Stanley Ballard Kathlyn Moore

The subject of this portrait by Stanley Ballard is watercolour artist Kathlyn Moore (1929–2013), who had studied fine arts at Swinburne in Melbourne. The pair would later marry, and Kathlyn Ballard would go on to serve as arts advisor to the Victorian Government, president of the Victorian Artists Society and patron of the Watercolour Society of Victoria, and be made a member of the Order of Australia for services to the arts. She was also the subject of a second Archibald portrait, by Shirley Bourne in 1967.

Stanley Ballard (1925–1997) trained as an oil painter with William Dargie at Victoria’s National Gallery Art School. While he worked mostly as a commercial artist, he was also a successful portrait painter, exhibiting six works in the Archibald Prize between 1952 and 1968. As a child, he had polio, which permanently weakened his right arm and, as a consequence, he had learned to draw with his left.