At this time she also began exhibiting at the esteemed Royal Art Society, alongside the likes of Sydney Long, Mary Edwards, William Lister Lister, James R Jackson, Lloyd Rees & Joseph Wolinski. She exhibited regularly throughout the 1930s. In 1935, she won a first prize in the Reeves & Sons painting competition. In 1936, Hilda took a painting expedition to Durban, South Africa, "complete with easels, palettes and brushes, and a fixed determination to record the countless miles of South African landscape on canvas", which she planned to exhibit in Sydney on her return. However, a change of plans saw her move to Cape Town the following year. She & her sister Madge were stranded in South Africa during World War II, but returned to Sydney in 1945. They resided with their parents at 7 Bent Street, Lindfield, until Hilda passed away at 60. Both sisters were spinsters.