Vida Lahey: colour and modernism

Vida Lahey: Colour and Modernism One of Queensland's best loved artists, romanticist Blaniire Young. the Meidroni Schooi's Vida Lahey (1882-1968) is recognised as Alexander Coiquhoun and modernist George Bell Vida Lahey c.1927 much for promoting art and art education as - they praised Lahey's work 'with rare unanimity, BELOW she is for her own paintings. Lahey was taught which they considered placed her in the front rank The carters' rest, Eagle Street 1913 by R Godfrey Rivers at the Brisbane Technical of Australian artists',3 1iVate'coOur / 33 x 42cm / Purchased 2005 College before studying at the National Gallery Collection: Queensland Ad Gallery School in Melbourne in 1905-06, and again in That colour was a major consideration for Lahey 1909, under Frederick McCubbin. Her most is indicated in numerous work titles, such as famous work, the Queensland Art Gallery Blue and gold 1923, Emerald and gold 1926 and .1 Collection's Monday morning 1912 became Vermilion and blue 1930 - the latter described an icon for later feminists as a study in brilliant contrasts showin I I B azaleas in a blue bowl against a vermili From the 1920s on Lahey received universal background with blue forget-me-nots'H praise for her colourful flower studies, which Young wrote at the same work as 'strik(ing t were considered exceptional even at a time when strong chord between the blue flower studies by Australian modernists such as Margaret Preston, Nora Heysen and Adriar Feint proliferated. She showed an early intere: in colour, as her light-filled The carters' rest. Streeton. who Eagle Street 1913 attests; her restrained of Impressionism caused much comment Brisbane's Royal Queensland Art Society direction nO it is too individual to be ln itateo In 1916, Lahey travelled to London to establish No one in Australia so far has painted flowers a home base for her brothers, who were fighting their surroundings with such a powerful expire in World War One At the end of the war she in watercolours a studied for some months at famous Parisian a schools, including with Ethel Carrick Fox in p She travelled and studied in Italy, but it was the few weeks in 1920 that Lahey spent in St Ives,fir Cornwall, attending New Zealand artist Franc, Hadgkins's sketching classes, that 'applied' I a quickening shock to my sensibili ie ' re-energised her i n t e r e s t in C O l O U r ' - & The colouris4-1 t I ' Comments in exhibition reviews from the 1 the 1940s were unanimous in praising the vi # of Lahey colour and technique. The Syd modernists' experimentation, along with t r of the 1960s Colour Field painters, made plain the significance of colour for Australian artists iir the twentieth century. Rarely, however, has ' Australian painter t h Vida Lahey' pale , b A in 1 9 ' A! The high point : ance ti ' Zvi 3 30, when m Moore, on the occasion of her Melbourne exhibition at the Fine Art Society Gallery, wrote that while 'art critics in Melbourne are well known artists, with some difference in outlook' - notably traditionalist Arthur Stree a , a '