signed lower left: Constance Stokes
Note: Title advised by Lucilla Wyborn d’Abrera, the artist’s daughter
Constance Stokes, initially trained at the National Gallery School in Melbourne, was awarded their prestigious Travelling Scholarship which took her to London from 1930-1933.¹ She studied at the Royal Academy School under William Mornington whom she acknowledged for ‘furthering my understanding of drawing’, and for showing her how line can express form.² Then in the summer of 1931, she took herself to Paris to study with Andre Lhôte who had a profound influence on her. As she recalled, ‘the Lhôte School was a revelation to me and, as I did not have much French, and Lhôte had no English, I had to do the best I could by watching him work with his brush - drawing all the colour together, and for the first time I became aware of colour used as tone, and not used as local colour’.³
¹. On the artist see Lucilla Wyborn d’Abrera, Constance Stokes: Art and Life, Hill House Publishers, 2015; Anne Summers, The Lost Mother: A Story of Love and Art, Melbourne University Press, 2009.
². Constance Stokes Retrospective Exhibition, Swan Hill Regional Gallery, 1985, np; Barbara Blackman interview cited in Felicity St John Moore, Classical Modernism: The George Bell Circle, National Gallery of Victoria, 1992, p. 126.
³. Constance Stokes Retrospective Exhibition, Swan Hill Regional Gallery, 1985, np.
unknown
Fine Australian and European Paintings, Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 24 November 1997, lot 224K as Portrait of a Woman
private collection, Queensland