sculptor, was born in Parramatta on 25 September 1907. She studied art at East Sydney Technical College from 1923 on a scholarship awarded to her from Drummoyne Public School. She specialised in sculpture, studying under Rayner Hoff from 1924. In 1930 she was awarded a Diploma in Art (Sculpture Honours), the first Art Diploma awarded at the College. She gained various prizes while a student, including an award in the 1929 Society of Artists’ Competition, and her work attracted critical attention.
Hoff, who described McGrath’s student progress as 'exceptionally brilliant’, designed and edited a book on her work which was published in 1931 with contributions from notable establishment figures, including Norman Lindsay and J.S. McDonald. Commissions included displays for Farmers department store, Pan for Beale & Co. in 1931 and illustrations for Katherine Susannah Pritchard’s The Earth Cover (1932).
For three years (1930-33) McGrath worked as an assistant to Rayner Hoff on the sculpture for the Anzac Memorial in Sydney, reputedly modelling much of the relief work. In 1933 she sailed for London with her family, attended carving classes run by John Skeaping and produced a number of portrait heads. She travelled in Europe in 1934-35 and later taught art at a girls’ school in Carlisle. In 1936-38 she illustrated books of humorous verse and cartoons for Punch , the jokes being provided by Albert Frost, whom she married in 1938. She moved to Washington DC (USA) in 1941 when her husband was appointed to the British Embassy and still lives there. She has not worked as a professional artist since this move.
Eileen McGrath was the most prominent and perhaps most accomplished artist in the group of (predominantly female) sculpture students at East Sydney Technical College whom Hoff developed into a coherent 'school’ of sculptors which dominated Sydney sculptural production in the inter-war decades. This liberated McGrath, and others, to produce an art which would possibly have not been allowed to them otherwise. Freedom from conventional constraints was won by taking on much of Hoff’s identity and the result was a markedly uniform body of work, yet a quite distinctive and powerful one.
- Writers:
- Edwards, Deborah
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
