LUCAS, EVA G. (1885-1973)

"St. Kilda Beach, Melbourne" (c.1940)
oil on board
30 x 45cm
signed lower right
*estate of the artist
 
Eva Georgina Lucas is a forgotten, award-winning New Zealand Artist. Born Eva Freeman in Christchurch in 1885, Eva Lucas attended the Canterbury College School of Art between 1903 & 1907, where she received first class awards for her drawings from life & the antique. She illustrated a 1904 article by Robert M. Laing (BSc) on New Zealand Ceramiaceae (algae) for the journal of the New Zealand Institute & she was awarded a silver medal for drawing & painting at the 1906-7 New Zealand International Exhibition, which was held in Christchurch's Hagley Park. Lucas later exhibited with the Canterbury Society of Arts, the Auckland Society of Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1923, Lucas moved to Melbourne with her daughter & Australian-born husband Walter, also living in both Sydney & Brisbane. She was a member of the Royal Queensland Art Society, exhibiting alongside the likes of Vida Lahey, William Bustard, Caroline Barker, Jessie Trail & Frances Payne. She returned to Melbourne in the early 1930s, where she held a large painting retrospective at Hogan Gallery on Collins Street in 1934. In addition to her drawing and painting talents, she was skilled in copperwork, leatherwork, beading & pokerwork (the art of making pictures or patterns on wood using a series of deep grooves made by heated pokers). Lucas worked as a commercial artist in Australia between 1930-50 & from the late 1940s sculpted ceramic works, which she glazed and fired herself. She is recorded as a finalist in the Art Gallery of New South Wales' Archibald Prize in 1940, for a work titled Portrait. Her work is represented at the Christchurch Art Gallery.