JONES, ELVA A. (1909-1998)

"Burning Off, Burragorang Valley" (1948)
watercolour
37 x 49cm
signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney

Elva A. Jones is a lost Australian Female Modernist. She studied at East Sydney Technical College under Fred Leist with contemporaries such as Jean Appleton. During this time, she exhibited with the Australian Watercolour Institute alongside Vida Lahey, Kenneth MacQueen, Blamire Young, Rah Fizelle, B.E. Minns and Thea Proctor. Her work was commended in the Sydney Morning Herald & Brisbane Courier for her contributions to the Institute's 1932 Annual Exhibition. Elva continued to work as a commercial artist and illustrator into the 1950s, contributing artwork for Herbert Rumsey's "The Pioneers Of Sydney Cove" (1937). Little is known about her life after this point, but we know she lived much of her life in Rockdale as a spinster, like many female artists of her generation, and is buried in Woronora Cemetery. This Modernist masterpiece was completed as part of a series of works in the Burragorang Valley, in the Blue Mountains in the late 1940s. There is a distinct influence of fellow female Australian Modernists, such as Grace Cossington Smith, Eveline Syme and Dorrit Black.