painter, art teacher, dress designer and textile artist, was born in Sydney. She studied art at both the Royal Art Society and the Julian Ashton Sydney School of Art. At the latter she met Charles Robert Dalgarno, son of the NSW Deputy Postmaster-General James Dalgarno, who painted seascapes. They married in 1900 and moved to Goulburn, where Charles was manager of the old Government Savings Bank until his death in 1912. His widow was left with four young children to support. Although Lucie’s first love was painting, she realised that she would need to use her artistic talents in other ways to make a living. She moved the family back to Sydney, where they lived first at Cremorne then at Coogee until finally settling at Northwood in 1921.

Disliking her first job – teaching art at a girls’ school at Bradley’s Point – Lucie did piecework for Ward & Co.'s wholesale business, designing, stencilling and embroidering evening dresses. She worked from home and was assisted by her younger son, who fetched the work to and from the warehouse. In the mid-1920s she responded to the fashion for handcrafted textiles by painting velvet and silk dress items, which she sold through David Jones department store. In the late 1920s she taught herself the technique of batik (hand-printing and dyeing textiles by the wax resist method), then enormously popular in Europe. She made batik scarves and shawls for David Jones, again assisted by her younger son who developed a special batik pen for her.

Like many others involved in the crafts, Lucie Dalgarno was interested in using Australian flora in her work. She had considerable commercial success with her kid leather and wool dress accessories of gumnut-blossoms and other Australian flowers, which she sold through the Arts and Crafts Society’s shop in Rowe Street, Sydney. In 1936 she took her first overseas trip, going to England and holding exhibitions of her dress accessories in London. In the late 1930s, with her children older and her financial commitments less onerous, Lucie Dalgarno was able to return to painting. She spent 1936-37 travelling and studying painting in Europe. In 1939 she travelled to the USA with her daughter and daughter’s family. She took a studio in New York in order to study and paint, but World War II cut her stay short. Returning to Australia, she gave travel talks illustrated with her paintings of America to share her experiences and raise money for wartime charities. Lucie Dalgarno died in Sydney in 1945.

Writers:

Mitchell, Louise

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011