Dunedin-born artist Grace Joel painted A Rose ‘midst Poppies in 1895, the year after returning from Melbourne, where she’d studied from 1888 at the National Gallery School under Frederick McCubbin. This light-filled, summery composition also reflects the influence of her second cousin E. Phillips Fox, a leading Australian painter who had studied in France and, after establishing his Melbourne Art School in 1892, promoted the fully developed French impressionist technique employed here to lively effect by Joel.
Grace Joel taught painting and drawing in Dunedin before leaving New Zealand in 1899 to study in Paris at the Académie Julian. She settled permanently in London in 1901, achieving steady critical acclaim for her portraits of women and children, which were shown in London, Paris and Edinburgh over the next two decades. Her career successes would be claimed by both Australia and New Zealand.
(The Weight of Sunlight, 16 September 2017 - 16 September 2018)