Clara Southern

{{Short description|Australian artist (1860–1940)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=March 2018}} {{Use Australian English|date=March 2018}} {{Infobox artist | name = Clara Southern | image = Clara-Southern-portrait.jpg | imagesize = | caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{birth date|1860|10|3|df=y}} | birth_place = Kyneton, Victoria, Australia | death_date = {{death date and age|1940|12|15|1860|10|3|df=y}} | death_place = Melbourne, Victoria, Australia | education = National Gallery of Victoria Art School | field = Painting | training = | movement = | works = | patrons = | awards = | spouse = {{marriage|John Arthur Flinn|1905}} }}

'''Clara Southern''' (3 October 1860 – 15 December 1940) was an Australian artist associated with the Heidelberg School, also known as Australian Impressionism. She was active between the years 1883 and her death in 1940.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.daao.org.au/bio/clara-southern/|title=Clara Southern :: biography at :: at Design and Art Australia Online|website=www.daao.org.au|language=en|access-date=2018-03-17}}</ref> Physically, Southern was tall with reddish fair hair, and was nicknamed 'Panther' because of her lithe beauty.<ref name=ADBcs>{{Cite book|url=https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/southern-clara-8590|title=Australian Dictionary of Biography|last=Duke|first=Anne|chapter=Southern, Clara (1860–1940)|publisher=National Centre of Biography, Australian National University|location=Canberra}}</ref>

== Biography == left|thumb|The artist painting at her home in Warrandyte Southern was born in Kyneton, Victoria, in 1860,<ref name="ADBcs" /> the eldest of six children.<ref name="Rotary Club of Warrandyte Donvale-2018">{{Cite web|publisher=Rotary Club of Warrandyte Donvale|date=2018|title=Warrandyte a heritage steeped in art|url=https://www.warrandytedonvalerotary.org.au/uploads/1/0/3/8/103809242/art_heritage_v1_6.pdf|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180318224849/http://www.warrandytedonvalerotary.org.au/uploads/1/0/3/8/103809242/art_heritage_v1_6.pdf |archive-date=18 March 2018 |access-date=|website=}}</ref> She was the daughter of local timber merchant and farmer John Southern and farmer Jane Elliott.<ref name="www.artistsfootsteps.com">{{Cite web|title=Artist's Footsteps|url=https://www.artistsfootsteps.com/html/Southern_biography.htm|access-date=2020-09-14|website=www.artistsfootsteps.com}}</ref> From 1883 to 1887,<ref>{{Cite book |last1=McCulloch |first1=Alan |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/80568976 |title=The new McCulloch's encyclopedia of Australian art |last2=McCulloch |first2=Susan |last3=McCulloch Childs |first3=Emily |publisher=AUS Art Editions; The Miegunyah Press |year=2006 |isbn=0-522-85317-X |edition=4th |location=Fitzroy |pages=899 |oclc=80568976}}</ref> Southern studied at the School of Design, National Gallery of Victoria under Oswald Rose Campbell<ref name="www.artistsfootsteps.com" /> and at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School under George Folingsby and Frederick McCubbin.

During her studies she joined the Buonarotti Club, a bohemian society of writers, painters and musicians to which other members of the Heidelberg School belonged. She is credited by some as 'among the first women to be elected' to it in 1886, though several other female artists were already members, and amateur poet and painter Alice Brotherton had been the first woman elected to the Club in 1883, followed by several other important women artists such as Jane Sutherland and May Vale, who both joined in 1884.<ref name="Mead">{{Cite journal |last=Mead |first=Stephen F. |date=December 2011 |title=The Search for Artistic Professionalism in Melbourne: the activities of the Buonarotti Club, 1883–1887 |journal=The Latrobe Journal |volume=88}}</ref>

Southern was a member of the Victorian Artists Society, the Australian Art Association, the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors, the Twenty Melbourne Painters, and the Lyceum Club.<ref name="ADBcs" /> Paving the way for women's involvement in the arts, Southern was the first female member of the Australian Artists' Association.<ref name="www.artistsfootsteps.com" />

When in Melbourne Southern shared a studio at Grosvenor Chambers, 9 Collins Street, with Jane Sutherland and Tom Roberts<ref name="Mead" /> from 1888. She taught art classes from her studio, and regularly joined her Heidelberg School colleagues on ''plein air'' painting trips to Heidelberg and Eaglemont.<ref name="victorianartistssociety.com.au">{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=|title=Blog Post – The Victorian Artists Society|url=https://vasgallery.org.au/Clara-Southern~1545|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210305044151/https://vasgallery.org.au/Clara-Southern~1545 |archive-date=5 March 2021 |access-date=2020-09-15|website=victorianartistssociety.com.au}}</ref>

== Warrandyte == By 1908 Southern had established an artistic community of younger landscape painters at Warrandyte, a township on the Yarra about 30 kilometres from Melbourne. The community included Penleigh Boyd and Harold Herbert. Her teacher and mentor Walter Withers often visited her in Warrandyte to paint the landscape.<ref name="Rotary Club of Warrandyte Donvale-2018" /> Her residence at cottage 'Blythe Bank' in Warrandyte was integral to the development of the artistic community there, with regular visits from the McCubbins and Colquhouns, and Jo Sweatman becoming her neighbour at 'Kipsy.'<ref name="www.artistsfootsteps.com" /> Many of her works capture the spirit of the area, such as ''<nowiki/>'Evensong'<nowiki/>'' and ''<nowiki/>'A Cool Corner''', and she encouraged many a young artist to visit her studio there.<ref name="www.artistsfootsteps.com" /> At one point she was regarded as the eminent female landscape artist in Melbourne.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Artists Warrandyte – Warrrandyte Historical Society|url=https://whsoc.org.au/artists/|access-date=2020-09-14|website=Warrandyte Historical Society|language=en-US}}</ref>

On 9 November 1905, Southern married local miner John Arthur Flinn at St. John's Anglican Church in Blackburn. Together they built a cottage, and later a studio, at Blythe Bank, Warrandyte.<ref name=ADBcs /><ref>{{cite web|url=https://online.justice.vic.gov.au/bdm/indexsearch.doj?viewSequence=200&language=en&trxId=IDX&commandAction_displayDetailsAction%3DB6586BB05F709B89AC89CE4A5C8ADC8D|title=Marriage Certificate|website=Births Deaths and Marriages Victoria|accessdate=17 February 2018}}</ref> Even after her marriage, Southern continued to exhibit under her own name.

''An Old Bee Farm'', held by the National Gallery of Victoria is one of her better known works. It was one of 56 paintings included in Lloyd O'Neil's ''Classic Australian Paintings'', and was used as the cover illustration for Kay Schaffer's 1988 book ''Women and the Bush: Forces of Desire in the Australian Cultural Tradition''.

Clara was also supportive of charity and relief efforts, supporting Violet Teague and her sister Una in an exhibition for the Hermannsburg Mission Water Supply in Central Australia.<ref name="victorianartistssociety.com.au" /> Bushfires were a devastating risk in her township of Warrandyte, and she contributed to the ''Artists' Bushfire Relief Fund Exhibition''.<ref name="victorianartistssociety.com.au" /> Unfortunately some time after her death, her beloved cottage 'Blythe Bank' was lost to bushfires.<ref name="victorianartistssociety.com.au" /><blockquote>''Miss Clara Southern (Mrs J. Flinn) is a sweet and original singer of the Australian bush in colour, which, by the most skilful use of her pigments, she realises in all its beauty and charm, its majestic silences, its harmonies, and those mysterious distances we all know and feel when in its midst. We can almost hear the wind sighing and sobbing through her trees and that furtive movement of life beneath the beautiful undergrowth that trembles in her foregrounds. Her landscapes are truly poems, full of sentiment and feeling, and that artistic reticence so seldom met with, which never allows nature to be for one moment oppressed or overstepped, or the note forced under any pretence.-'A Lyrical Painter','' Kyneton Guardian, 14 March 1914<ref>{{Cite news|date=1914-03-14|title=A LYRICAL PAINTER.|pages=2|work=Kyneton Guardian (Vic. : 1870–1880; 1914–1918)|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article129617265|access-date=2020-09-15}}</ref> </blockquote>Southern died in Melbourne on 15 December 1940.<ref name="ADBcs" />

Southern Close in the Canberra suburb of Chisholm is named in her honour.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Schedule 'B' National Memorials Ordinance 1928–1972 Street Nomenclature List of Additional Names with Reference to Origin: Commonwealth of Australia Gazette. Special (National: 1977–2012) – 8 Feb 1978|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article240628906|last=|first=|date=|website=Trove|page=14|language=en|access-date=2020-04-02}}</ref>

== Selected works == <gallery mode="packed-hover" heights="200px" caption="Oil paintings by Clara Southern"> File:Clara Southern - The Back of the Barn.jpg|''The Back of the Barn'', Private collection File:Clara Southern - The Yarra at Warrandyte.jpg|''The Yarra at Warrandyte'', Private collection File:Clara Southern - The kitchen.jpg|''The Kitchen'', Private collection File:Old Bee Farm - Clara Southern.JPG|''Old Bee Farm'', National Gallery of Victoria File:Clara Southern - A Cool Corner.jpg|''A Cool Corner'', Art Gallery of Ballarat File:Clara Southern - The Road to Warrandyte, 1905-1910.jpg|''The Road to Warrandyte'', Private collection File:Clara Southern - Evensong.jpg|''Evensong'', National Gallery of Victoria File:Clara Southern - The old shed.jpg|''The old shed'', National Gallery of Australia File:Clara Southern - Landscape with Cottage, 1900.jpg|''Landscape with Cottage'', Private collection File:Clara Southern - Bush Camp.jpg|''Bush Camp'', Private collection File:Clara Southern - The artist's home.jpg|''The artist's home'', Benalla Art Gallery </gallery>

== Exhibitions ==

* ''1899–1917 -'' Victorian Artists' Society * ''1907 -'' First Australian Women's Work Exhibition * ''1914, 1917–1919'' – Australian Art Association Exhibition * ''1934 -'' Exhibition in aid of the Hermannsburg Water Supply in Central Australia<ref name="bio">{{Cite web|date=April 13, 2017|title=Clara Southern b. 3 October 1860|url=https://www.daao.org.au/bio/clara-southern/events/|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190820190746/https://www.daao.org.au/bio/clara-southern/events/ |archive-date=20 August 2019 |access-date=15 September 2020|website=Design & Art Australia Online}}</ref>

=== Posthumous === * ''1975 -'' Australian Women Artists, One Hundred Years 1840–1940, Melbourne University, Ewing and George Paton Gallery * ''1995 -'' A l'hombre des jeunes filles et des fleurs: In the shadow of young girls and flowers, Benalla Art Gallery * ''2011–2012 -'' Look, Look Again, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia<ref name="bio" />

== Collections == * National Gallery of Australia<ref>{{Cite web |title=Clara Southern |url=https://searchthecollection.nga.gov.au/artist/13749/clara-southern |access-date=2026-03-11}}</ref> * National Gallery of Victoria<ref>{{Cite web |title=Clara Southern |url=https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/artist/ |access-date=2023-07-06 |website=National Gallery of Victoria |language=en-AU}}</ref> * Art Gallery of Ballarat<ref>{{Cite web |title=Clara Southern : Abandoned farmhouse |url=https://www.artgalleryofballarat.com.au/explore/the-collection/search/6070 |access-date=2023-07-07 |website=Art Gallery of Ballarat |language=en}}</ref> * Cruthers Collection of Women's Art<ref>{{Cite web |title= Chrysanthemums | url= https://www.uwaccwa.uwa.edu.au/?record=ecatalogue.74153 | access-date=2026-03-11}}</ref> * Gippsland Art Gallery<ref>{{Cite web |last=Southern |first=Clara |title=Beach Scene – 2017.005 |url=https://www.gippslandartgallery.com/collections/beach-scene-2017-005/ |access-date=2023-07-07 |website=Gippsland Art Gallery |language=en}}</ref>

== References == {{Reflist}}

== External links == {{Commons category}} * [http://www.artistsfootsteps.com/html/Artists_Southern.htm Online Gallery of Southern's works] * {{Dictionary of Australian Biography|First=Clara|Last=Southern|shortlink=0-dict-biogSa-Sp.html}} * [https://www.artistsfootsteps.com/html/WomenofHeidelbergSchool.htm ''Women of the Heidelberg School'', by Andrew MacKenzie, sponsored by the Victorian Government]. * [http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/f/1cl35st/SLV_VOYAGER1086023 Clara Southern: Australian art and artists file], ''State Library Victoria''

{{Heidelberg School}} {{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Southern, Clara}} Category:1860 births Category:1940 deaths Category:Heidelberg School Category:19th-century Australian painters Category:20th-century Australian painters Category:People from Kyneton Category:Artists from Victoria (state) Category:National Gallery of Victoria Art School alumni Category:People from the Colony of Victoria Category:20th-century Australian women painters Category:19th-century Australian women painters