Hilda Rix Nicholas

Hilda Rix Nicholas was an Australian artist. She was one of the first Australians to paint post-impressionist landscapes. She studied under a leading Australian Impressionist, Frederick McCubbin. She painted in an academic style, generally choosing still lifes and flowers as subjects.

About Hilda Rix Nicholas in brief

Hilda Rix Nicholas was an Australian artist. She was one of the first Australians to paint post-impressionist landscapes. She studied under a leading Australian Impressionist, Frederick McCubbin. Her works are held in most major Australian collections, including the Art Gallery of South Australia, Australian War Memorial, National Gallery of Victoria, and the Queensland Art Gallery. She died in 1961 at Delegate, New South Wales, where she lived with her husband Edgar Wright and their only child, a son named Rix Wright, born in 1930. She painted in an academic style, generally choosing still lifes and flowers as subjects, though she painted some large landscapes in the Beechworth region. Rix was a staunch critic of modernism and disdainful of emerging major artists such as Russell Drysdale and William Dobell. Her pictures followed a conservative modern style, portraying an Australian pastoral ideal, and reviews of her exhibitions grew more uneven. She had a studio in Melbourne’s Flinders Street, and was a committee member of the Austral Salon, a meeting place for intellectual women interested in the fine arts. Her sister Elsie was a singer and actor who performed at regional shows, and collaborated in designing posters for the Salons of theAustralasian Salon, and performed at the meetings of the. Austral Salon. Her mother and sister both played musical instruments as children, performing songs and dances at local dances and concerts. Her father, Henry Finch Rix, was a mathematics teacher and a poet who wrote in support of Australian Federation, and played Australian rules football for the Carlton Football Club.

She grew up in a gifted and energetic family, with two sisters, Elsie Bertha and Emily Hilda, and a brother, George Matson Nicholas. As a child, Hilda was enthusiastic about drawing, though in most other respects she was not an outstanding student. Her artistic efforts drew praise while she was attending high school at Grammar Girls Grammar School in Melbourne. Her only sibling Elsie and her mother travelled to Europe where she undertook further study, first in London and then Paris. After travelling to Tangier in 1912, Rix held several successful exhibitions of her work, with one drawing, Grande marché, Tanger, purchased by the French government. In 1926 she returned to Australia, and in 1928 she married Edgar Wright, whom she had met during her travels in the early 1920s. Her last solo show in 1947 was In Picardy, bought by the National gallery of Victoria. She lived in Delegate until her death in 1961, when she moved to a retirement home in Sydney. She is survived by her husband, Edgar Wright. She also had a son, Roxanne Wright, who was born in 1928, and two daughters, Elizabeth Sutton and Hilda Bertha, who were born in 1877 and 1884, respectively. She married George M Watson Nicholas in 1916, only to be widowed the next month when he was killed on the Western Front.

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