Sunday Reed

Sunday Reed
Portrait of Sunday Reed by Moya Dyring about 1934
Born	Lelda Sunday Baillieu 15 October 1905
Died	15 December 1981
Occupation	Art collector and patron
Spouse(s)	John Reed
Children	Sweeney Reed (adopted)

Sunday Reed (born Lelda Sunday Baillieu) (15 October 1905 – 15 December 1981) was notable for supporting and collecting Australian art with her husband John Reed.

Born on a Sunday, Sunday Reed was the daughter of Arthur Sydney Baillieu (1872–1943) and his wife, Ethel Mary née Ham (1875–1932). Her parents had married in 1899 and had three other children. She was a member of Melbourne's – the niece of William Baillieu, one of Australia's richest men. She grew up in Toorak and Sorrento. Mostly educated at home, she also attended St Catherine's School, Toorak.

She married an Irish-American Catholic, Leonard Quinn, on 31 December 1926. The marriage lasted three years. She married John Reed on 13 January 1932.

In the 1930s, Sunday studied art under George Bell in his Bourke Street Studio School in Melbourne. Her only remaining work is a landscape drawing, showing her skill with colour and form.

In 1934, the Reeds purchased a former dairy farm on the Yarra River at Bulleen, a suburb of Melbourne, which became known as Heide. The talented artists at Heide "helped shape Australian art from the 1930s on." The Reeds lived on the property until their deaths in 1981, a short time after the property became the Heide Museum of Modern Art, still popularly known as Heide.

Sunday was unable to have children following a hysterectomy. The Reeds took over care of and eventually adopted Joy Hester's child Sweeney after Hester was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma in the 1940s.

John Reed died on 5 December 1981. Sunday Reed died ten days later, on 15 December.

Sunday Reed was the aunt of Ted Baillieu, who in 2010 became Premier of Victoria.

A number of modernist artists came to live and work at Heide at various times during the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and it became the place where many of the most famous works of the period were painted. These artists were known as the Heide Circle and included Sam Atyeo and his wife Moya Dyring, Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan, Joy Hester (Hester and Tucker married in 1941), John Perceval, Laurence Hope among others, all worked at Heide. Nolan painting his famous series of Ned Kelly works in the living room there.