PORTIA GEACH (1873-1959) heralded the age of the modern Australian woman. Sophisticated, creative and a formidable advocate for women, she was equally championed for her campaigns and pummelled for interfering in the business of men. The first Australian woman admitted to London's Royal Academy of Arts, upon her return to Australia she took charge of her career, first as an artist, then becoming a leader in the women's rights movement. She fought for equal pay, access to political power and better standards of healthcare. She represented Australia at women's rights assemblies in America, exhibited her paintings internationally, and, in 1929, famously led Sydney's potato boycott as a challenge to high prices. The Portia Geach Memorial Award was established by the will of Florence Kate Geach, Portia's sister. It is Australia's most prestigious art prize for portraiture by women artists - yet Portia has been written out of history. This book tells her story for the first time.
ISBN 9 781763 679900
Paperback
377 Pages
Excerpt:
There are no prizes for guessing the Melbourne street where, on Christmas Eve of 1873, Portia Swanston Geach was born. Though a room in her father’s drapery business in the centre of the city was not the most auspicious or peaceful of places to arrive into this world, it defined Portia’s identity. Her parents not only had a ready-made middle name, but a father’s Shakespearian desire and respect for strong, powerful women provided the first. And Portia, one suspects, was forever grateful.
Edwin and Catherine Geach chose well. Portia from a young age hovered between the worlds of carefree childhood and the world of trade. Immersed in city life, she observed commercial transactions with the same commonplace perspective as a suburban child catches frogs in the local creek. Busy parents give children no choice but to be independent; survival is child’s play. Yet, for all her later public statements on mothering, she never discussed her childhood.
Portia was young when she entered the National Gallery Art School aged 16, and about the right age when in 1897 she strode through the doors of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she just happened to be the first Australian woman to write her name on the list of students. The year before, she rode proudly through the hills of Gippsland, man-style and wearing culottes, knowing her outfit would cause a stir. The performance alerted the burgeoning women’s movement that she was unfazed by a challenge. Two decades later Portia took on the role of President of the Housewives Association of New South Wales as though she had waited her whole life to be asked to lead but, failing that, formed the organisation and made the position for herself.
When she returned to Australia from the Royal Academy and a short stint studying in Paris there were none of the sold-out exhibitions, prizes and public-gallery purchases that greeted her male colleagues on their return. She had to construct her own studio and fund her own exhibitions; unable to quieten her need to serve, she also became the champion of the housewife. She boycotted potatoes when the market barons put prices up, weathering their abuse and mockery, all the while elegantly clothed in her cloche hat and matching dress. She lectured women on the benefits of nutritional food and, above all, did everything possible for the survival of mothers and their children.