Biography

Born in 1890, Ethel Spowers was a modern woman living and working in the modern age of the 1920s and 1930s. As a female artist she had to struggle with gender bias and divide. Women artists were not unheard of but were not taken as seriously as male artists.⁽¹⁾ The impact of the First World War and the further loss of life from the Spanish influenza provided an opportunity to liberate women from historically female defined roles to pursue interests in male dominated fields. Her philanthropic endeavours included support of the Children’s and Women’s hospitals with time and money. Her dedication as an artist eventually afforded her great admiration from her peers and critics.

The daughter of newspaper media mogul William George Lucas Spowers, Ethel Spowers was afforded a private school education where she matriculated Melbourne Church of England Girls Grammar as prefect in 1908.⁽²⁾ Her family upbringing encouraged her in the arts, with her mother Annie Christina Spowers (nee Westgarth) and Grandfather William Westgarth, both skilled at painting and drawing. A family trip to Europe in 1909-1910 afforded her an opportunity to attend an art school in Paris.⁽³⁾ This introduction encouraged her to enrol and complete a full course in drawing and painting at Melbourne’s National Gallery School from 1911-1917.⁽⁴⁾ Students exhibited annually at the National Gallery of Victoria, and as a member of the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria she began to regularly exhibit in their exhibitions. In 1918, selected members of the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria were invited to exhibit with the Arts and Crafts Society of New South Wales.⁽⁵⁾ At this exhibition Spowers sold her first work to a public institution with the National Art Gallery of New South Wales (now the Art Gallery of New South Wales), Sydney acquiring The Kite.⁽⁶⁾ In 1920 Spowers held her first solo exhibition of 54 works at the Decorations Gallery, Melbourne.⁽⁷⁾ Works of art included black and white drawings, watercolours and two oils and was noted for its fairy-tale and nursery rhyme themes.⁽⁸⁾ In 1921 Spowers returned to Europe for an extended stay where she exhibited with fellow Australian artist Mary Reynolds at the Macrae Gallery, London.⁽⁹⁾ While in Europe Spowers continued further studies at the Regent Street Polytechnic, London and Academié Ranson in Paris.⁽¹⁰⁾ Her good friend Eveline Syme joined Spowers to study life drawing at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris in 1923.⁽¹¹⁾ By 1927 Spowers held an addition three further solo exhibitions with two at the New Gallery, Melbourne (1925 and 1927) and one in Sydney at the Grosvenor Galleries (1926).⁽¹²⁾ These exhibitions continued to present fairy-tales and themes around children, however Spowers also introduced relief prints (woodcuts/linocuts) into her oeuvre, probably influenced by the works of her contemporaries Christian Waller and Napier Waller and the style and subjects found in Japanese art. By 1928 regard for Spowers artistic talent was recognised with works of art adorning the cover of Woman’s World: An Illustrative Monthly for Australian Woman,⁽¹³⁾ an article in The Australian Home Beautiful⁽¹⁴⁾ and illustrated a book of poetry by Maurice Furnley⁽¹⁵⁾ and pages in the Adam Lindsay Gordon Memorial Volume.⁽¹⁶⁾ The Ethel Spowers memorial exhibition noted her style had two distinct periods, with works produced between 1924-1928 as ‘delicate and charming, soundly constructed and gay in colour, comprising water-colour and line drawings, wood-engravings and colour linocuts in the Japanese method.’⁽¹⁷⁾

Returning to London in 1928, Spowers attended the Grosvenor School of Modern Art under the tutelage of Claude Flight and Iain
Macnab.⁽¹⁸⁾ The Grosvenor School of Modern Art’s training in the linocut print and the use of block colour shifted Spowers artistic style to a simplified and dynamic form that embraced a rhythmic design. This was seen as her ‘modern’ period from 1929. The Japanese method of colour printing was exchanged for the British technique with the use of solid block colour. Unlike other students of Iain Macnab and Claude Flight who explored the modern age through transport and industry, Spowers imbued her works with a sense of vivacity and elegance in her designs through the liveliness of her every-day; with scenes of children and family life including picnics, urban street scenes and children at play. Critical attention was bestowed upon Spowers works for their vibrancy, bold and simplified form.⁽¹⁹⁾ So enamoured with the linocut medium and how it was a modern medium for a modern age, Spowers demonstrated the linocut technique during the annual exhibition of the Art and Crafts Society of Victoria,⁽²⁰⁾ and contributed to a group exhibition promoting the medium with Dorrit Black, Eveline Syme and Eric Thake at the Everyman’s Lending Library in Melbourne.⁽²¹⁾ Both the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the British Museum, London had acquired works by Spowers in 1930.⁽²²⁾ She would return to study with Claude Flight and the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in 1931. Spowers continued the advancement and promotion of the modernist style though the media and lectures, frequently challenging the established doctrines in Australia.⁽²³⁾ Spowers became a founding member of Contemporary Group in Melbourne and as an agent for Claude Flight and his circle in Australia. Advancing art practices in Australia, Spowers taught at the Swinburne Technical College, Melbourne in the mid-1930s.

Aside from her creative pursuits, Spowers was an active philanthropist; participating in fundraising exhibitions (including an exhibition to raise funds for a permanent water supply for Hermannsburg mission) and making donations to children’s and women’s hospitals, bushfire relief, the Red Cross and war relief efforts. In 1938, probably owing to Spowers gradual ailing health, she arranged for artist Helen Ogilvie to paint a specialised children’s ambulance with nursery rhyme themes to improve the experience for children undergoing medical transport care.⁽²⁴⁾ Ethel Spowers was diagnosed with breast cancer in the late 1930s and passed away in 1947 from related metastasises.⁽²⁵⁾ Although she is reputed to have destroyed some of her work towards the end of her life (or the family did after), a memorial exhibition of her prints and watercolours was held in Melbourne in 1948.⁽²⁶⁾ Through her lifetime she had submitted works of art to at least 85 exhibitions nationally and internationally including six solo exhibitions. Since her passing, Spowers has been included in many exhibitions and been the subject of many social and academic papers on her work and life.

By her death Australia has lost one of the most gifted and original of its woman artists.⁽²⁷⁾

References

Coppel, Stephen, ‘Spowers, Ethel Louise (1890–1947)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, [internet] https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/spowers-ethel-louise-11748/text21007, published first in hardcopy 2002, accessed online 28 July 2021
1) Herbert, Harold, ‘Art: Miss Ethel Spowers: A Mixed Exhibition’, The Australasian, Melbourne, 9 December 1933, p. 16
2) ‘Public and Matriculation Examinations’, The Ballarat Star, Ballarat, 21 January 1908, p. 1
3) Topliss, Helen, Modernism and Feminism: Australian Women Artists 1900-1940, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1996
4) Certificate of Completion, National Gallery of Victoria Art School, Melbourne, signed Bernard Hall, 15 February 1918
5) Falaise, ‘Arts and Crafts Society’, The Australasian, Melbourne, 12 April 1919, p. 680
6) Ethel Spowers, The Kite (1918), watercolour, pen and ink on paper, 24.6 x 22.8 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, purchased 1918, Acc No. 4435, visit https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/4435/
7) Exhibition Catalogue; Decorative Drawings by Miss E.L. Spowers, Decoration Galleries, Melbourne, [22]-[29] June 1920
8) ‘Art Exhibition’, The Argus, Melbourne, 22 June 1920, p. 7 and; ‘Decorative Art’, The Age, Melbourne, 23 June 1920, p. 12
9) ‘About People’, The Age, Melbourne, 2 November 1921, p. 7
10) Topliss, op. cit.
11) Social Notes, The Australasian, Melbourne 3 February 1923, p. 44
12) Exhibition catalogues; Exhibition of Works by Ethel Spowers, The New Gallery, Melbourne, 4-15 August 1925; Ethel L. Spowers, Grosvenor Galleries, Sydney, 1-19 June 1926 and; Exhibition of Wood-cuts and Water-colours by Ethel Spowers, The New Gallery, Melbourne, 2-13 August 1927
13) Taylor, Frances (ed.), Woman’s World of Australia, Melbourne, vol. 6, no. 1, 1 December 1925, cover (illus.)
14) ‘The Linen Cupboard’, The Australian Home Beautiful, United Press, Melbourne, vol. 6, no. 1, 2 January 1928, p. 34-36 (illus.)
15) Furnley, Maurice, Arrows of Longing, Alexander McCubbin, Melbourne, 1921
16) Vidler, Edward (ed.), The Adam Lindsay Gordon Memorial Volume, The Lothian Publishing Co, Melbourne, 1926
17) Exhibition catalogue; Memorial Exhibition by Ethel Spowers, Georges Gallery, Melbourne, 7 September – 16 September 1948
18) ‘Social Notes’, The Australasian, Melbourne, 4 August 1928, p. 14; ‘Wood Engravings: Brought from London’, The Herald, Melbourne, 14 May 1930, p. 11, and; Coppel, Stephen, Linocuts of the Machine Age: Claude Flight and the Grosvenor School, Scolar Press in association with the National Gallery of Australia, Aldershot, 1995
19) ‘Art Exhibitions: Lino-Cuts’, The Times, London, 13 July 1931, p. 10; Young, Blamire, ‘Art Shows Reviewed: Color Prints by Younger Artists: Interesting Collection’, The Herald, Melbourne, 4 April 1932, p. 10; ‘Designs in Lino. Cut.’, The Age, Melbourne, 5 April 1932, p. 8; Streeton, Arthur, ‘Art Exhibitions: Display of Lino Cuts’, The Argus, Melbourne, 5 April 1932, p. 9; ‘A Woman’s Letter’, The Bulletin, Sydney, Double Christmas Number vol. 53 no. 2757, 14 December 1932, p. 55; Simpson, Colin, ‘Prints by 50 Artists’, The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 8 March 1933, p. 10
20) ‘Arts and Crafts Exhibition’, The Age, Melbourne, 12 October 1935, p. 25
21) Exhibition invitation card; Exhibition of Linocuts, Everyman’s Lending Library, Melbourne, 9-24 December 1930
22) ‘Personal’, The Argus, Melbourne, 24 September 1930, p. 6
23) Spowers, Ethel, ‘Modern Art’, The Australasian, Melbourne, 26 April 1930, p. 17
24) ’Nursery Rhymes in Ambulance’, The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 11 August 1938, p. 25
25) Certificate of Death, Ethel Spowers, 5 May 1947, signed A. Fegan, Registrar, 9 June 1947
26) Memorial Exhibition, op. cit.
27) Ibid.