Description

Extended Data

DAAO URL

https://www.daao.org.au/bio/edith-annie-mary-alsop

Birth Place

Hawthorn, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Biography

painter, illustrator and printmaker, was born in Melbourne, daughter of John Alsop, a banker, and Anne, née Howard. She had travelled to Europe before studying at the National Gallery of Victoria School (1900-05) where she won second prize for anatomical drawing in the student exhibition of 1904. She exhibited fairly regularly with the Victorian Artists’ Society between 1903 and 1926 as well as revisiting Europe in 1913. In 1907 she submitted several designs in the competition for a poster for the Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne, without success. Helen Atkinson was the winner, but at the exhibition itself Edith won first prize for the best design for a frieze (Fine Art Category, class 30a). In 1910 Edith Alsop was one of four artists – the others being Ida Rentoul Outhwaite , Janet Cumbrae Stewart and Jessie Traill – who painted wall decorations for the children’s wards in Melbourne’s Homeopathic Hospital. Both Alsop and Outhwaite painted their panels in a flat decorative style that incorporated nursery rhyme texts like children’s book illustrations, whereas Traill and Cumbrae Stewart collaborated on panels more closely resembling conventional perspective paintings. This was also the year in which Some Children’s Songs was published, with illustrations by Edith, music by her sister Marion and lyrics by Dorothy MacCrae. (Edith’s younger brother, the architect Rodney Howard Alsop, had executed a series of nursery-rhyme postcards for the Willsmere Certified Milk Company about five years earlier.) In 1916 Edith Alsop illustrated Joice Nankivell’s The Cobweb Ladder with seven black-and-white illustrations. These very beautiful pictures, with white figures and tracery set against a black night sky sprinkled with stars, by rights should have led to a brilliant career in children’s book illustration. However, Outhwaite’s lavish Elves and Fairies appeared the very next month completely overwhelming Cobweb Ladder . According to Holden, Edith’s only other foray into children’s book illustration was a small volume, The Tale of the Fairies , published by Whitcombe & Tombs in the 1920s. Many women artists such as May Gibbs or Outhwaite, who became specialist children’s book illustrators either by design or happenstance, have had their work dismissed as trivial or mere decoration. Alsop, who went in the opposite direction, moving away from 'mere decoration’ to the High Art more valued by critics, demonstrated that this strategy didn’t necessarily work wonders for women artists either. After studying wood engraving at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and painting in Paris under André Lhôte (1928-29) Alsop exhibited her European work back at Melbourne in the 1930s, e.g. Gondolas, Venice 1931 (National Gallery of Australia). She became known for her close association with women’s groups: from the 1930s she regularly lectured and exhibited at the Lyceum Club, Melbourne, and she was connected with the University Women’s College (now University College) and Janet Clarke Hall at the University of Melbourne, both of which own drawings. She also studied with George Bell and was one of the 12 original members of the Contemporary Art Group in 1932 though rarely mentioned in this context. In 1934 Edith contributed wood engravings to Manuscripts (no.9) and her beach scene, St Kilda 1934 , was reproduced in the Victorian Centenary Gift Book . She was apparently involved with the Women Artists’ National Service Group during World War II; Juliet Peers notes that in 1941 she donated a picture to be raffled titled The Three Little Pigs – apparently a temporary reversion to children’s illustration. The sisters Edith and Marion Alsop collaborated with Dorothy McCrae to produce pictures, music and verse for five original children’s songs: 'Paddling Days’, 'The Jackass’ (the laughing jackass, or kookaburra), 'Bubbles’, 'The Song of the Water Babies’ and 'The Rebel’. These were published by George Robertson in 1910 as a folio-size children’s song-book titled Some Children’s Songs ; Marion wrote the music, Dorothy the words, and Edith 'designed’ the book. Her designs consisted of five full-page colour illustrations introducing each song on the left-hand page and five black-and-white vignettes above the title of each song opposite. Edith and Marion’s artistic alliance mirrored that of their contemporaries, the better known Rentoul sisters , Ida ( Outhwaite ) and Annie, who collaborated on illustrated fairy stories for over 20 years. The first of the Rentouls’ three children’s song-books, Australian Songs for Young and Old , had appeared in 1907 'in connection with’ the opening of the Women’s Work Exhibition. Edith – who had unsuccessfully submitted a design for the poster competition and won a prize for her design for a frieze – could not have failed to be aware of Ida’s highly admired exhibits, Annie’s ode performed at the opening ceremony and the praise for the 'twin gifts’ that had produced their song-book. The Alsops’ book was published in 1910, the same year that the Rentouls’ second song-book ( Bush Songs of Australia ) appeared. There seems to have been no sense of competition between the two sets of sisters; indeed, both books were produced by the same publisher and the families were friendly, even to the point of Rodney Alsop (Edith and Marion’s brother) acting as groomsman at Ida’s marriage to Grenbry Outhwaite in 1909. Yet comparisons are (and were) inevitable. The Rentoul/Outhwaite book was very popular and was reprinted several times (until 1924). Although less popular, the Alsop book seems the more visually attractive, being double the size and with text and image well integrated, as shown in Edith’s title vignette The Rebel . The Rebel , imprisoned in her cot and desperately fighting against the narcotic effects of the decorative poppies that surround her, howls her refusal to sleep from the yawning black O of her mouth: I will not go to sleep For all the pains they take, I will wide open keep My eyes and stay awake; 'Tis all in vain they try and try, I will not go to sleep-not I! Writers: Callaway, Anita Date written: 1995 Last updated: 2011

Born

b. 1871

Summary

Painter, illustrator and printmaker who studied at the Central School of Arts in London and under André Lhôte in Paris. Despite her formal fine art training, which also included a period at the National Gallery School in Melbourne, Alsop is best known for her children's book illustrations.

Gender

Female

Died

1958

Age at death

87