Description

Extended Data

DAAO URL

https://www.daao.org.au/bio/winifred-mary-towers

Birth Place

Portsmouth, England, UK

Biography

painter, was born on 17 December 1890 at Portsmouth, England, seventh of the eight children of John White (d.1910), a sculptor, and his wife Sophia, née Welch (1850-1943). Winifred studied at the Portsmouth and Gosport Schools of Art and was awarded a three year scholarship to the Royal College of Art, London, but was unable to take up the offer. In Portsmouth during World War I she was employed as a press illustrator for the Evening News and Hampshire Telegraph and Post . She also undertook portrait commissions and conducted private art classes. Late in 1918 Winifred White moved to London. In 1921 she married Alfred Towers (1895-1980), a telegraphist on the headquarters’ ship of a North Sea trawling fleet operating out of Hull. Winifred Towers spent the next six years in London working as a commercial artist, mainly in advertising, for firms such as Muller Blatchley. During this period she also worked with the cartoonist Millar Watt. In 1926 Alfred Towers migrated to Australia, settling at Glenel, a dairy property situated on the Nogo River, near Abercorn in the Upper Burnett region of Queensland. The following year he was joined by his wife and in 1928 by the artist’s mother, sisters and several other family members. Alfred and Winifred Towers spent the next thirteen years at Glenel, moving to Brisbane in 1940. During World War II Alfred served as a telegraphist in the Royal Australian Air Force. Following his discharge in 1945, the couple built a cottage at Sunnybank, on the southern outskirts of Brisbane, where they farmed a small property for a livelihood. Over the next two decades Winifred Towers gradually established herself as a talented and accomplished painter in oil and watercolour. Her subject matter embraced still life, landscape, portraiture and figure studies. She also engaged successfully in book illustration, her most important work being for the children’s book Little Words to God by Maureen C. Meadows (Sydney 1949). Towers first exhibited in Australia in 1937, with the Royal Queensland Art Society, and continued to show intermittently at their annual exhibitions until 1949. Between 1945 and 1972 her work was included regularly in the annual exhibitions of the Half Dozen Group of Artists (its founder Lilian Pedersen became a close friend) and she served as vice-president in 1947-48. Two of her paintings were included in the Commonwealth Jubilee Celebration Exhibition of Queensland Art (Queensland Art Gallery, 1951). In the late 1950s she exhibited with the Fellowship of Australian Artists in Melbourne. Although she never returned to England, she maintained links with her homeland through membership of the Portsmouth and Southsea Art Clubs and the Portsmouth Art Grou The artist died in Brisbane on 28 February 1982, aged ninety-one. Her works are held by the Queensland Art Gallery and Queensland University of Technology Art Collection, Brisbane. Writers: Rainbird, Stephen Date written: 1995 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 17 December 1890

Summary

Oil and watercolour painter, illustrator of children's book by Maureen C. Meadows 'Little Words to God' (Sydney, 1949). Regularly exhibited with the Half Dozen Group of Artists, where she served as vice-president in 1947-48, was included as well in major national art surveys such as the Commonwealth Jubilee Celebration Exhibition of Queensland Art and the Fellowship of Australian Artists in 1951.

Gender

Female

Died

28-Feb-82

Age at death

92