Lot 11

Ms. Hilda Ninna Pickering Redmond (née Ball)
Mrs. I. C. Everist
Thence by descent
Private collection, Melbourne

Lane, T., Serle, J., Australians at Home: A Documentary History of Australian Domestic Interiors From 1788 to 1914, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1990, pl. 265

Florence Fuller is today considered to be one of Australia's most important female artists of the late 19th century. By 1914, her works were featured in four public galleries in Australia and South Africa - a record for an Australian female painter of the time. Despite Fuller enjoying considerable success in her early life, she remained for most of her career somewhat overlooked.
Florence Fuller attended the National Gallery School in Melbourne and took lessons from Jane Sutherland while working as a governess. Her uncle, fellow artist Robert Dowling, greatly encouraged her artistic pursuits and she was asked to complete several of his unfinished works after his sudden passing. This practice led to numerous commissions from wealthy patrons and encouraged Fuller's professional progression. In fact, aged in her early twenties, she was able to cease working as a governess and devote herself to her art full-time, practicing from her studio in her parents' home in Pine Grove, Malvern.
In the late 1880s and early 90s, Fuller produced some of her most notable works including Weary 1888 (Collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales) and won an award from the Victorian Artists Society for the best portrait by an artist aged under 25. Shortly after in 1890, Fuller painted this portrait of little Hilda Ball playing 'mother' at a dolls' tea party. Variations of this subject were popular with Victorian and Edwardian artists of the time - young females in quiet contemplation, placed within the domestic interior somewhat isolated from the outside world. The subject rarely catches the gaze of the viewer, instead focused on their own activity or task. This is similarly seen in Fuller's "Inseparables" c.1900 (The Collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia), in which a young girl remains absorbed in her book, reading intently beside a burning fire. Whilst one could argue the similarities between this subject and Hilda, both confined within the home and focused on their own activities, one could also note that young Hilda is seen to be playing a game considered very 'comfortable' for young ladies of the day. She is caring for her dolls and serving tea, displaying both maternal and marital tendencies. By contrast, the older subject in "Inseparables" is reading a book. Whilst we don't know the content of the book, it could be considered subversive by Fuller to portray a young lady satiating her desire for knowledge - perhaps a sign of the changing times at the fin-de-siècle.
Although Hilda was only about 5 years old at the time her portrait was painted, she too became a woman of great accomplishments. A science graduate, Hilda was one of the first generation of university-educated women to make a career of teaching, and between 1918 and 1928 she introduced the post-First World War generation of girls who attended Tintern Church of England Girls' Grammar School to the notion of fitting themselves for a future career(1) - a truly modern approach to girls' schooling at the time. The Balls lived in various houses in Kew in the 1890s. The interior tells us they lived a comfortable life, with signs of the Aesthetic Movement in the dado, fans, arrangement of bulrushes and papier-mâché fire screen(2) . This painting is recorded within a photograph of Florence sitting in her Pine Grove studio, published in the "Illustrated Sydney News" on 1 August 1891. It has been in the collection of Hilda's family since leaving the artist's studio.

Olivia Fuller
Head of Art

(1) Lane, T., Serle, J., Australians at Home: A Documentary History of Australian Domestic Interiors From 1788 to 1914, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1990
(2) Ibid.