sculptor, was born in Sydney on 1 October 1895, daughter of William McArthur Mayo, an insurance executive, and Lila Mary, née Jaxelby. The family moved to Brisbane where Daphne attended the Eton High School at Hamilton before studying for a Diploma in Art Craftsmanship at the Brisbane Central Technical College in 1911-13, specialising in modelling under L.J. Harvey. In 1914 she was awarded the first Wattle Day Travelling Art Scholarship. When her departure was delayed by the outbreak of war she attended Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School and worked with an Ipswich (Qld) stonemason, Frank Williams.

Arriving at London in 1919, she worked as an assistant to the sculptor John Angel before being admitted to the Sculpture School of the Royal Academy. Upon graduation in 1923, she was awarded the gold medal for sculpture and the Edward Stott Travelling Scholarship. For the next two years she toured France and Italy, beginning her travels with fellow Brisbane student Lloyd Rees , to whom she became engaged in 1923 although no marriage eventuated. Mayo returned to Brisbane in 1925 and resolved to pursue an independent career in her home city. She never married. She soon received large sculptural commissions, which were carved in situ, including the Brisbane City Hall tympanum (1927-30), the Queensland Women’s War Memorial, Anzac Square (1929-32) and relief panels for the original chapel at Mount Thompson Crematorium (1934).

She performed equally monumental feats to promote art in Queensland, suspending her sculptural work for much of 1934-35 in order to do so. Her vision was shared with her friend, the painter Vida Lahey . In 1927 they founded the Queensland Art Fund to purchase contemporary British works for the Queensland Art Gallery; in 1936 they established the state’s first Art Reference Library. In 1931 Mayo obtained for the Queensland Art Gallery its first major monetary bequest, the Godfrey Rivers Bequest, with which contemporary Australian works were acquired, initially through prize exhibitions. Her major feat for art in Queensland came in 1935 when she led a public appeal for the £10,000 needed to secure the John Darnell Bequest for Queensland University. For her public service she was awarded the Society of Artists’ medal in 1938 and the MBE in 1959.

Mayo travelled in Europe, the USA and Canada in 1938-39 to observe modern developments in sculpture. On her return she moved to Sydney in search of a more stimulating environment and to undertake the bronze doors for the Public Library of NSW (1940-42). She worked speculatively on small-scale sculpture, experimented with ceramics and exhibited regularly with the Society of Artists until 1958. With Lyndon Dadswell and Arthur Fleischmann , she staged the Three Sculptors exhibition in 1946, Sydney’s first sculpture exhibition for years. The Olympian was acquired in 1949 by the Felton Bequest (NGV), but the mainstay of her late career were her portrait commissions.

Appointed Queensland Art Gallery’s first woman trustee in 1960, Mayo resumed living in Brisbane and undertook her last large commission, a statue of Sir William Glasgow (1961-64). Her public career of extraordinary tenacity and courage ended in 1967 when she resigned her post as trustee, voicing her disapproval of the Gallery’s administration. She stayed in Brisbane in her retirement while maintaining her Sydney studio.

Mayo died on 31 July 1982. A retrospective exhibition of her sculpture was held at the University Art Museum, Brisbane, in 1981. Her work is widely represented in Australian state and provincial galleries. {Bronzes of “Banjo” Paterson and his creation, The Jolly Swagman, are in the main street of Winton, Qld, home of the Waltzing Matilda legend. The NPG has her bronze portrait bust of {Lahey?}.

Writers:

McKay, Judith

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011