Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors

The Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors is the oldest surviving women's art group in Australia.

History

The Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors (MSWPS) was began in 1902 as a monthly gathering of ex-students from the National Gallery School which members called the Students' Art Club. They added the indigenous word "Woomballana" (meaning either 'everlasting beauty' or 'search for beauty') to identify their Art Club, later changing its title to The Women's Art Club, then the Melbourne Society of Women Painters. The present designation was adopted in 1954.

Many of its early members were plein air painters and identified with the Heidelberg School, which was regarded widely as a male group but which involved many women. The interest in the decorative arts at the opening of the twentieth century attracted other members who were significant craftspeople. By the 1920s, the Society was assimilating the generation of professional women artists emerging from the Melbourne National Gallery School, with significant women artists, representatives of both the Meldrum tonal school and modernism, being invited to join.

Its members included:

• A.M.E.Bale,
• Lina Bryans,

• Ola Cohn,
• Amalie Colquhoun,

• Sybil Craig,
• Peggie Crombie,

• Janet Cumbrae-Stewart,
• Ethel Carrick Fox,
• Maidie McGowan
• Anne Montgomery,
• Hilda Rix Nicholas,

• Helen Ogilvie,
• Ada May Plante,
• Dora Serle,
• Clara Southern,
• Violet Teague,
• Isabel Hunter Tweddle,
• Dora Wilson,
• Majorie Woolcock,