B. 1882 – 1968 

Born in Pimpama, Queensland, Vida Lahey studied at the Brisbane Central Technical College under Godfrey Rivers and at the National Gallery School under Bernard Hall and Frederick McCubbin. During World World I, she travelled to London to be near her brothers and cousins and the volunteer war effort. 

Lahey is considered one of the first women in Queensland - and indeed Australia - who regarded themselves as a professional artist. She was committed to making a living from her work, exhibiting widely and teaching art at the Brisbane Girls High School. She helped found Robert Menzies’s anti-modernist organisation, the Australian Academy of Art, was awarded both a Coronation Medal and MBE for services to art in 1958, and remains an important figure in Australian art history.

To read a more in-depth biography of the artist, click here.