Bessie Ellen Davidson (1879–1965) was an Australian painter known for her impressionist, light-filled landscapes and interiors.
Early life and education
Bessie Ellen Davidson was born on 22 May 1879 in North Adelaide, South Australia, to a family of Scottish and English origin. She was the second child of David Davidson, who was in the mining industry, and Ellen Johnson Davidson.
[ Her great-grandfather William Gowan was a sculptor, and her grandmother Frances Gowan was a painter. She was educated at the ]Advanced School for Girls
The Advanced School for Girls was a South Australian State school whose purpose was to prepare girls to qualify for entry to the University of Adelaide. Founded in 1879, the school merged with Adelaide High School in 1907.
History
From its ince ...
(which had a strong drawing strand), and studied art with the painter Rose McPherson (better known as Margaret Preston
Margaret Rose Preston (29 April 1875 – 28 May 1963) was an Australian painter and printmaker who is regarded as one of Australia's leading modern art, modernists of the early 20th century. In her quest to foster an Australian "national art", ...
). She began exhibiting with the South Australian Society of Arts as early as 1901; in this period, her work clearly showed Preston's influence.[
In 1904, after her mother's death, she went to Europe to study art in company with Preston.][ They spent the first few months in Munich, where Davidson studied briefly at the Künstlerinner Verein, before moving on to Paris. There she studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, under René-Xavier Prinet, where she met and began a lifelong friendship with Philippe Besnard's future wife, Germaine Desgranges. She also took classes with Raphael Collin, Richard Miller, and ]Gustave Courtois
Gustave-Claude-Étienne Courtois, also known as Gustave Courtois (; 18 May 1852 in Pusey, Haute-Saône – 1923 in Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French painter, a representative of the academic style of art.
Life
Courtois was born 18 May 1852 i ...
.[ A year after her arrival in France, she was exhibiting at the Salon de la ]Société des Artistes Français
The Société des Artistes Français (, meaning "Society of French Artists") is the association of French painters and sculptors established in 1881. Its annual exhibition is called the "Salon des artistes français" (not to be confused with the ...
, and the year after that at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts
Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (SNBA; ; en, National Society of Fine Arts) was the term under which two groups of French artists united, the first for some exhibitions in the early 1860s, the second since 1890 for annual exhibitions.
1862
Es ...
. In 1922 she would become the first Australian woman elected a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and she would later serve as its secretary.[ She was a founding member of the ]Salon des Tuileries The Salon des Tuileries was an annual art exhibition for painting and sculpture, created June 14, 1923, co-founded by painters Albert Besnard and Bessie Davidson, sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, architect Auguste Perret, and others.
The first year's e ...
, at which she would exhibit almost every year between 1923 and 1951.
Career
Returning to Australia in 1907, Davidson rented a studio with Preston and continued painting and exhibiting for several years. In 1908, the National Gallery of South Australia
The Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), established as the National Gallery of South Australia in 1881, is located in Adelaide. It is the most significant visual arts museum in the Australian state of South Australia. It has a collection of ...
bought her portrait of the potter Gladys Reynell
Gladys Reynell (1881–1956) was one of South Australia's earliest potters and is known for her bold modernist style and her preference for working with native clays.
Family and education
Reynell was born on 4 September 1881 in Glenelg, a s ...
. In 1910, she went back to Paris and set up a workshop in Monparnasse on Boissonade Street next door to Raymond Legueult and across the street from the Dutch painter Conrad Kickert. She became the godmother of Kickert's daughter as well as of Philippe Besnard's daughter. She made many other friends in Parisian art circles, including the painter Anders Osterlind.
Davidson travelled to Australia to visit family in 1914 and was there when World War I began. She returned to France immediately, where she joined the French Red Cross and served in various military hospitals. During the war, she met the woman who would be her companion for the next two decades, Marguerite Leroy (d. 1938), whose nickname was "Dauphine".
The postwar period between 1918 and 1920 saw Davidson producing quiet, intimate, loosely impressionistic paintings—mostly interiors, still lives, and portraits—in muted tones. Her style evolved in a more vigorous direction in the 1920s and 1930s, with rich, vibrant, often dramatic colours laid on with a palette knife.[ In this period her work sold well and was well received by critics.][ She travelled around Europe, Russia, and Morocco making outdoor sketches that she used as the basis for paintings later produced in her studio. Her landscapes are notable for their quality of light and sense of atmosphere.][
In 1930 Davidson was a founding vice-president of La Société Femmes Artistes Modernes. She was a founding member of the Société Nationale Indépendentes and a member of the ]Salon d'Automne
The Salon d'Automne (; en, Autumn Salon), or Société du Salon d'automne, is an art exhibition held annually in Paris, France. Since 2011, it is held on the Champs-Élysées, between the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais, in mid-October. The f ...
. In 1931 she was appointed to the French Legion of Honor
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon B ...
, in part for her cofounding of the Salon des Tuileries, the only Australian woman to receive that honour up to that time.[ She exhibited widely with such artists as ]Mary Cassatt
Mary Stevenson Cassatt (; May 22, 1844June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh's North Side), but lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar De ...
, Tamara de Lempicka
Tamara Łempicka (born Tamara Rosalia Gurwik-Górska; 16 May 1898 – 18 March 1980), better known as Tamara de Lempicka, was a Polish painter who spent her working life in France and the United States. She is best known for her polished Art D ...
, Camille Claudel
Camille Rosalie Claudel (; 8 December 1864 19 October 1943) was a French sculptor known for her figurative works in bronze and marble. She died in relative obscurity, but later gained recognition for the originality and quality of her work. The ...
, and Suzanne Valadon
Suzanne Valadon (23 September 18657 April 1938) was a French painter who was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des ...
.
Although still a citizen of the British Commonwealth, Davidson decided to stay in France during World War II. She lived with friends in Grenoble
lat, Gratianopolis
, commune status = Prefecture and commune
, image = Panorama grenoble.png
, image size =
, caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...
, and some sources say that she was a member of the French Resistance.[ Her paintings from this period are strong, bright, and lively. In 1945, she returned to her old studio in Paris, occasionally spending time at a farm she bought near Rouen. In the postwar period, she painted mostly outdoors on small wood panels.
She died at ]Montparnasse
Montparnasse () is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. Montparnasse has bee ...
in France in 1965. She was buried in Saint-Saëns, Seine-Maritime
Saint-Saëns (, until about 1940–1950 ) is a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region in northern France. A small town of farming and associated light industry situated by the banks of the river Varenne in the Pays de Br ...
.
References
Further reading
* Downey, Georgina. "Reading Rooms: Domesticity, Identity and Belonging in the Paintings of Bessie Davidson, Margaret Preston and Stella Bowen in Paris and London 1910s–1930s". Ph.D. thesis, South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia, 2004.
* Little, Penelope, and Bessie Davidson. ''A Studio in Montparnasse: Bessie Davidson: an Australian Artist in Paris''. Craftsman House, 2003.
* Little, Penelope. "The Beauty of Common Things: The Rediscovery of Bessie Davidson." ''Art and Australia'' 36:4, 1999.
* Biven, R. ''Some Forgotten, Some Remembered'' (Adel, 1976)
* Butler, R. ''The Prints of Margaret Preston'' (Melb, 1987)
* Hylton, Jane. ''South Australian Women Artists'', Art Gallery Board of South Australia, Adelaide, 1994
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davidson, Bessie
1879 births
1965 deaths
Australian women painters
20th-century Australian painters
Artists from Adelaide
Australian people of Scottish descent
Australian people of English descent
Australian expatriates in France
Alumni of the Académie de la Grande Chaumière
Recipients of the Legion of Honour
20th-century Australian women artists
19th-century Australian women
People educated at the Advanced School for Girls
Burials in Normandy