The Summer Art Collection

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EILEEN ROSEMARY MAYO
(BRITAIN, NEW ZEALAND, 1906–1994)
Children with Umbrella
woodblock print
editioned and signed lower right:
A/P 4/10, Eileen Mayo
39.5 x 19.5cm
PROVENANCE
Dunbar Sloane, New Zealand &
International Fine Art, Part II, Wellington,
7 September, 2017, Lot 285
$2,500–3,500 §
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Eileen Mayo, D.B.E., was educated at the Slade
School of Art and at the Central School of
Arts and Crafts. She established a career
as an illustrator, painter and printmaker in
London in the 1930s and was associated
with Claude Flight and the Colour Linocut
Movement. Her works were exhibited at the
Royal Academy and collected by the Victoria
and Albert and the British Museums.
Mayo emigrated to Australia in 1952,
becoming established as a leading printmaker
and stamp designer. She taught at the
National Art School in Sydney and was a
member of Sydney Printmakers. Her career
in Australia included working on murals
and designing tapestries and posters.
As part of the Australian Commonwealth
series of six postage stamps issued between
1959 and 1962 she designed the platypus for
the one-shilling stamp and was awarded the
Vizard-Wholohan Prize for prints in 1962. Other
stamps in the series feature the kangaroo,
banded anteater, tiger cat, rabbit bandicoot
and the Tasmanian tiger. This stamp series
is significant as it was one of the earliest
attempts at putting Australian flora and fauna
on stamps. In addition it was one of the first
times that a designer further commercialised
their designs by producing poster versions of
the stamp artwork and made them available
for sale. This series, the first to be designed by
a woman, were for the Postmaster-General's
Department now called Australia Post. Mayo
produced many stamp and poster designs
depicting the flora and fauna of Australia.
Mayo was an artist who undertook commercial
work in order to support herself. The full
range of her output across the diverse
media she employed includes illustrations,
books, prints, paintings, tapestries, murals,
bookplates, posters, tableware, dioramas,
stamps and coins and was produced against
a background of artistic practice within three
countries in which she lived and worked.
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