Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors
| Formation | 1902 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Melbourne, Australia |
The Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors is the oldest surviving women's art group in Australia.
The Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors (MSWPS) began in 1902 as a monthly gathering of eight former students of Frederick McCubbin from the National Gallery School which members called the Students' Art Club. It is known that among these founders were Daisy Stone, Tina Gowdie, Annie Gates, Kate Allan, Ella Thorn, Henrietta Maria Gulliver and a Miss Stock (otherwise unidentified, who died in 1906). In 1905 they added the indigenous word "Woomballano" (meaning either 'everlasting beauty' or 'search for beauty') to identify their Art Club, changing its title to The Women's Art Club in 1913 then to the Melbourne Society of Women Painters in 1930. The present designation was adopted in 1954.
Many of its early members were plein air painters and identified with the Heidelberg School, which was regarded widely as a male group but which involved many women. The interest in the decorative arts at the opening of the twentieth century attracted other members who were significant craftspeople. By the 1920s, the Society was assimilating the generation of professional women artists emerging from the Melbourne National Gallery School, with significant women artists, representatives of both the Meldrum tonal school and modernism, being invited to join. The Society was less overtly feminist than its counterpart The Sydney Society of Women Painters (later named Women’s Industrial Art Society) which was founded in 1910 in reaction to the discrimination of male-dominated juries of art institutions and societies. During the Second World War the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors’ opened volunteer headquarters at Grosvenor Chambers (9 Collins Street, Melbourne) where they made and sold handcrafts and art to raise money for the war effort.
MSWPS has met at heritage-listed Ola Cohn House 41-43 Gipps Street, East Melbourne since the sculptor's death in 1964. She was President of the Society 1948–1964.
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