School of Art - Theses
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ItemHilda Rix Nicholas: a catalogue raisonne( 1994)This thesis is a study of the art of Hilda Rix Nicholas, an Australian painter who constructed what appeared to be a successful career in the period between the wars. Her achievements were impressive: she held several solo exhibitions and showed her work in a large number of group shows, and in 1926 became an associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Despite her accomplishments, however, Rix Nicholas has been virtually ignored by art historians. Often mentioned, but rarely discussed, her work, like that of a number of women artists, has been excluded from and marginalised in the writing of Australian art history. In seeking to account for the reasons why Rix Nicholas's work failed to achieve any lasting recognition in Australia the thesis examines the ways in which she constructed her career. In Paris, before World War 1 she attuned her art to the standards of the Salon, appropriating its genres, particularly the French peasant tradition, as models of artistic excellence, models which underpinned the emergence of her distinctive Australian imagery in the early 1920s. In Australia, Rix Nicholas conscientiously set out to represent the national landscape in her work. Describing herself as 'the man for the job' she attempted to establish her career within a milieu where the rules of representation were controlled by men. In doing so, she challenged the masculinist framework of the cultural and artistic establishment, as well as the idea that the representation of the nation was the exclusive domain of male painters like Arthur Streeton and Hans Heysen. Furthermore, Rix Nicholas painted several pictures of women in the bush, and dared to suggest that women had been equal partners in the formation of the imagined community of the nation. Refusing to acknowledge the gendered boundaries of the Australian art world, she constructed a position for herself that was at odds with the prescribed role of a woman painter, a role which was acknowledged by most women artists working in Australia. Like her male colleagues, Rix Nicholas distrusted the modern movement and was sceptical about the involvement of women artists in it. As far as she could see women modernists had accepted a subordinate position within the artistic hierarchy, a position Rix Nicholas was not prepared to recognize. Her assertive affirmation of her rights meant that her artistic practice occupied a difficult and ambivalent position. Existing outside the mainstream of both male and female representation she challenged the establishment on too many levels, making it virtually impossible for her to achieve any lasting recognition in Australia.