Curzona (Lily) Allport

Curzona (Lily) Allport, ' Adamson's Peak' ( ALMFA, SLT)

Curzona Frances Louise (Lily) Allport (1860–1949), artist, was born in Tasmania. Initially tutored by her grandmother Mary Morton Allport, she produced substantial botanical studies with delicacy and elan. From 1888 she studied and worked in England at the height of the Art Nouveau period. Her portraits of women and children were elegant and refined, and travels in Europe produced watercolour landscape and garden scenes informed by the Pre-Raphaelites. Mastering the techniques of painting on silk, she created a series of fan-designs; in 1914 Spring song was included in an exhibition by Charles Conder and Aubrey Beardsley, 'Modern fan painters' in London. Curzona returned to Tasmania for five years between 1922 and 1927, producing fine watercolour landscapes. She settled in Hobart at the age of 72 and set up a print studio.