STOKES, CONSTANCE (1906-1991)

**PRICE ON APPLICATION**
 
"Painting Palette & Notebooks"
various sizes
each signed
*estate of the artist
*private collection, Adelaide
 
Stokes was a leading Australian Modernist. She trained at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School until 1929, winning a scholarship to continue her study at London's Royal Academy of Arts. Although Stokes painted few works in the 1930s, her paintings & drawings were exhibited from the 1940s onwards. She was one of only two women, & two Victorians, included in a major exhibition of twelve Australian artists that travelled to Canada, the UK & Italy in the early 1950s. Her work was even exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC in 1941. Influenced by George Bell, Stokes was part of the Melbourne Contemporary Artists, a group established in 1940. Her were well-regarded for many years after the group's formation, in contrast to those by many of her Victorian modernist colleagues, with favourable reviews in the UK & Australia. Following a large break from painting due to motherhood, from 1964 she resumed painting & exhibiting through the 1970-80s. She was the subject of a retrospective exhibition that toured Victorian regional galleries including the Geelong Art Gallery in 1985. She is little-known in comparison to some other women artists including Cossington Smith, Preston & Beckett, but her fortunes were revived somewhat as a central figure in Anne Summers' 2009 book The Lost Mother. Her art is represented in most major Australian galleries, including the NGA & NGV.
 
These notebooks include various sketches, Europe travel itinerary, art history notes, art instruction, materials & techiniques.