Grace Cossington Smith

Grace Cossington Smith AO OBE was an Australian artist and pioneer of modernist painting in Australia and was instrumental in introducing PostImpressionism to her home country. Examples of her work are held by every major gallery in Australia.

She was born Grace Smith, in Neutral Bay, Sydney, second of five children of Londonborn solicitor Ernest Smith and his wife Grace, ne Fisher, who was the daughter of the rector of Cossington in Leicestershire. The family moved to Thornleigh, New South Wales around 1890. Grace attended Abbotsleigh School for Girls in Wahroonga 190509 where Albert Collins and Alfred Coffey took art classes. From 191011 she studied drawing with Antonio Dattilo Rubbo. From 191214 she and her sister lived in England, staying with an aunt at Winchester where she attended drawing classes as well as classes at Stettin in Germany, and was exposed to paintings by Watteau in Berlin.

Source: Wikipedia