Portia BENNETT   1898  - 1989

Portia Bennett was born in Sydney on 28 January 1898. She attended classes under Dattilo Rubbo at the Royal Art Society of New South Wales 1913-14 and then won a scholarship to Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School, where she studied at night between 1915-1919. During the day she attended the Blackfriars Teachers College, where she taught art from 1921-5. In 1925 she married William Wallace and moved to Queensland and then, in 1932, came to Perth. She helped found the Perth Society of Artists, working with Muriel Southern, Florence Hall and Margaret Johnson to establish a place for women artists in Western Australia. She was fascinated by the city and by modern recently constructed buildings, and painted many watercolour studies of the architecture around Perth. She observed her subjects carefully and with obvious affection, painting directly from the motif. She died in Perth on 1 May 1989, aged 91.

Reference:

GRAY, Anna, The way we were: 1940s - 1950s, p. 16, catalogue from an exhibition at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, 14 April 1996 - 30 March 1997.

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