PARSONS, ALICE MARY (1866-1939)

**PRICE ON APPLICATION**
 
“In The Garden” (c.1900)
Watercolour
cm
Signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney
 
Parsons is a forgotten South African-born Australian Artist, Illustrator and Woodworker. She was born in Port Elizabeth in South Africa and migrated as a child to Melbourne with her family. There she and her younger sister, Florence, trained with their uncle Robert Hawker Dowling and teacher Jane Sutherland and took classes at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, becoming a professional artist in the late 1880s. While her sister, Florence Ada Fuller, returned to South Africa and then trained in Paris, exhibiting at the Royal Academy, Alice moved to Sydney and married Alderman, Frederick William Parsons, and set up a girls day school "Wooroonook" at her residence in Strathfield. She continued to paint and exhibit professionally, illustrating several books and was appointed President of the NSW Society of Women Artists aka Society of Women Painters, by her sister-in-law, A. Hedley Parsons (a prominent painter in her own right). Alice's sister, Florence, went on to become one of the leading and influential female Australian Impressionists, although she remained close with Alice. She even appointed Florence as the Society's inaugural life drawing teacher. This impressive landscape watercolour was produced possibly in Sydney in the early 20th century, and is reminiscent of the plein air style of landscape painting that was being taught at the Julian Ashton Art School, under Sydney Long. Her work is represented at the Art Gallery Of NSW, and sadly she has been overshadowed by her sister's success.