painter, printmaker, art teacher, writer and collector of child art, was born in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern on 15 November 1894. For a few years c.1903-6 her family lived in New Zealand then in Ireland where she attended classes at the Belfast School of Art. The Andersons returned to Australia in 1906 and Frankie (as she was known) spent her teenage years in rural Victoria, where she taught herself drawing and sculpture. At the age of sixteen she went to Melbourne to study at the National Gallery School (1911-13). There she met her lifelong friends Ethel Spowers and Mary Cecil Allen . She took additional classes in sculpture and design at the Eastern Suburbs Technical College, finally qualifying as an art teacher from Swinburne Tech. In 1916 she was appointed foundation art teacher at the Junior Technical School for Girls. Because government policy forbade the employment of married women, this career ended after her marriage to Alfred Plumley Derham in 1917.

Derham took an active interest in the Arts and Crafts Society (Vic.). Inspired by Baldwin Spencer, she began to incorporate Aboriginal motifs into her designs from 1925, particularly in her linocuts of the 1930s. Her interest in Aboriginal art was no passing phase. In 1938 she visited Hermannsburg Mission in Central Australia and taught art to the young children there. She collected more than 200 drawings on this visit, which she showed in numerous exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart. In 1948 she travelled to the Aurukun Mission in far North Queensland and once again taught art to the children of the settlement. She visited Papua New Guinea for five days in 1960 and again in 1967.

From 1928 to 1963 Derham was an art teacher at the Melbourne Kindergarten Training College at Kew, where she influenced several thousand teachers. She also taught in the teacher-training program at Mercer House Associated Teachers Training College. Much of her energy was devoted to the reform of art education in Victoria through her many publications and by serving on numerous committees in the 1950s-70s. In the 1960s she represented Australia at congresses held by the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) at Manila and Montreal.

Derham was also involved in many community activities, including war relief work during World War II. In 1950 was awarded the MBE for services to the community. Despite a steady output of paintings and drawings Derham never practised full time as an artist. Nevertheless, she continued to expand her skills. In the 1930s she studied printmaking with Ethel Spowers and Eveline Syme and painting, sporadically, with George Bell from the 1930s until he died in the 1960s. She rarely exhibited, preferring to give her work away. The most comprehensive exhibition of her art was held at Jim Alexander’s Important Women Artists’ gallery in 1986. She died in Melbourne on 5 November 1987 and was buried at Kew.

Frances Derham donated her personal papers to the University of Melbourne and her children’s art collection of some 7,000 paintings and drawings to the National Gallery of Australia in 1976. A few of her own prints are in public collections, but her paintings and collages are held privately.

Writers:

Piscitelli, Barbara

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011