Olive Pink’s art education  

Olive Pink first studied art at school - at Miss Ayton’s School in Brisbane Street, Hobart and then at the new Girls High School run by Miss Sarah Walker, a Quaker, and Miss Poppy Clarke.

Olive enjoyed her time at school and kept in touch with her headmistresses after leaving. She was influenced by the Quaker philosophy she had encountered through Sarah Walker for the rest of her life. She learnt painting from Sarah Walker’s sister, Mary who had studied at the Slade School in London.

James Backhouse Walker with his sisters
James Backhouse Walker with his sisters, Mary Walker (back)
Isabella Walker (front) and Sarah Walker (right)
From : University of Tasmania Special and Rare Materials Collections.
(see also Quaker Life in Tasmania online exhibition)
enlarge

‘She always claimed that hers was the artistic temperament - intuitive, passionate, imaginative and unconstrained by convention - and her interest in painting showed itself early and was encouraged’.
(from: Marcus, Julie ‘The Indomitable Miss Pink’ Sydney, UNSW Press, 2001 p.28)

Hobart Technical College
Hobart Technical College
Benjamin Sheppard
Benjamin Sheppard
Art class
Art Class at Hobart Technical College

Olive studied art at Hobart Technical School with sculptor Benjamin Sheppard who taught there from 1899. She studied with Mildred Lovett, Florence Rodway and Harold Southern, (nephew of Benjamin Sheppard), her childhood friend, believed to be her sweetheart, who died at Gallipoli.

Art Society of Tasmania catalogue 1907
Art Society of Tasmania Catalogue of their 1907 exhibition which included paintings by Olive Pink.
Roll over image and click to see enlarged catalogue and details about her paintings.
Catalogue images courtesy of Tasmaniana Library, State Library of Tasmania

In 1907 she exhibited four pictures in the annual exhibition of the Tasmanian Art Society - they were entitled ‘Carnations’, ‘Nasturtiums’, ‘Sun Flowers’ and ‘In Grandmother’s Garden’ and one of her flower studies won a prize. Her friend Harold Southern exhibited pen and ink book illustrations in the same exhibition. Her father died during this year and left the family with ‘modest funds’. Teaching art required no formal qualifications so she started giving private art lessons. In 1909 she joined the Hobart Technical school as an art teacher until moving to Perth in 1911 with her mother and brother where she had a studio and again started giving private art lessons and taught art in a girls’ school.

Harold Southern
Harold Southern
(from: Marcus, Julie ‘The Indomitable Miss Pink’
Sydney, UNSW Press, 2001)

In a letter written to her friend William Crowther on 2nd October 1959 Olive Pink writes about Harold Southern and about two of his paintings which she owned:

'He was in the Govt. Analyst’s Dept.in both Hobart and Perth. And was killed on Gallipoli 10 days after he landed – (on April 15th) when leading his men (as a Captain) at Pope’s Hill (on May 2nd). He was a nephew of Benjamin Sheppard, who was the sculptor for the Boer War Memorial Soldier in Hobart Domain. Harold Southern, Mildred Lovett, Florence Rodway and I were some of Benjamin Sheppard’s Art pupils (before I went to Julian Ashton). One water-colour is of daffodils. And everyone who sees them exclaims at their beauty: “the very spirit of daffodils”! The other is of “Paper-bark trees on the banks of the Swan River, Perth. (W.A.) and is, to me, very beautiful too. From boyhood, Harold was a great friend of mine. He had a very brilliant brain:- both for artistic and scientific work. (For a short time, I had a studio in Perth and taught Art there – and in a leading girl’s School, 1911-12) So met him again there.'
(Letter courtesy of Crowther Collection, Tasmaniana Library, State Library of Tasmania)

painting Paperbark Trees
Harold Southern 'Paper-Bark Trees'
painted on Swan River Bank, East Perth, 1910
watercolour, 15x23cm - enlarge
Now held in the University of Tasmania
Special and Rare Materials Collection:
Courtesy of Olive Pink Botanic Garden collection.

Miss Pink as Red Cross volunteer
Miss Pink as Red Cross volunteer in Sydney.(circa. 1914)
Photo: courtesy of Olive Pink Botanic Garden.

In 1914 Olive and her mother sailed to Sydney where they spent the war years. She worked for the Red Cross and taught art until completing a Town Planning Diploma. In 1915 she was employed as a tracer by NSW Government Railways and Tramways until being retrenched during the depression. During this period, she attended classes at Julian Ashton’s Art School .

Study from life
Bookplate designed for Olive Pink by her friend Adrian Feint

Study from life by Olive Pink drawn
at Julian Ashton Art School, Sydney c. 1914,
in pencil and charcoal - enlarge
Now held in the University of Tasmania
Special and Rare Materials Collection.
(Courtesy of Olive Pink Botanic Garden collection).

Bookplate designed for Olive Pink by her friend Adrian Feint. Image: Courtesy of Tom Wright Collection, Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University

Note by Olive Pink
Note by Olive Pink regarding drawing (above left)

‘The students at Julian Ashton’s art school where she took classes were an unconventional and cheerful crowd living a bohemian life. There she met a number of young artists who were later to become recognised, often buying their work. Adrian Feint, who was at Julian Ashton’s with her in 1919, Dorrit Black (at Julian Ashton’s in 1915) and Muriel Southern, Harold’s sister, who also studied with Ashton, were her good friends, Muriel Southern becoming recognised for her paintings of the Australian wildflowers that Olive Pink also loved to sketch. She met, too, Miss Violet Artagh Bartlett, a water-colourist and painter of flowers who became a close and much-loved friend. Both Olive Pink and Violet Bartlett painted gift cards for thieir friends. These were the years of Dulcie Deamer’s small and outrageously bohemian set, of wild artists’ balls, and of socialist politics.’
(from: Marcus, Julie ‘The Indomitable Miss Pink’ Sydney, UNSW Press, 2001 p.30)

Violet Bartlett Card
p6/16/4
Violet Bartlett Card
p6/15/19

Two giftcards painted by Violet Bartlett from the Olive Pink collection, University of Tasmania Archives

Oil Painting Cobbity
Olive Pink, "Cobbity" near Camden
- May 1925. Oil Painting 24x32cm. - enlarge
Now held in the University of Tasmania
Special and Rare Materials Collection.
(Courtesy of Olive Pink Botanic Garden collection).

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Last updated 20 June, 2007