Vida Lahey was one of the first women in Queensland – and indeed Australia – who regarded herself as a professional artist. She superseded the Victorian tradition of the genteel lady amatuer and was instead, determined to make a living from art, exhibiting widely and teaching art at the Brisbane Girls High School.

Lahey is best known for exquisite florals like this. What is particularly intriguing about ‘White Daisies in a Brown Bowl’ however, is that despite being created between 1908 and 1914 – prior to her modernist training – it bears traces of the compositional ideas that would come to underlie her later work. More about form than subject, Lahey presents her daisies like figures, blushing, climbing and coiling across a chocolate backdrop.

A key figure in the development of Australian art, Lahey 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. This early and art historically rich work is a compelling find for collectors of florals and women artists.

Vida LAHEY (1882 - 1968)
'White Daisies in Brown Bowl' c. 1908-1914
oil on canvas
Image Size: 50 x 29 cm
Framed Dimensions: 69 x 49 x 3 cm
Signed: Signed 'F. V. Lahey' lower right.

Comes with Letter of Provenance

Condition: Very Good: Describes a work of art's image as Excellent, but may show some small signs of surrounding wear to paper or frame. There are no tears to paper margin or disruption to the paint surface.

(c) The Artist or Assignee