In 1938, the art world was in an uproar. Nora Heysen had just taken out the coveted Archibald Prize, the most prestigious portrait painting competition in the country. She was the first woman and, aged 28, the youngest artist to do so.
Art, at the time, was seen as a man’s game. This was summed up by aggrieved fellow artist Max Meldrum, whose own work had been pipped at the post by Nora’s portrait of Madame Elink Schuurman, the French wife of the Dutch consul-general to Australia.
“A great artist has to tread a lonely road,” Max opined. “He needs all the manly qualities – courage, strength and endurance. He becomes great only by exerting himself to the limit of his strength the whole time. I believe that such a life is unnatural and impossible for a woman.
“If I were a woman I would certainly prefer raising a healthy family to a career in art. Men and women are differently constituted. Women are more closely attached to the physical things of life. They are not to blame. They cannot help it, and to expect them to do some things equally as well as men is sheer lunacy.”
“He was very threatened by Nora’s award,” explains Tracey Lock, curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA).
“The prize money was life-changing. And the male artists who had traditionally seen themselves as the income providers for their family felt very much cut off at the knees to think that a woman would be awarded that amount of money, which today would be around $60,000. There was a huge outcry.”
Who was the first woman to win the Archibald?
In the course of her incredible career, Nora would also go on to be the first Australian female war artist. Yet for decades, her accomplishments were lost to the passing of time. Fortunately, that’s all starting to change.
Nora is one of the 50 women who are being celebrated in the Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890-1940 exhibition which started its run at AGSA and has now moved to the Art Gallery of NSW. Nora was part of an unprecedented wave of women who travelled the world at the turn of the 20th century. It’s time, says Tracey, to celebrate the boundaries they broke and the incredible work they created along the way.
Born January 11, 1911, Nora was the fourth-born of the eight children acclaimed landscape painter Hans Heysen and his wife, Sallie, welcomed into the world.
The family lived in the Adelaide Hills at their home, The Cedars, in Hahndorf. And from a young age Nora was fascinated by her father’s craft, often trailing him to see him at work.
“She’d follow him out of the house when he was painting and then she’d take her materials and they’d paint together,” Rosie Heysen, Nora’s great-niece, explains.
“Dame Nellie Melba gave Nora her first professional palette when she was a teenager. Early on she was exposed to people like Anna Pavlova and other incredibly talented people who were doing things outside of the normal way.”
Rosie’s father, Peter Heysen, who established a foundation in his aunt’s name, adds that while many men of the time may have discouraged female artists, Hans was not amongst them.
What did Nora Heysen paint?
“When my grandfather was alive,” Peter says, “I remember they would be sitting at the dining table discussing artists they knew in common, paints, different colours and the light. What struck me was that they were talking as equals.”
Nora’s talent became obvious quickly and she told her parents she wanted to go to art school. Studying at the School of Fine Arts in Adelaide, by the age of 20 she had already won numerous prizes. She’d also had works acquired by three state galleries.
Despite this, she was often riddled with self-doubt.
“When people praised her work, she was never really sure whether they were praising her just because she was the daughter of Hans,” says Tracey. “It’s a really tough gig to be talented but born into that shadow.”
To separate herself from her father’s work, she chose to focus on portraiture and still life, rather than landscapes.
Where did Nora Heysen study?
In 1933, her first solo exhibition allowed her to self-fund a trip to London to study. Arriving in London in 1934, she was excited by what lay ahead. Instead, she found herself once again dejected by exchanges with her mostly male teachers who criticised her work. They would question her colour palette, her brushwork and more, some labelling her works mechanical and lacking emotion.
“It is funny. In Australia I had a surfeit of praise and here I get nothing but adverse criticisms and jolts in all directions,” Nora wrote in one letter home.
Still, it was an incredible learning curve. It opened her up to using bright, high-key colours and finding a freedom in her brushwork. She’d photograph these new works, sending the photos home to her father for advice on her progress. In typical fashion, Hans wouldn’t spare his daughter’s feelings and give honest feedback.
Meanwhile, to continue funding her stay, which lasted three and a half years, Nora was taking commissions and making other sales in Australia.
“She was sending home works, but she started just signing them with her Christian name to see if they would sell as well,” Rosie reveals.
“But she didn’t realise that her father was finishing the signature off and then selling them.”
Nora returned back to home shores in 1937, and the following year moved from the Adelaide Hills to Sydney. Months later, she won the Archibald Prize, her reputation firmly established as an artist in her own right.
Who was Australia’s first war artist?
In October 1943, she made history again. This time, it was as the first woman appointed as a war artist. She was granted the honorary rank of Captain.
“She obviously could have contributed to the war effort at home but she wanted to be right in the thick of things, so she volunteered herself,” Rosie says.
Nora, adds Peter, “was told to only paint and draw the women involved. But of course she took no notice. And so she did men and also local inhabitants, the Indigenous people in New Guinea and landscapes as well.”
“She’d sneak into places she wasn’t supposed to be,” laughs Rosie.
It was in New Guinea that life shifted again for Nora. Before her discharge in 1946, she met tropical disease specialist Dr Robert Black. The pair fell in love but there was a slight complication – the doctor was already married. Despite this, she waited things out.
Was Nora Heysen married?
Scandalising society at the time, the pair moved in together ahead of his 1953 divorce, marrying a few months after. Nora was in her 40s, and there were no children from the marriage. Her work slowed down – although she continued to paint.
“Her output really wasn’t as great as it could have been,” says Tracey. “She did a lot of being the wife, hosting dinners and doing the right thing. When frankly, her letters reveal, she’d have rather been in the other room, painting. So there was a great deal of frustration out of that.”
The pair travelled in the tropics often, Nora capturing their adventures. Robert was unwell for a large part of their marriage with malaria and a range of other ailments. In 1972 the marriage ended after Robert left her for a younger woman.
“This was a quiet period for her,” Tracey says of what came next. “She lived a life of what she called comfortable anonymity. She was at peace with that because she was not a woman or an artist that pushed herself forward.”
Gradually, she faded away from public consciousness. But in 2000, a retrospective exhibition at the National Library of Australia in Canberra sparked new interest in this extraordinary artist. Nora was on hand to witness it.
“All of a sudden people could see her work en masse, and it was a revelation,” Tracey says. “It was at that moment – she was 89 – where she finally said, ‘I am an artist in my own right’.”
What is the Nora Heysen Foundation?
Peter too saw the show. And he convinced his aunt to allow him to set up the Nora Heysen Foundation. Exhibits and memorabilia are now housed at The Cedars, which is open to the public for viewing.
“Nora was a bit suspicious about it,” Peter laughs. “She was a bit uncertain about what I was trying to do. We tidied up her old studio and I remember her coming down. She lent on a walking stick and said, ‘This is not my studio, this is a museum!’
“At the moment, it’s still a bit of a museum, but we are going to try to take it back, as much as we can, to being like a studio.”
Nora passed away in 2003, at the age of 92. And as a new generation of art lovers discovers her at Dangerously Modern, Peter hopes that they will also take heed of the other women of that time whose names aren’t on the tip of our tongues anymore – but deserve to be.
“All artists, despite their gender, should be recognised on their artistic merit,” he says. “I think this exhibition helps drive that home.”
Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890-1940 opened at the Art Gallery of NSW on October 11. Find out more and purchase tickets HERE
The article originally appeared in the November 2025 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Subscribe so you never miss an issue.
