Title
Sister Diddy
circa 1920
Artist
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Details
- Place where the work was made
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Sydney
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New South Wales
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Australia
- Date
- circa 1920
- Media category
- Drawing
- Materials used
- pencil, crayon on buff wove paper
- Dimensions
- 34.0 x 26.7 cm sight/sheet; 52.2 x 42.0 cm frame
- Signature & date
Signed and dated l.l., pencil 'G. Cossington Smith/ 1920?/ Sister Diddy'.
- Credit
- Purchased with funds provided by Guy, Marian and Meredith Paynter 2018
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 122.2018
- Copyright
- © Estate of Grace Cossington Smith
- Artist information
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Grace Cossington Smith
Works in the collection
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About
Grace Cossington Smith loved to draw and continued the practice over her long career, including resolved works for exhibition, studies for paintings and drawings for personal use. Among her earliest drawings were images of everyday life at home in Sydney’s northern suburbs, with images of her home and its environs, and portraits of her family.
Cossington Smith’s parents, siblings and later nieces and nephews were willing and available subjects for the artist; this drawing is of her younger sister Charlotte (“Diddy”, 1897-1962). Cossington Smith’s sketchbooks (now in the National Gallery of Australia) include several images of Diddy, characteristically pictured reading with her eyes downcast and feet propped up, images of domestic contentment and leisure. Diddy remained living at home in the Smith household with her sister Grace until the mid 1920s, when her career as a nurse progressed.
Diddy is the subject of another Cossington Smith work in the Gallery collection, a painting titled ‘The reader’ c.1919.
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Places
Where the work was made
Sydney
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Exhibition history
Shown in 4 exhibitions
Drawings and Watercolours by Grace Cossington Smith, Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 20 Mar 1974–01 Apr 1974
Ruth Prowse, thirty years of collecting, Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, Canberra, 01 Apr 2004–16 May 2004
2018 Blue Chip XX: The Collectors Exhibition, Niagara Galleries, Richmond, 06 Mar 2018–07 Apr 2018
Archie Plus, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 26 Sep 2020–07 Mar 2021
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Bibliography
Referenced in 2 publications
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Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University and Ruth Prowse, Ruth Prowse, thirty years of collecting, Canberra, 2004, 15 (illus.).
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Niagara Galleries, Blue Chip XX: The collectors’ exhibition: featuring works from the private collection of the late Ruth Prowse, Richmond, 2018, 5 (colour illus.).
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