HAYWARD, FLORENCE JANE (1859-1948)

"Figure By The Coast, Victoria" (c.1900)
oil on board
20 x 43cm
signed lower right
*private collection, Geelong
 
Hayward is a lost Australian Female Impressionist & Heidelberg School Painter. Her initial art training was as a student at the National Gallery of Victoria, School of Painting, alongside fellow students such as Jane Sutherland, May Vale, Clara Southern, Frederick McCubbin, Emanuel Phillips Fox, John Llewellyn Jones and Tudor St. George Tucker. Following her marriage, she studied painting with legendary Heidelberg School Painter, Walter Withers who in 1891 had moved into a studio in the AMP Buildings in Collins Street, Melbourne, & attracted a large number of private pupils. Hayward had also attended Withers’ painting classes en plein air at Heidelberg which strongly influenced her sensitive treatment of light & tone in landscape paintings typically depicting scenes of Heidelberg, Eltham & Healesville. From 1885 to 1906, she exhibited regularly at the Victorian Artists' Society, initially under the name ‘Miss F. J. Pickering’ & from 1898, under ‘Mrs. F. Hayward.’ Her contemporaries included Clara Southern, May Vale, Ina Gregory & Jane Sutherland. “Her subjects in oils include landscapes of Heidelberg & Healesville as well as portraits & still-life. In her later work the influence of Withers can be clearly seen in both tonality and brushwork.” In her later years, Hayward lived in Dendy Street, Brighton, but died at Mont Park on 4 February 1948, aged 93 years. Having been raised in a family of some standing in the Heidelberg community, she was one of the few female artists of the period who were able to work in oils, as opposed to watercolours (the most common medium for female artists of the period). This work was likely to have been exhibited at the Victorian Artists' Society. This painting is the finest example of Hayward's work to come to market. Her works are SO rare in fact, that she is not represented in any National or Regional Gallery. Only a handful of her works have appeared on the secondary market.