Florence Aline Rodway :: biography at Design and Art Australia Online

Florence Aline Rodway b. 1881 Hobart, Tasmania

Also known as Florence Rodway

Artist (Draughtsman) , (Painter)

While Florence Aline Rodway had a splendid career as a portraitist she preferred to do more complex compositions with figures. Together with the artists such as Thea Proctor, Margaret Preston, Sir John Longstaff, Arthur Streeton and Hans Heysen she represented Australia in the second London exhibition of contemporary art of the Empire at the Imperial Institute in South Kensington in 1928.

Talk | Version history | Updated Oct. 19, 2011 | Created Jan. 1, 1995

Name

Florence Aline Rodway

Also known as Florence Rodway

Birth date

11 November 1881

Birth place

Hobart, Tasmania

Death date

23 January 1971

Death place

Hobart, Tasmania

Gender

Female

Roles

Artist (Draughtsman)
Artist (Painter)

Residence

c.1906- c.1910 Sydney, New South Wales
c.1902- c.1906 London, England, UK

Other Occupation

art teacher

Active Period

1897- 1951

Languages

English

Training

c.1906 Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School, Sydney, New South Wales
1902- 1906 Royal Academy Schools, London, England, UK
c.1897- c.1901 Hobart Technical College, Tasmania

Is Indigenous

Initial Record Data Source

Heritage with additions

Biography

painter, pastellist and illustrator, was born on 11 November 1881 at Hobart, daughter of Leonard Rodway, a dentist and botanist, and Louisa Susan, née Phillips. She studied art at the Hobart Technical College (1897, 1899-1901) under Ethel Nicholls and the sculptor Benjamin Sheppard; fellow pupils included Mildred Lovett and Eileen Crow. After exhibiting with the Art Society of Tasmania from 1898 and teaching art at the College in 1902, she travelled to London to study at the Royal Academy Schools under Sargent, Bacon, Leslie, Storey and other visiting masters, for which she won a four-year scholarship. She gained a credit in the Academy examinations with work in which Bertram Stevens saw 'breadth of treatment, fecundity of imagination and persistent earnestness’.

After returning to Australia in 1906, Rodway set up a studio in Sydney and continued to study under Sydney Long at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School. Her dramatic depictions of draped figures entered with several other works in the 1907 First Exhibition of Women’s Work at Melbourne were referred to as 'titanic’ by D.H. Souter. In the first issue of Art in Australia (1916) her portraits were described as having 'considerable power … certainty and grace’. As well as oil studies, she drew black-and-white illustrations for journals such as the Lone Hand , e.g. illustration to Arthur H. Adams’s poem 'Loneliness’ in June 1907 (p.177), a very odd drawing titled The Sisters showing a naked (dead?) woman in a cave accompanied by a skeleton (September 1907, 494) and illustrations to Furnley Maurice’s poem 'Exile’ in May 1907, 105. 'The Australian Girl as seen by Florence Rodway’, one of a series, was published on 1 January 1910, 282(?). Sleep , a pastel of a sleeping girl awarded an Honorable Mention at the 1909 Society of Artists’ exhibition, was reproduced in the magazine on 1 April 1910, accompanying a review of the show which stated:

Miss Rodway has come with pastels into her kingdom, to which her familiar charcoal studies seem to-day but a highway. Unlike her charcoals, she does not over-work her pastels; and the several children and fair girls that she shows are handled with a most refreshing directness.

Rodway was an active member of the Society of Artists from 1908 to 1930 and a committee member in 1912. She was also a foundation committee member of the Society of Women Painters in 1910 and a member of the exhibition committee in 1910-12. By then she was receiving regular portrait commissions, especially for children and mostly in pastel or pencil. Three of her pastels, Toffee (a little girl), a portrait, and The Interview , were purchased for the Art Gallery of NSW in 1910, 1916 and 1920 respectively. By 1916 she was producing about twenty portraits a year but really preferred to do more complex compositions with several figures, like The Interview , in which a prospective young woman employer is interviewing a servant (evidently a cook) accompanied by her daughter. She received commissions to paint famous figures like Sir Adrian Knox (1920, ML), Sir William Cullen, Dame Nellie Melba, Julian Ashton, W.C. Wentworth and Henry Lawson (1913, ML). In 1919 the Art Gallery of NSW commissioned portraits of J.F. Archibald (1921) and Major General Sir William Bridges, the University of Sydney commissioned a portrait of Sir Alex McCormick.

Rodway exhibited throughout her life, most frequently before her marriage in 1920 to Walter Moore, a civil engineer, the birth of a daughter and the family’s return to Hobart. Even so, her work was included in the 1923 Exhibition of Australian Art at Burlington House, London, and in the following year’s British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. With Thea Proctor, Margaret Preston and thirteen male artists—including Sir John Longstaff, Arthur Streeton and Hans Heysen—she was again chosen to represent Australia (with The Interview ) in the second (1928) London exhibition of contemporary art of the Empire at the Imperial Institute, South Kensington. She had paintings in the 1934 Women Artists of Australia exhibition at Sydney and in the 1950-51 exhibitions of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors (when living in Melbourne). She died in Hobart on 23 January 1971.

Writers:: Bell, Pamela
Date written:: 1995
Last updated:: 1992

associate of

Mildred Esther Lovett

1880

Artist, Artist (Draughtsman), Artist (Printmaker), Artist (Sculptor), Artist (Painter)

associate of

Sydney Long

1871

Artist (Painter), Artist (Printmaker)

associate of

David Henry Souter

1862

Artist (Cartoonist / Illustrator), Artist (Painter)

associate of

Thea Proctor

1879

Artist (Industrial / Product Designer), Artist (Printmaker), Artist (Painter)

associate of

Margaret Preston

1875

Artist (Painter), Artist (Printmaker), Artist (Ceramist)

associate of

Sir John Longstaff

1861

Artist (Painter)

associate of

Arthur Streeton

1867

Artist (Draughtsman), Artist (Printmaker), Artist (Painter)

associate of

Bernice E. Edwell

1880

Artist, Artist (Printmaker), Artist (Painter)

associate of

Edith Lilla Holmes

1893

Artist (Painter)

associate of

Helen Dora Lempriere

1907

Artist (Draughtsman), Artist (Printmaker), Artist (Sculptor), Artist (Painter)

associate of

Alice Jane Muskett

1869

Artist (Cartoonist / Illustrator), Artist (Painter)

associate of

Violet Emma Vimpany

1886

Artist (Sculptor), Artist (Printmaker), Artist (Painter)

associate of

Date: 1912
Medium: pastel on paper

72.5 x 49.5cm

Sleep

Date: 1910

The Sisters

Date: 1907

Collections

Citations:

(1 January 1910), The Australian Girl as seen by Florence Rodway, (series Place: 282(?))
Backhouse, Sue, (1988), Florence Rodway, (Place: Australian Dictionary of Biography 11, ed. Pike, D., Shaw, A., Clark, M., Nairn,B., Serle, G., and Ward, R., vols 1-6, Melbourne 1966/1976 (1988) and Tasmanian Artists of the Twentieth Century, Hobart 1988)
Interview with Hazel de Berg, (8 December 1965), Rodway, Florence, (Place: National Library of Australia, Canberra, oral history tape 156)
(1 April 1910), The Art of the Year, (Place: Lone Hand, 665)
Souter, D. H., (1909), Miss Florence Rodway: Comments on her work, (Place: Art and Architecture, 6)
Ambrus, Caroline, (1984), The Ladies' Picture Show, (Place: Sydney, NSW)
ed. Kerr, Joan, Florence Aline Rodway by Bell, Pamela, (Place: Heritage, Craftsman House, Sydney, NSW)

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Florence Aline Rodway b. 1881 Hobart, Tasmania

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