Joie de Vivre

Details

Artist

Constance Stokes

Title

Joie de Vivre

Medium

oil on composition board

Size

96 x 41 cm

Details

signed lower left: Constance Stokes

Note: Title advised by Lucilla Wyborn d’Abrera, the artist’s daughter

Sold This artwork has been sold. Please contact us for similar artworks.

Provenance

unknown
Fine Australian and European Paintings, Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 24 November 1997, lot 224K as Portrait of a Woman
private collection, Queensland

Further Information

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