Grace Cossington Smith - National Gallery of Australia

FAMILY
Grace Cossington Smith
Portrait of Diddy c. 1922
pastel, charcoal and pencil on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased 1974
Grace Cossington Smith was the second of fi ve children – she had three sisters and a brother.
Her mother, also named Grace, was a cultured woman with a love of music and languages; her
father, Ernest, was appointed Crown Solicitor of New South Wales in 1890 and later established his
own fi rm. Theirs was a close, supportive family. The family liked nicknames: Margaret was known as
Madge and Charlotte as Diddy.
Cossington was the name of the ancestral home of the artist’s mother in Great Britain, and it was
the name given to the house where Cossington Smith was born on 22 April 1892, in Neutral Bay
in Sydney, and later to the family home in Turramurra. Cossington was also the name the artist
adopted in the 1920s, when she began signing her work as Grace Cossington Smith.
Cossington Smith’s ability to draw was recognised while she was at school. The Head Mistress of
Abbotsleigh, who encouraged Cossington Smith’s art education, gave her a gift of four art books
on her graduation from school. Her parents took it for granted that their second daughter would
study art and that she would become a professional artist, not just a genteel amateur painter.
Cossington Smith began drawing classes with Anthony Dattilo Rubbo in 1910, at the age of 18.
During her fi rst year of tuition Cossington Smith began the practice of drawing in sketchbooks. A
sketchpad, pencils, crayons and pastels are easily transported and are non-intrusive, enabling the
artist to sit and draw within the intimacy of the family circle. The National Gallery of Australia owns
52 of Cossington Smith’s sketchbooks, dating from 1910 to the 1950s. The artist made drawings for a
variety of purposes: as fi nished works of art, as sketches for later paintings, as investigations of form
and composition, as travel documentation and as intimate records of family life.
Diddy was a favourite subject to draw, as she could maintain a pose while deeply absorbed in a
book. She had a close bond with Cossington Smith and was also interested in art, having studied
woodcarving with Eirene Mort. Diddy worked as a nurse at the Parramatta Hospital and in later life
Cossington Smith spent many years nursing her at home after she suffered a stroke.
Visual analysis
In Portrait of Diddy Cossington Smith concentrates the viewer’s attention on the face by framing it
between the two parallel horizontal lines of the hat and the lower edge of the collar. The diagonals
of the collar lead the eye to Diddy’s pensive, downcast face. Even at this early date it is possible
to see how Cossington Smith challenged accepted drawing practice by using a repeated vertical
stroke that defi nes the form with colour, rather than by following the contours of the object. This
device can be seen much later in the painting Interior in yellow 1962, 1964.
Discussion points
•Describe Cossington Smith’s family and the artist’s place in it.
•Discuss the different roles drawing took in the work of Cossington Smith.