Lot 92

Estate of the Artist
Colonial House Gallery, Melbourne (label verso)
Private collection, Melbourne
Thence by descent

"Mabel Williams paintings to be displayed at Colonial House Gallery are the last available for sale from her estate. Lady Williams died in Melbourne in October 1980. Her birthplace was Adelaide in 1896. After her studies at the South Australian School of Art, she worked in commercial art and design.

She studied watercolour with George Benson and then was a pupil of George Bell. Ian McNab taught her for a short time at the Warwick Gardens Art School in London. From 1957 to 1965 she was president of the Melbourne Contemporary Artists Group and for six years chairman of the Red Cross Picture Library sub-committee.

She married John Francis Williams, and they lived in Broken Hill, Brisbane and Melbourne. Sir John Williams was for many years chairman of The Herald and Weekly Times.

Alan McCulloch, Herald art critic, has described Mabel Williams as 'a woman who loved art and artists, and was herself a painter to great sensitivity.' Qualities which gave her work [sic] soft colour, combined with firm artistic structure, all carefully considered elements in the paintings of George Bell's teaching and philosophy." (label affixed verso)