Merioola Group

The Merioola Group (sometimes also called the "Sydney Charm School") was a Sydney-based group of Australian artists active during the 1940s and early 1950s. The group was named after Merioola, a mansion where many of the group lived.

The group took its name from Merioola, a Victorian-era mansion converted into a boarding house in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra, New South Wales, managed from 1941 by Chica Edgeworth Lowe. Lowe consciously encouraged artists, dancers, writers and theatre people to take up residence, forming the bohemian artistic centre of Sydney in the immediate post-war years.

Tenants included the European-born and trained artists Arthur Fleischmann (sculptor), Roland Strasser, Peter Kaiser, Michael Kmit and George de Olszanski. Others, such as Donald Friend, Edgar Ritchard (artist and costume designer), Loudon Sainthill (later to become one of the most prominent theatre designers of the 20th century) and his life partner Harry Tatlock Miller (writer, critic and curator and subsequently the director of the Redfern Galleries, London), had lived and worked overseas. Others connected with the visual arts included photographer Alec Murray, painters Justin O'Brien, Mary Edwards, artist and later noted costume designer Jocelyn Rickards. Other tenants included dancers Alison Lee, Darya Collin, Beatrice Vitringer and Edmee Monod, author and historian Hector Bolitho, architect George Beiers, civil engineer William Pierre Beiers, mathematician and astronomer John Sidgewick, musicians John and Norma Bannenberg, and many others.

When in Sydney, Ballet Rambert dancers often spent time at Merioola, where many theatrical and literary collaborations took place.

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