EVANS, TYDFYL (1887-1975)

"Sunset" (c.1920)
Watercolour
17.5 x 34.5cm
Signed lower left
*private collection, Sydney
.
Evans is a forgotten Australian Female Impressionist. She was the daughter of a prominent Welsh Mining Engineer, & product of the Bristol School of Mines, John Evans, who came to Australia at 23 to manage the Stockton colliery. As a result, Tydfyl grew up in Lorn, Maitland, N.S.W. From the early 1920s, Tydfyl was a member of the Royal Art Society & Society Of Women Painters, where she exhibited regularly across the following two decades alongside contemporaries, Hilda Rix Nicholas, Thea Proctor, Violet Teague, Vida Lahey, Janet Cumbrae Stewart, Dora Wilson, Ethel Stephens, Jessie Trail & May Gibbs. She was also an established member of the Australian Watercolour Society. Evans was particularly well known for her Impressionistic landscape watercolours, influenced by the legendary Hans Heysen, in particular her renderings of trees. In fact, she was primarily known as a "tree" painter in the media. A chance meeting in the late 1930s with prominent local Newcastle doctor, Dr. A.W. D'Ombrain, lead to an acclaimed, illustrated, collaborative publication, "A Gallery Of Gumtrees" (1938). The botanical-style Gum Tree reference book was filled with over 20 original, detailed illustrations by Tydfyl. So popular was the book, the Red Cross Society sent a copy to the Duchess Of Kent, who passed the book onto her Royal Highness, who wrote - "The Duchess Of Kent was delighted with the charming and very interesting book which you sent, and she is looking forward to seeing the beauties of Australia, about which her Royal Highness has heard so much." Examples of Tydfyl's work are very rare, with most examples in the Newcastle Library Collection.