Hilda Rix Nicholas
| Hilda Rix Nicholas | |
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Rix Nicholas, c. 1920, dressed as "the spirit of the bush"
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| Born | 1 September 1884 Ballarat, Victoria, Australia |
| Died | 3 August 1961 (aged 76) Delegate, New South Wales, Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
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| Known for | Painting, drawing |
| Notable work |
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Hilda Rix Nicholas (née Rix, later Hilda Rix Wright, 1 September 1884 – 3 August 1961) was an Australian artist. Hilda Rix was born in the Victorian city of Ballarat. Her father was an education administrator and poet, her mother was a musician and artist. She studied under a leading member of the Heidelberg School, Frederick McCubbin, at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School from 1902 to 1905 and was an early member of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors. Following the death of her father in 1907, Hilda Rix, her only sibling Elsie and her mother travelled to Europe where she undertook further study in London and then in Paris. Her teachers during the period included John Hassall, Richard Emil Miller and Théophile Steinlen.
After travelling to Tangiers in 1912, Rix held several successful exhibitions of her work, with one drawing, Grande marche, Tanger, purchased by the French government. She was one of the first Australians to paint post-impressionist landscapes, was made a member of the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français, and had works hung in the Paris Salon first in 1911 and again in 1913. The family evacuated from France to England after the outbreak of World War I. A period of personal tragedy followed, as Rix's sister died in 1914, then her mother in 1915. In 1916 she met and married George Matson Nicholas, only to be widowed the next month when he was killed on the Western Front.
Returning to Australia in 1918, Rix Nicholas once more took up professional painting, and held an exhibition of over a hundred works at Melbourne's Guild Hall. Many sold, including In Picardy, purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria. Following a period painting in rural locations in the early 1920s, Rix Nicholas returned to Europe. A 1925 exhibition in Paris led to the sale of her work In Australia to the Musée du Luxembourg, followed by an extensive tour of her paintings around regional British art galleries. There followed representation in other exhibitions, including at the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, and the Royal Academy of Arts, both in London. Following the inclusion of several works in the 1926 Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts Spring exhibition in Paris she was made an Associate of that organisation.
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