KILGOUR, NANCY (1904-1954)

"Kurrajong Farm" (1942)
oil on canvas
61 x 76cm
signed lower right
*Wynne Prize Finalist, 1942
*private collection, Perth
 
Melbourne-born Nancy studied at Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School. Here she met fellow student, Jack Noel Kilgour whom she married & relocated to London in the early 1930s. They became close to fellow artist William Dobell there; Nancy’s diaries are an important source of information on Dobell’s London years. Nancy studied at St Martin-in-the-Field School. From 1935, she concentrated more on her writing. In 1936 she suffered a near fatal attack of eclampsia from which she never fully recovered. In 1939 the Kilgours returned to Australia and Nancy began painting again, while continuing to write short stories and a novel (never published). Jack had painted her portrait in 1932 & soon after she resumed painting she produced Portrait of Jack Kilgour Sketching a Model (Mitchell Library Collection). She exhibited at Sydney’s Macquarie Galleries in 1941, held joint exhibitions with her husband there in 1943, 1946 & 1950 – as well as in Adelaide and Brisbane – and was a regular exhibitor with the NSW Society of Artists. In 1954, the year of her death, Nancy briefly worked as a secretary at East Sydney Technical College. Until 1994 (when she appeared in her husband’s entry), Nancy Kilgour was mentioned in none of the standard references on Australian art. If it were not for Jack, who encouraged the Newcastle Region Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of NSW and private dealers to see her work and gave transcripts of some of her diary notes to the Newcastle Region Art Gallery, she would have faded into complete obscurity.