B. 1906 – 1991

Constance Stokes, known as Connie, was a leading artist of her generation. A member of the George Bell Circle, she was awarded the prestigious National Gallery Travelling Scholarship which took her to London from 1930 to 1933. In 1953, she was one of only two female artists included in a major exhibition that travelled to Canada, the United Kingdom and Italy that included Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and Russell Drysdale. 

Stokes’s early career is characterised by two competing forces: the social expectation to be just a mother and wife; and her desire to make art. In 1962 however, the unexpected death of her husband opened up space for the latter to develop. While she preferred to call herself an ‘artist’ rather than a ‘female artist’, no account of her career – nor Modernism itself – is complete without acknowledging how conventions of womanhood could prove inhibiting.

Stokes’s under-representation in the Australian canon has been redressed with the 2006 Anne Summer’s book, ‘The Lost Mother’, two major retrospectives at National Gallery of Victoria (1994) and Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery (2017) and representation in almost all public collections. As senior curator of the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery Danny Lacy states, "[When you see her work] you can really see the place that she deserves in Australian art history."