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Early life and education

While at Junior school in St Andrew’s College, Bendigo, where her father was principal in 1902, aged seven, Freeman took out prizes for writing and sewing. and one for sewing again in the following year. and another for ‘Church Instruction’ in 1906, the year in which she and Ola Cohn played castanets in a school concert, an indication of her enjoyment of performance.

Teaching qualification

In 1910, the Education Department issued results in which Freeman, studying under Arthur Woodward at the School of Mines, achieved an ‘Elementary Pass for ‘drawing from a flat example’ advancing to a Pass for ‘drawing from models or objects’ and ‘drawing plant forms from nature and in 1912 and 1913 passing the exam in ’drawing an ornament from a cast in outline’ Other tasks in which she passed were ‘Elementary modelling’ and ‘modelling ornament from the cast (1913

Freeman was employed in July 1913 as assistant art instructor at the Bendigo High School. Meanwhile she continued study at the School of Mines, receiving a Pass in ‘Modelling Human Figure from Cast’ and an ‘Advanced Grade 1 Pass’ in ‘Modelled Design’

Socialite

In 1914 the Bendigo Independent announced her debut at the Tennis Ball with her photograph being published in the Bendigonian She received her Secondary Certificate as a Drawing Teacher in December 1914 For a fancy dress ball at Girton, as an ‘old girl’ of the school, she dressed as ‘Powder and Patches’ (an 18th century aristocrat) in March 1915 and in May that year returned for a ‘Dickens Evening’ dressed as Dick Swiveller. For Australia Day celebrations in Bendigo, and to raise funds for soldiers at the local camp, Freeman joined ‘the Keystone Moving Picture Company,’ a street performance, also another fundraiser, featuring ‘The Keystone Komedy Kompany’ at Bendigo’s Princess Theatre, in both of which she appeared as the silent movie dancer 'Carmencita.’ Freeman’s soldier brother Ross, a signaller, was stationed in Lemnos and newspapers noted that he was the chance recipient of some of his family's war donations.

Art school

In February 1916 Freeman commenced her studies at the National Gallery of Victoria art schools. where Clarice Beckett and her sister, and Elma Roach, were also, and where they were reported as ‘working very hard’, relieved by the periodic return home to Bendigo on holidays, where on one occasion Coleman host a student friend Joan Lindsay. Freeman enjoyed her social life and performing; while in Melbourne she appeared at the Playhouse in a ‘moving tableau of early Melbourne’ in a dress worn at Government House in the 1850s, and in 1920 was invited to the Lord Mayor of Melbourne’s ball in honour of Edward VIII, the Prince of Wales. With Roach, in July 1920, she acted with other Gallery School students in an oriental romance based on Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh. She was a member, with Norah Gurdon, Dora Wilson, Elma Roach, Isabel May Tweddle, Helen Ogilvie,Louis McCubbin, and Daryl Lindsay of a club for former students formed in 1916 and presided by the oldest, Peter Kirk, which held a number of reunions which received wide publicity in the early 1920s. In June 1923, members of the club were responsible for a fancy dress ball at St Kilda Town Hall, with Freeman, who dressed as a peacock for the event, contributing the huge stencilled lanterns that lit the venue. They next held an all-night dance at St Mary’s Hall in East St Kilda on 31 August 1923.

Artist

Freeman was invited with Joan Lindsay to the Crivelli’s at Ferrars Place, Albert Park to a dance celebrating Rene Crivielli’s Legion of Honour, and in January 1923 spent time at his family's Mount Macedon property to break from sketching in the Malmsbury district, where she was taught watercolour techniques by Matthew James MacNally who was working there beside Harold Herbert.

Freeman and Elma Roach formed a close alliance and in March 1923 rented a cottage in Mooroolbark where they made paintings toward an exhibition that opened the following May. The reviewer Alexander Colquhoun, though he gently critical of Roach’s technical shortcomings, in Freeman’s work he found ‘more technical grip and a better sense of values,’ continuing that she showed ‘a creditable disinclination to rely on a pretty water-color manner and a consistent striving after true definition.’ Arthur Streeton in the Argus, while acknowledging that this was their first exhibition so ‘rather immature’, agreed that ‘Miss Freeman reveals herself as the better craftsman [sic], and displays an interesting sense of colour to which is added free handling of pigment’. The show received kindly attention also from The Age, whose critic made no distinction between the artists’ capabilities and remarked that their works were ‘distinctly Australian in atmosphere and subject matter’ while The Australasian merely repeated Streeton’s commentary. George Bell, writing in the Sun News-Pictorial under a heading ‘Gums and Glimpses’ saw promise in how ‘Madge Freeman expresses the white gum in all its poetic beauty, and is tenderly sympathetic with the atmosphere of her skies. The freedom, the clear, true palette she uses, and her forthright work throughout mark her as an artist of whom more will be heard.’

Only weeks later the pair contributed to the display and sale of arts and crafts at the Melbourne Town Hall. Their artefacts, which were reported to have ‘drawn a crowd’, included ‘hair combs, umbrella handles, egg cups, serviette rings, bag handles, hat pins and quaint pendants dangling on necklets of black ribbon’ all in ‘polished, tinted and painted woods.’ Another show of their lacquerwork including powder boxes, card trays, fruit bowls and dress ornaments, was held in Jessie Traill’s Collins Street studio for Christmas shoppers, and was noted in Table Talk.

Europe

In 1923 numbers of former National Gallery students had left Australia to continue studying or exhibiting in Paris, London or America, including Ethel Spowers, Edith Grieve, Nancy Lyle, and Lilian Pentland, and winners of the gallery travelling scholarship Marion Jones, Adelaide Perry, and Laurie Honey (a.k.a. Taylor). Freeman and Roach were saving from their craft sales for their own overseas excursion which they planned for 1924, and spent the early weeks of that year bidding farewell to friends and family, then departed for London, travelling second-class on the SS Medic on 16 February that year.

On 23 June Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll opened an exhibit of Australian artists that included work by Freeman, was hailed by Sydney’s The Sun newspaper critic as ‘Healthy Art,’ being told that the London organisers were ‘glad to find that Australian art continues to be healthy and vigorous, rebuffing the decadence shown by the freak schools’, by which modernism was meant. Freeman encountered other Australian artists also in Paris. Her assimilation was rapid; in May 1925 she had a work accepted for the Paris Salon.

Exhibitions

• 1923, from 9 May: Joint exhibition by Madge Freeman and Elma Roach. Fine Art Society's Gallery, 100 Exhibition St., Melbourne
• 1923, June: Display at Melbourne Town Hall of painted woodcraft by Freeman and Roach
• 1923, 16 June–7 July: Bendigo Art Society's annual exhibition, with Charles Wheeler, H. Septimus Power, Charles D. Richardson, Dora L. Wilson, Allan. T. Bernaldo and Madge Freeman. Bendigo Art Gallery
• 1923, from 22 August: The Women’s Art Club, with Cumbrae Stewart, Dora Wilson, Nora Gurdon, Madge Freeman, Jessie Traill, and A. M. E. Bale. Athenaeum, 188 Collins Street, Melbourne
• 1923, 11-18 December: joint exhibition of craftwork at Jessie Traill’s studio. Edwards Building, 178 Collins St., Melbourne
• 1924, from 23 June: Exhibition of Australian Art, with Abby (Abraham) Alston, David Baker, Leslie Bowles, Penleigh Boyd, Rupert Bunny, Isaac M. Cohen, Charles Conder, George James Coates, Ethel Carrick-Fox, Bessie Davidson, Roy De Maistre, E. Phillips Fox, Madge Freeman, Bessie Gibson, Agnes Goodsir, Elioth Gruner, Clewin Harcourt, Hans Heysen, Marion Jones, W.A. Kermode, George Lambert, Fred Leist, Sydney Long, John Longstaff, W. Lister, Dora Meeson, Harold Parker, Adelaide Perry, H. A. Power, James Quinn, Janet Cumbrae Stewart, Arthur Streeton, and Laurence B. Tayler. Royal College of Arts gallery, London
• 1924, 1–11 October: Inclusion in absentia in Women’s Art Club group show. Athenaeum, 188 Collins Street, Melbourne