Treania Smith

Treania Smith, 1936

Treania Helen Lindsay Smith (born December 23, 1901 in Clayfield, Brisbane , † September 21, 1990 in Bayview, Sydney ) was an Australian gallery owner and painter .

Life

Treania Smith was the only child of her Scottish-born parents Edwin Evan Smith (architect) and his wife Margaret Mackenzie, nee Lindsay. In her youth, she was surrounded by her father's artist friends, including Max Meldrum, whose school she attended in Melbourne . She studied with LJ Harvey at Brisbane Central Technical College and took sculpture lessons at Melbourne Working Men's College . In 1928 she went to London and then to Scotland , where she studied at the Edinburgh College of Art with the sculptor Alexander Carrick and the landscape painter William George Gillies.

Treania Smith, 1931.

In the early 1930s Smith returned to Australia and exhibited her work at the Victorian Artists' Society and the Society of Artists, Sydney (1932-1949). From 1932 to 1934 she studied in the class of Rayner Hoff at East Sydney Technical College , where she met Beryl Young, whose father John Young had founded the Macquarie Galleries in 1925 with Basil Burdett . Smith had her first solo exhibition here in 1934 and continued to exhibit over the next two years. Shortly thereafter, John Young accepted her as an assistant. In 1936 the Contemporary Group voted to join the group of artists with which it exhibited until the 1950s. In 1937 she showed her work with Mary Edwards, Lloyd Rees and MJ MacNally.

Treania Smith and Lucy Swanton, 1938.

In 1938 Smith acquired with Lucy Howell Swanton (1901–1981) the Macquarie Galleries , Sydney's leading commercial gallery for contemporary art, which showed all of the leading Sydney artists of the time, including Grace Cossington Smith, Grace Crowley, Margaret Preston, Jean Bellette, Margaret Olley and Elaine Haxton, but also Rupert Bunny from Melbourne. Other artists were Justin O'Brien and Ian Fairweather. The partnership with Swanton lasted until 1956, after which Smith ran the Macquarie Galleries together with Mary Killen, later Turner (1956–1976), Penelope Meagher (1966–1972) and Eileen Chanin (1976–1979) .

On December 27, 1962, Smith married the retired Commodore purser of the P&O fleet , Clive Edwin Bennett, at St. Stephen's Presbyterian Church, Sydney. Both had known each other for 30 years. Smith was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1979 . In the same year she retired to her home in Whale Beach , north Sydney, but found her retirement unsatisfactory. So she joined the Painters Gallery in Darlinghurst , where she held her last solo exhibition in 1982.

Smith had an extensive art collection, including works by Bunny, Fairweather, O'Brien, Rees, Jeffrey Smart, Donald Friend, and Roland Wakelin. She died on September 21, 1990 in Bayview and was cremated.

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  Treania Smith (center), framed by two sisters of the Voluntary Aid Detachment , 1942.

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  Treania Smith, 1950.

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  Treania Smith at the French Painting Today exhibition , Sydney 1953.

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  Treania Smith, 1953.

Works

• Late Afternoon, Long Reef (16th Hole) , 1940
• Country road , 1946
• Bridge at Waverton
• Still Life , 1982
• Lenah Valley, Hobart , 1935
• Sydney Street Scene , 1935
• Grose Road, Springwood , 1952
• Richmond Bridge, Tasmania , 1938
• Flower Piece , around 1924
• Kissing Point Road, Turramurra , around 1937
• Mountain Road , 1946
• Moored Yachts
• Landscape with Cottage
• Clear Day, Canberra
• Church Point
• Nude Study

literature

• Hazel de Berg: Treania Smith (1900-91). In: Geoffrey Dutton: Artists' Portraits . National Library of Australia, 1992, ISBN 0-64210-579-0 , pp. 82-88.

Web links

Commons : Treania Smith  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Eileen Chanin: Smith, Treania Helen Lindsay (1901–1990). In: Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 18, 2012.
• Smith, Treania (1901-1990) . In: trove.nla.gov.au
• Treania Smith (Australian, 1901-1990) . In: artnet