Vida Lahey: colour and modernism

With the exception of a small oil in a family collection Wattles c.1910, probably painted by Lahey in support Ift NY of the Wattle Day League - native flowers do not appear in Lahey's exhibited works until the late 1920s. Over the next decades, gum leaves and blossom, banksia, Christmas bells, wattle, Geraldton-wax flowers and boronia appear in the titles of her works. Mountain flowers is highly unusual: it depicts flowers that were probably gathered from family properties near Canungra in the Gold Coast hinterland, including the dusky coral pea (Kenned/a rubibundal(; a white daisy 4 CD (probably Clear/a nernst//); the yellow-flowered daisy - 0 4 Senec/o amygdal/fo/ius; and the plant trailing from the left, C/emat/s glyc/no/des.44 RIGHT Mountain flowers 1951 IX /I/wercchmrnn caner .' 73x65'........i Gr:bth O.no •'ers'r,. An BELOW Sweet peas and gerberas Purchased 1943 / Collection Queensland AC Galery I' BELOW RIGHT Flower study Anzac daisies, pyrethrum, jasmine and blue toreniaj 965 vi \/Vaterc:o:our over oencil on rvove paper / 33 x 30cm Gift of the abet's sister, Mrs MW Denholm 1969 4 Collection: Queensland AC Gallery p1 i p • re t - U -. "I fiv A; WE 1 10 1. -t •.-: 4