GEACH, PORTIA (1873-1959)

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“Portrait Of Miriam Geach” (c.1920)

Oil on canvas board

59 x 49cm

Signed lower left

*private collection, Mittagong

Portia Geach is distinguished Australia Portraitist, & pioneering Feminist, and namesake for the famous Portia Geach Memorial Award. The reputation of Geach as an artist has perhaps been eclipsed by her reputation as a feminist & an advocate for women's rights. The youngest daughter from English immigrants from Cornwall, Portia & her siblings all pursued the arts; her brother a film director, her sisters were writers & philanthropists. At 17, Portia enrolled at the NGV Schools alongside AME Bale, Max Meldrum & Margaret Preston. She spent two years studying design under Frederick McCubbin & three years studying painting under Bernard Hall. She was a school prizewinner & on completing her NGV studies in 1896; the first Australian to win a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. She spent four years at the RCA studying under Lawrence Alma-Tadema, John Singer Sargent among others. She also studied stained-glass techniques at London's Central School of Arts & Crafts & later spent some time in Paris, where she studied at the Academie Julian & where she came to know Whistler. She exhibited her work in Paris, London & New York. On her return, she was elected a member of the Victorian Artists Society, with whom she regularly exhibited. She was soon exhibiting with the Royal Art Society of NSW. She divided her time between Melbourne & Sydney & regularly exhibited in both cities. Portia had been an early advocate for the empowerment of women in Australian society & in 1905 had painted a banner for the suffragette movement. She established & became founding president of the Housewives' Association of NSW. She periodically travelled to the US & Europe, where she engaged with international women's groups, while also exhibiting her artwork. Her sister, Florence, established the Portia Geach Memorial Art Award after Portia’s passing. This famous annual award is for a portrait by a woman resident in Australia & someone distinguished in Art, Letters or the Sciences.

Miriam Geach (1864-1936) was a renowned Melbourne socialite, respected philanthropist & active feminist. Together with Portia, in the early 1920s, she supervised the running of Mosspennock, an Italianate mansion in East Melbourne which was then known as 'The Ritz'. Well travelled like her sister, she was a fashion devotee, inspired by her experiences in New York, which she spoke about in numerous newspaper publications.