Grace Adela Williams Crowley (1890-1979), painter, was born on 28 May 1890 at Forrest Lodge, Cobbadah, NSW, to native-born parents Henry Crowley, grazier, and his wife Elizabeth, née Bridger.
When Grace was aged about 10 years the family moved to nearby Barraba. Three years later Grace’s parents sent one of her pen-and-ink drawings to the New Idea magazine which awarded her a prize.
Having been home schooled by a governess, Grace spent a year at boarding-school in Sydney in 1907 where she attended Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School one day a week.
Back in the bush, she didn’t do any more drawing after her mother sacked the maid and introduced Grace to household duties.
Following a painting trip by Julian Ashton to Glen Riddle about 1910, Grace’s interest revived. Grace went on to study full time at the Sydney Art School from 1915 and in 1918 became an assistant-teacher there.
Having exhibited, from 1916, with the Society of Artists, Grace resigned her teaching position in 1923 and prepared for the society's travelling scholarship. She went to Glen Riddle on holidays, completed several rural subjects and longed to do something of men shearing, but her father denied her opportunity. Although Grace didn’t win the scholarship, she was visited Melbourne and worked briefly in Bernard Hall's classes. Her parents grudgingly gave her the fare to Europe, and her brother Wilfred sent her an annual stipend. In February 1926 she left with Dangar for France, intending to study at the Slade school in London.
Grace's four years in Paris were the most enjoyable of her life. Grace worked at Colarossi's without a teacher, acquired her own studio-home at Montrouge in October and from early 1927 was enrolled at André Lhote's academy at Montparnasse, where she spent three years. An occasional writer, Grace had contributed a chapter to The Julian Ashton Book (Sydney, 1920) and was to send letters from France and lectures on cubism for publication in the Sydney Art School's journal, Undergrowth.
After they had attended Lhote's summer school at Mirmande, near Montélimar, Dangar sailed for Sydney in 1928. The following year Grace spent some weeks at Mirmande, attended Albert Gleizes's classes in Paris and visited museums in Paris, Italy, The Netherlands and Britain, while her Académie Lhote paintings were exhibited in various Parisian salons in 1928 and 1929.
Grace returned to Glen Riddle in February 1930 upon learning her mother was ill, and found her easel thrown upon a rubbish tip. By then Crowley was probably the most experienced modernist painter in Australia.
In March 1930 her French work was seen in the Group of Seven exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries, Sydney; a modernist portrait of her cousin Gwen Ridley was a startling sight in the 1930 Archibald prize competition. Grace came to Sydney in 1932 to help Dorrit Black with exhibitions, art classes and a sketch club at her short-lived Modern Art Centre where Grace held her first solo exhibition, chiefly showing work from France.
Obtaining a studio in George Street, she and 'Rah' Fizelle established the Crowley-Fizelle school, the principal centre for modernist painting. It closed in 1937.
Exhibition 1, at David Jones's Art Gallery in August 1939, was a climax for the Sydney semi-abstract movement, showing work by Balson, Crowley, Fizelle and others. In the 1940s and early 1950s Balson's and Grace's body of abstract 'Constructive Paintings' were unique in Australia. They participated in group exhibitions at the Macquarie Galleries and David Jones, but, because neo-romanticism in Sydney and expressionism in Melbourne had become the fashion, their work lost prominence. In 1949 Grace taught abstract painting at East Sydney Technical College before handing over to Balson.
In 1954 Crowley bought High Hill, a house in Oxley Drive at Mittagong. Balson painted there at weekends and decorated the ceiling of the living-room with a large, constructivist design; he later lived in the garden-studio. Grace was content to be at High Hill: the 'garden and the house and their care seemed to take up my time'.
After Balson died in August 1964, Grace gave her energy to ensuring his place in art history. Her own work was reassessed and her paintings were suddenly acquired for art museum collections. A major exhibition, Balson, Crowley, Fizelle, Hinder (1966), and a retrospective exhibition of her work (1975) were mounted by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The feminist movement, as well as the growth of Australian art history, brought admirers in Grace's late years.
Small and very slight of build, Grace was somewhat vague in manner and self-effacing in promoting Balson's work. Yet she was strong-willed in her own self-liberation from housework in the bush to painting in Sydney and Paris (and in her insistence on the pronunciation of the name Grace, to rhyme with 'slowly'). She dressed with chic, favouring the simplest, cream, linen dresses and silk scarves. She lived in immaculate, sparsely decorated, light-filled spaces, with pots by Dangar and paintings by Balson.
High Hill was sold in 1966 and Grace bought a modern flat at Manly. She kept her George Street studio until 1971. Grace died at her home on 21 April 1979 and was cremated. Her estate was sworn for probate at $318,441. She bequeathed her remaining paintings to Australian art museums and her papers to the Mitchell Library, Sydney. Balson's portrait (1939) of Grace is in the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
What year did Grace purchase High Hill ? A= first digit. B=last digit.
When did Grace die. C=4th digit year.
What year did Grace leave with for France. D=last digit.
When was Grace born. E= Second digit of day.
Balson's art work is in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Year. F=Third digit.
S34 FB.(D-A)A(D+B-5) E150 ((E-C)+(B-A))E.(C-F+A)(D-A)(F-A)
(FTF) Muppet95