Helen Elizabeth Ogilvie b. 1902 Corowa, NSW

  • Artist (Cartoonist / Illustrator) , (Printmaker) , (Painter)
While working as the director of Peter Bray Gallery in Melbourne, Helen Ogilvie organised exhibitions for such avant-garde artists as Margo Lewers, John Brack, Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd, to name a few. Her own work was also very modern and she was engaged with the Crafts Revival of the 1950s and 60s, which allowed her to make a living designing cutting edge lampshades in London for a period.
Talk | Version history | Updated Oct. 19, 2011 | Created Jan. 1, 1995
Name
Helen Elizabeth Ogilvie
Birth date
1902
Birth place
Corowa, NSW
Death date
1 August 1993
Death place
Melbourne, VIC
Gender
Female
Roles
  • Artist (Cartoonist / Illustrator)
  • Artist
  • Artist (Printmaker)
  • Artist (Painter)
Residence
  • 1963- 1993 Melbourne, VIC
  • 1956- 1963 London, England, UK
  • 1920- 1956 Melbourne, VIC
Other Occupation
  • Director of the Pater Bray Gallery, Melbourne (Director of the Pater Bray Gallery, Melbourne 1949-1955)
Active Period
  • 1922- 1991
Languages
  • English
Training
  • 1922- 1925 National Gallery School, Melbourne, VIC
Is Indigenous
No
Initial Record Data Source
  • Heritage with additions

painter, printmaker, craftworker and gallery director, was born in Corowa and grew up in the NSW countryside. From an early age she was encouraged by her mother to draw. The family moved to Melbourne in 1920 and Helen attended the National Gallery School in 1922-25. Influenced by Claude Flight’s Lino-cuts (London, 1927), in the late 1920s she began making linocuts and, a few years later, wood-engravings. She produced many for exhibition, as ex libris plates, for greeting cards, and as illustrations for privately published books such as Russell Grimwade’s Flinders Lane (1947) and J.D.G. Medley’s Stolen and Surreptitious Verses (1952).

In 1949-55 Helen Ogilvie was director of the Peter Bray Gallery in Melbourne. Aiming to show the most exciting contemporary work, she organised exhibitions of such artists as Margo Lewers , Helen Maudsley, John Brack, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman and Ian Fairweather. In 1956 she moved to London where she partly made a living designing and making modern lampshades. She also began to paint the small studies of Australian rural buildings for which she has become best known. In London she had two successful solo exhibitions – one held after she returned to Australia in 1963 – and she participated in several group exhibitions.

Back in Australia, Helen Ogilvie continued to explore the countryside, sketching and painting the humble buildings she admired which she was aware were disappearing. At the end of the 1970s she decided that she had said all she wanted to say in her art and from then on produced little work. Her interest in the art world, however, remained acute until her sudden death in Melbourne on 1 August 1993. The last solo exhibition she was able to attend opened at australian Girls Own Gallery, Canberra, on her 89th birthday, 4 May 1991. From 1990 until her death she shared her memories with the contributor—with generosity, clarity and a delicious sense of humour – for a book of her wood engravings to be published by Officina Brindabella, Canberra.

Writers:
Maxwell, Helen
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
associate of
Margo Lewers
1908
Artist
associate of
John Brack
1920
Artist
associate of
Charles Blackman
1928
Artist
associate of
Arthur Boyd
Non-Artist/Designer/Curator
associate of
Sidney Nolan
Non-Artist/Designer/Curator
associate of
Ian Fairweather
Non-Artist/Designer/Curator
associate of
Helen Maudsley
Non-Artist/Designer/Curator
associate of
Jessie Mackintosh
1892
Artist (Photographer), Artist (Printmaker), Artist (Painter)
Notification of Change of Address
Date
1941
linocut, 9.1 x 13.9 cm, held Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat, VIC.
Collections
May 1991
Exhibition (exhibited at)
australian Girls Own Gallery, Canberra, ACT
Citations:
  • Medley, J.D.G, (1952), Stolen and Surreptitious Verses, (Contributed illustrations)
  • Grimwade, Russell, (1947), Flinders Lane, (Contributed illustrations)
  • Munk, Frances, (1996), From Banksias to Slaughter Houses: The art of Helen Ogilvie, (A review of the travelling exhibition 'All this I knew' curated by Sheridan Palmer and organised by Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat, VIC Place: Imprint, 31/1, Autumn, pp25-26)
  • McPhee, John, (1991), Helen Ogilvie, (Place: (Introduction), **CHECK** australian Girls Own Gallery catalogue, Canberra, ACT)
  • Germaine, Max, (1991), A Dictionary of Women Artists of Australia, (Place: Roseville East, Sydney, NSW)
  • Butler, Roger, (1981), Melbourne Woodcuts and Linocuts of the 1920's and 1930's, (Place: City of Ballarat Fine Art Gallery catalogue, Ballarat, VIC)
  • Maxwell, Helen, (September 1993), Helen Ogilvie 1902-1993, (Place: Art Monthly, no.63)
See also:
  • ADD section 10, plate 425