Margaret Preston
| Margaret Preston | |
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Margaret Preston outside her home in Berowra, 1936.
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| Born | April 29, 1875 |
| Died | May 28, 1963 (aged 88) |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Style | Modernism |
| Spouse(s) | William George "Bill" Preston |
Margaret Rose Preston (29 April 1875 – 28 May 1963) was an Australian painter and printmaker who is regarded as one of Australia's leading modernists of the early 20th century. In her quest to foster an Australian "national art", she was also one of the first non-Indigenous Australian artists to use Aboriginal motifs in her work.
Margaret Rose Preston was born on 29 April 1875 in Port Adelaide to David McPherson, a Scottish marine engineer, and Prudence McPherson. She was the first-born child; her sister Ethelwynne was born in 1877. The family called Margaret by her middle name (Rose), and it was only in her mid 30s that she began to use Margaret.
Preston's family moved to Sydney in 1885, where Preston attended Fort Street Girls' High School for two years. She showed an early interest in art, first with china painting and then through private art classes with William Lister Lister. Preston would later, at the age of 52, write about her childhood and developing interest in art in the article "From Eggs to Electrolux," which ran in Sydney Ure Smith's Art in Australia in 1927. Although written in the third person, it offers glimpses of her legendarily strong personality. She describes her first visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales at the age of 12, recalling it as
Following her classes with Lister, Preston went on to study at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School under Frederick McCubbin from 1889 to 1894. Her studies were interrupted for a time in 1894–95 by her father's illness and death. When she returned to the school, she began working with Bernard Hall. She showed a strong preference for painting still lifes instead of people, and in 1897, she won the school's Still Life Scholarship, which afforded her a year's free tuition.
In 1898, she transferred to Adelaide's School of Design, where she studied under H. P. Gill and Hans Heysen.
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