Description

Extended Data

Birth Place

Fremantle, WA, Australia

Biography

Painter Betsey Currie was born in Fremantle, WA, one of four children of the family who owned the Oasis Tearooms there. The jewellery maker and silversmith Herbert Kitchener Currie (also known as Kitch Currie) was her brother. Her maternal great-grandfather was a sculptor in Melbourne. She studied art at Perth Technical College under J. W. R. Linton and A. B. Webb. Linton opened a new purpose-built studio and gallery in Murray Street West where he and his elder son Jamie established a business as 'Art Metal Workers, Designers, Dealers in works of Art, etc’. This included a display area and a studio room for drawing, painting, sculpting or exhibiting. Currie and Jamie Linton worked there helping at the Linton School of Art from 1922-1925. Students came for life classes one or two nights a week. Currie shared a studio in 1929 with Ivor Hunt but this became impossible after the family lost their fortune in the Depression. J. W. R. Linton was retired early by the Education Department at the end of 1931 because of the 'financial emergency’ of the Depression. In 1932, when Jamie opened The Linton Institute of Art on the corner of King and Hay Streets, Perth, he was joined by his father and Currie. The Institute housed the studios and an art school. Currie acted as the Lintons’ assistant and general factotum, organizing the classes and teaching students. Kitch Curry helped with the metalwork. Extra 'life’ classes at night were carefully scrutinised by the police to ensure that all attendees were bona fide and that the nude did not move. The institute quickly became a meeting place for students, artists, family and friends. It also served as an exhibition venue with an alcove at the top of the stairs set up with a permanent display managed by Currie. The Linton Institute of Art lasted until about 1935. When J. W. R. Linton’s wife Lottie moved interstate in 1938, Currie and Linton went to live in Parkerville. She changed her name to Linton by deed poll in 1942. She and her sister Nell ran Currie’s Gift Shop in the Wheatsheaf centre, corner of St George’s Terrac eand Kings Street in Perth in the 1940s and 1950s to sell the work of Kitch Currie and the Lintons. Linton died in 1947 and in 1957 Betsey moved with Kitch to Greenmount. She taught art at Fremantle Prison through the Perth Technical College extension service from 1955 and retired in 1965. She and her sister travelled with Kitch to Europe and Morocco. In 1999, in her nineties, she enjoyed a resurgence of her art with almost sell-out exhibitions of pictures selected from her old folios. RED SECTIONS Writers: Dr Dorothy Erickson Date written: 2010 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 1905

Summary

Painter and teacher who had a long association with J. W. R. Linton and worked at the Linton Institute of Art. She changed her name to Linton by deed poll in 1942.

Gender

Female

Died

2008

Age at death

103