Spowers, Ethel

Ethel Spowers, painter and printmaker, born 1890, Melbourne.  Attending art school in Paris, Spowers undertook (1911-17) full course in drawing and painting at Melbourne’s National Gallery schools. First solo exhibition in 1920 at Decoration Galleries in the city, showed fairy-tale drawings influenced by the work of Ida Outhwaite. In 1921-24 she worked and studied abroad, at the Regent Street Polytechnic, London, and the Académie Ranson, Paris and exhibited (1921) with fellow Australian artist Mary Reynolds at the Macrae Gallery, London. In the 1930s her linocuts attracted critical attention for their bold, simplified forms, rhythmic sense of movement, distinctive use of colour and humorous observation of everyday life, particularly the world of children. They were regularly shown at the Redfern Gallery, London. The British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum purchased a number of her linocuts. A founding member (1932-38) of George Bell’s Contemporary Group,

She died of cancer in1947 in Melbourne and buried with Anglican rites in Fawkner cemetery. Although she had destroyed many of her paintings in a bonfire, a memorial exhibition of her watercolours, line-drawings, wood-engravings and colour linocuts was held at George’s Gallery, Melbourne, in 1948. Her prints are held by the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, State galleries in Melbourne and Sydney, and the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Victoria.