Description

Extended Data

Birth Place

Bridport, Dorset, England, UK

Biography

painter, was born in Bridport, Dorset, one of the eight daughters of the 11 children of John Iley Greene and his wife. After migrating to Brisbane with her family, she helped her sisters set up a Ladies’ High School in Tenterfield (c.1894) where they prepared students for the local entrance examinations to music, science and art colleges in London and to the University of Sydney. In 1901 she helped her elder sister, Alice, found the Moreton Bay Girls’ High School at Wynnum (now Moreton Bay College); several of the sisters, only two of whom married, taught there. There was a special emphasis on art and music. As Alice stated in 1951: 'I feel with my sisters that the importance of cultural subjects in character formation cannot be over-emphasised’. Anne Alison Greene gave up teaching in 1911 in order to go to London to study at the South Kensington School of Art. She was awarded a prize for a still life and a diploma and medal by the Royal Art Society. She moved to Paris in 1912 where she studied the work of Emile Jacques-Dalcrose, the founder of eurhythmics – an interest subsequently reflected in the curriculum of the Greene sisters’ school, to which she paid a return visit during World War I. While in Brisbane, she took lessons in modelling from James Laurence Watts . After returning to France, Anne Alison Greene sent an extensive collection of replicas of statuary and lantern slides of European art works to her school. The school also kept all the postcards she sent from Paris and stuck them into albums. Having been drawn back to Paris by her love of French Impressionism, she studied with Edwin Scott at Castelucho’s. She also established her own studio on Rue Campagne Première, the same street where another Queensland expatriate, Anne’s great friend Bessie Gibson , lived. Anne had exhibited at the Old Salon before World War I. Afterwards she showed with the New Salon, from 1921 until 1939. In 1924 she was elected an associate and in 1928 a full member of the Société des Beaux Arts. During World War II she was marooned at Southampton, England, then illness forced her to return to Queensland in 1946. Four years later she held a solo exhibition of her French paintings in the art gallery of Finney’s department store, Brisbane from which the Queensland National Art Gallery (QAG) purchased three paintings. In 1951 her work was included in the Commonwealth Jubilee Exhibition of Queensland Art at QAG. She died at Brisbane in 1954. Writers: Staff Writer Date written: 1999 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 1878

Summary

Greene helped her sisters set up a Ladies' High School in Tenterfield and the Moreton Bay Girls' High School at Wynnum before pursuing her own artistic interests. She travelled to Europe and studied in London before setting up a studio and continuing to study in Paris. A member of the Société des Beaux Arts from 1928, illness forced Greene to return to Brisbane in 1946.

Gender

Female

Died

1954

Age at death

76