Margaret Olley

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Margaret Olley at the reopening of the Regional Art Gallery in Maitland , 2009.

Margaret Olley OA (born June 24, 1923 in Lismore (New South Wales) , † July 25, 2011 in Paddington (New South Wales) , Sydney ) was an Australian painter with more than ninety solo exhibitions.

Life

Margaret Hannah Olley was the eldest child of farmer Joseph Olley and his wife Grace, a nurse. The family soon moved to Tully , south of Cairns , where their siblings Elaine and Ken were born, and moved on to Brisbane during the Great Depression . At the age of six, Olley attended boarding school in Townsville , where she discovered painting for herself. From 1935 she attended Somerville House boarding school in Brisbane; here her talent was promoted by the art teacher Caroline Barker. In 1941 she enrolled at Brisbane Technical College for art classes. In 1942 she moved to McMahons Point in Sydney and studied at East Sydney Technical College with her school friend, the artist Margaret Cilento.

William Dobell with Margaret Olley, 1949.

Olley graduated with honors there in 1945 and entered the Sydney art scene, where she befriended artists such as Russell Drysdale, Sidney Nolan and William Dobell . She first received wide public attention here in 1948, when William Dobell, who had portrayed her in extravagant clothing, received the Archibald Prize for this controversial painting . The intense media attention irritated the shy young woman, who also felt offended by the negative reviews of her own artistic work by the press. She had already shown her work in her first solo exhibition and won the Mosman Prize the year before .

In 1949 Olley went to Europe, the first of many other trips overseas, which she made again well into the 1970s to Europe, the United States, Papua New Guinea, India, Turkey and Cambodia. During her first stay in Europe, she studied in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and stayed there until 1953. Her father died that year, after which she returned to Brisbane to live with her mother.

The 1950s proved to be a difficult time in Olley's life, failed relationships and an abortion led to the marriage of her close companion, homosexual artist Donald Friend, as well as her alcohol problem, which she liked to talk about to overcome her artistic shyness but on which she became dependent. Olley went into rehab in 1959 and successfully sought help from Alcoholics Anonymous . From this turning point on, her painting became more and more confident and was well received by buyers. Investing wisely in real estate enabled her to have a comfortable income.

Olley's home in Paddington, 2016.
Margaret Olley with Sam Hughes at the French Painting Today exhibition , Sydney 1953.

In 1965 she bought a plot of land with a row house and a former hat factory in Paddington , where she lived and painted for the rest of her life. The house has occasionally been the setting for lively dinner parties, sometimes attended by comedian Barry Humphries and restaurant critic Leo Schofield. From the early 1970s Olley was in an open relationship with the art dealer and theater director Sam Hughes, whom she described as the love of her life, but "came and went" Hughes in agreement with Olley, which was never favored by the institution of marriage and also shied away from motherhood. In 1980, her mother's house burned down, destroying many of Olley's works and parts of her private collection. Her mother died soon after, followed by Sam Hughes in 1982.

Using his estate, Olley devoted himself to philanthropy . In 1990 she founded the Margaret Hannah Olley Art Trust , which mainly supports regional galleries. She also donated more than $ 7 million in artwork to the Art Gallery of New South Wales , including works by Pablo Picasso , Paul Cézanne and Pierre Bonnard, along with many of her own paintings. In 1997, the gallery appointed her governor for life and in 2001 named the exhibition of 20th century European works after her in her honor. Olley was named Officer of the Order of Australia in 1991 and Companion in 2006 . It received the status of an Australian National Treasure in 1997 .

In 2001, the death of friends led to another low point in Olley's life, where she contemplated suicide. With the help of medication and the Black Dog Institute , she experienced "another rebirth". With a new zest for life, she worked with Meg Stewart on her 2005 biography Far from a Still Life . For the last two decades of her life, Olley has struggled with illness. Several falls resulted in broken bones, but she remained active. At the age of 84, she created her greatest work, a triptych depicting her favorite yellow room in the Paddington house, for an exhibition in Brisbane in 2007. In her last few months, she had become weaker and weaker, but Olley took part in the Archibald Awards in April 2011 - when her portrait, this time painted by Ben Quilty, was again named the best entry of the year.

Works

  • Everlasting Daisies
  • Pink Bauhinea
  • Cornflowers and Apples , 1991
  • Venice , 1951
  • The clock
  • Double Bay and Wildflowers
  • Pink Datura in Green Vase , 1964
  • Yellow Tablecloth with Cornflowers , 2007
  • Still Life with Flowers, Plums & Oranges
  • Standing nude
  • Reclining nude
  • The Kitchen Window , 1990
  • Plumbago with Manet , 1994
  • Girl in Brown Blouse , 1966
  • Shell Collectors Wharf (Palm Beach Pit Water) , 1963
  • Ned Kelly , 2003

literature

  • Meg Stewart: Margaret Olley. Far from a Still Life. Random House Australia, 2012, ISBN 1-74275-585-2 , 625 pp.
  • Meg Stewart, Kezia Geddes: Margaret Olley. Interiors and Still Lifes. Lismore Regional Gallery, 2006, ISBN 0-95793-123-9 , 76 pp.
  • Michele Helmrich: Margaret Olley. Life's Journey. University of Queensland . University Art Museum, Newcastle Region Art Gallery (NSW), SH Ervin Museum and Art Gallery. 2009, ISBN 1-86499-942-X , 128 pp.

Web links

Commons : Margaret Olley  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Patricia Maunder: A colorful life, celebrated frame by frame. In: Sydney Morning Herald of July 27, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Olley, Margaret
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Olley, Margaret Hannah (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian painter
DATE OF BIRTH June 24, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Lismore (New South Wales)
DATE OF DEATH July 26, 2011
Place of death Paddington, New South Wales , Sydney