Grace Cossington Smith

Grace Cossington Smith
Grace Cossington Smith, self-portrait, 1948, oil on cardboard, 39.5 x 30.7 cm, National Portrait Gallery (Australia).
Born	(1892-04-20)20 April 1892 Neutral Bay, New South Wales, Australia
Died	20 December 1984(1984-12-20) (aged 92) Roseville, New South Wales
Nationality	Australian
Known for	Painting
Awards	Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) (1973) Officer of the Order of Australia (OA) (1983)

Grace Cossington Smith AO OBE (20 April 1892 – 20 December 1984) was an Australian artist and pioneer of modernist painting in Australia and was instrumental in introducing Post-Impressionism to her home country. Examples of her work are held by every major gallery in Australia.

She was born Grace Smith, in Neutral Bay, Sydney, second of five children of London-born solicitor Ernest Smith and his wife Grace, née Fisher, who was the daughter of the rector of Cossington in Leicestershire. The family moved to Thornleigh, New South Wales around 1890. Grace attended Abbotsleigh School for Girls in Wahroonga 1905–09 where Albert Collins and Alfred Coffey took art classes. From 1910–11 she studied drawing with Antonio Dattilo Rubbo. From 1912–14 she and her sister lived in England, staying with an aunt at Winchester where she attended drawing classes as well as classes at Stettin in Germany, and was exposed to paintings by Watteau in Berlin.

After returning to Sydney in 1914 she attended Dattilo Rubbo's painting classes alongside Norah Simpson and took an interest in modernist theories. Her The Sock Knitter (1915) was arguably Australia's first post-Impressionist painting.