STEWART, ELSIE DAVIDSON (1920-2015)

"Hunter Valley Stud" (c.1950)
Watercolour & gouache
30 x 43cm
Signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney
 
Stewart is a forgotten Australian Modernist. She attended Sydney Girls’ High School and was awarded a Government Scholarship to study art at the East Sydney Technical College from 1935 to 1941, when she was awarded a Diploma in Illustration Art for the highest work of the year. She worked in the NSW Government Drafting Office during WW2. An illustrator and watercolourist, her subjects included still life, animals, landscapes of New South Wales and the Southern Highlands, historic buildings in Sydney and the Blue Mountains, and boats and lighthouses around Sydney Harbour and Pittwater. She was elected a member of the Australian Watercolour Institute in 1973, exhibiting regularly throughout Australia with the association from 1962 and in the Wynne Prize in 1964 and 1969. Her sister, Joyce Orchard (nee Stewart) was the manager of the Notanda Gallery in Rowe Street, Sydney from the late 1940s to 1965. Her work is the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, the National Trust of Australia and numerous private collections in Australia, United Kingdom, USA and New Zealand.