painter and printmaker, was born on 26 October 1888 at Thames Ditton, Surrey, England, daughter of Joseph Cowen Syme, newspaper proprietor, and Laura, née Blair, and grand-daughter of Ebenezer Syme, editor of the Melbourne Age . Raised in the family mansion at St Kilda, Melbourne, she attended the Church of England Girls’ Grammar School then returned to England to study Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1907-10. Degrees were not then awarded to women and she applied to Melbourne University for accreditation but was only granted admission to third year classics. Instead, she took out a Dip. Ed. From the university in 1914; her BA, MA from Cambridge was awarded in 1930.

Always more interested in art than academia, she went to Paris in 1922-23 and attended La Grande Chaumiére, 'under criticism’ from Maurice Denis. The following year she was back at Melbourne exhibiting with the Victorian Artists’ Society (VAS). In 1925 she held a solo exhibition, mainly of watercolours, at Queen’s Hall and produced her first woodcut, The Farmyard , a rather heavy linear work. By 1927 she was producing colour linocuts, presumably having learnt the technique from Ethel Spowers , her lifelong inseparable friend. Her solo exhibition at the Melbourne Athenaeum in March 1928 consisted largely of watercolours but two colour linocuts and four woodcuts were also included.

Inspired by Claude Flight’s 1927 textbook Lino-Cuts , Syme enrolled at Iain MacNab’s Grosvenor School of Modern Art at London in January 1929, where she (and Spowers) studied under Flight, the most influential linocut artist of his generation. From then on Syme’s linocuts reflected Flight’s brand of Art Deco motifs and techniques, his theory of 'Dynamic Symmetry’ and his passion for the Golden Section in composition. (Peers says she lectured on these at Melbourne in the late 1940s.) Later in 1929 she attended some of André Lhôte’s classes in Paris.

Back at Melbourne in 1930, Syme was included in an exhibition of prints at Everyman’s Library in December, along with Spowers and Dorrit Black . She also produced posters, including one advertising the 'Warrandyte Women’s Auxiliary Association Back to Warrandyte Christmas Carnival Exhibition of Pictures’ (c.1930). She was an active, exhibiting member of the VAS, the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria, the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors and the Lyceum Club. Her essay 'Women and Art’ (1934) is still a useful pioneering survey of the history of women artists of Victoria. She was a founding member of the University Women’s College (now University College) at the Melbourne University.

An inveterate traveller, Syme visited Europe regularly (with Spowers) and travelled to Japan to study print techniques. One of the twelve founding members of the Contemporary Group in 1932 – with Spowers, Edith Alsop , Ada May Plante , Isabel Hunter Tweddle et al. – Syme was also a regular member of George Bell’s Thursday Group. Barbara Brash 's portrait of Syme was drawn at one of these Thursday evening meetings, when the 'real’ model failed to turn up and Syme stood in. As secretary of the associated Independent Group, Syme reputedly ran the annual exhibition virtually single-handed. She organised the Red Cross Picture Library (a lending service) and in 1951 became its first chairwoman.

She also continued to paint and produce occasional linocuts until her death at Richmond on 6 June 1961. She was buried in the Presbyterian section of Brighton cemetery. In her will she left her books and £5,000 to University Women’s College.

Her prints are widely represented in Australian public collections, but her oils and watercolours are less popular. Even when held, they are rarely exhibited. Her oil on board The Snowy Mountains Highway , inscribed verso ’20 gns’ and ’202 Orrong Road, Toorak SE2, per Youngs, Melbourne’ is illustrated in Bridget McDonnell, Early Australian Paintings (exhibition catalogue May-June 2001, Carlton Vic), no.44.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan Note: Heritage biography.

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011