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Hilda Rix Nicholas (née Rix, later Hilda Rix Wright, 1 September 1884 – 3 August 1961) was an Australian artist. Hilda Rix was born in the Victorian city of Ballarat. Her father was an education administrator and poet, her mother a musician and artist. She studied under a leading member of the Heidelberg School, Frederick McCubbin, at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School from 1902 to 1905 and was an early member of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors. Following the death of her father in 1907, Hilda Rix, her only sibling Elsie and her mother travelled to Europe where she undertook further study in London and then in Paris. Her teachers during the period included John Hassall, Richard Emil Miller and Théophile Steinlen. After travelling to Tangiers in 1912, Rix held several successful exhibitions of her work, with one drawing, ''Grande marche, Tanger'', purchased by the French government. She was one of the first Australians to paint post-impressionist landscapes, was made a member of the Société des Peintres Orientalistes Français, and had works hung in the Paris Salon first in 1911 and again in 1913. The family evacuated from France to England after the outbreak of World War I. A period of personal tragedy followed, as Rix's sister died in 1914, then her mother in 1915. In 1916 she met and married George Matson Nicholas, only to be widowed the next month when he was killed on the Western Front. Returning to Australia in 1918, Rix Nicholas once more took up professional painting, and held an exhibition of over a hundred works at Melbourne's Guild Hall. Many sold, including ''In Picardy'', purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria. Following a period painting in rural locations in the early 1920s, Rix Nicholas returned to Europe. A 1925 exhibition in Paris led to the sale of her work ''In Australia'' to the Musée du Luxembourg, followed by an extensive tour of her paintings around regional British art galleries. There followed representation in other exhibitions, including at the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, and the Royal Academy of Arts, both in London. Following the inclusion of several works in the 1926 Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts Spring exhibition in Paris she was made an Associate of that organisation. In 1926, Rix Nicholas returned to Australia, and in 1928 she married Edgar Wright, whom she had met during her travels in the early 1920s. The couple settled at Delegate, New South Wales; their only child, a son named Rix Wright, was born in 1930. Though she continued to paint significant works including ''The Summer House'' and ''The Fair Musterer'', Rix Nicholas, a staunch critic of modernism who was disdainful of the works of emerging major artists such as Russell Drysdale and William Dobell, grew out of step with trends in Australian art. Her pictures remained didactic, portraying an Australian pastoral ideal, and reviews of her exhibitions grew more uneven. She held her last solo show in 1947. Rix Nicholas remained at Delegate until her death in 1961. Her works are held in most major Australian collections, including the Art Gallery of South Australia, Australian War Memorial, National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, and the Queensland Art Gallery. ==Early life== Henry Finch Rix and Elizabeth Sutton, each of whom had migrated to Australia as children with their families, met and married in Victoria in 1876. They had two daughters, Elsie Bertha, born in 1877, and Emily Hilda (known ubiquitously just as Hilda), born in Ballarat on 1 September 1884. The Rix children grew up in a gifted and energetic family. Henry, a mathematics teacher, was appointed a district Inspector of Schools in the 1880s; he was also a poet who wrote in support of Australian Federation, and he played Australian rules football for the Carlton Football Club. Elizabeth had grown up assisting in her parents' thriving music business in Ballarat, and was a singer who performed with the Ballarat Harmonic Society. In addition, she was an artist who had a studio in Melbourne's Flinders Street, and a committee member of the Austral Salon, "a meeting place for intellectual women interested in the fine arts." She painted in an academic style, generally choosing still lifes and flowers as subjects, though she also painted some large landscapes in the Beechworth region. Hilda Rix and her sister Elsie both played musical instruments as children, and would perform songs or dances at regional shows. Elsie was a singer and actor who performed at the meetings of the Austral Salon, and the sisters collaborated in designing posters to advertise the Salon's activities. As a child, Hilda was enthusiastic about drawing. Her artistic efforts drew praise while she was attending high school at Melbourne Girls Grammar (known as Merton Hall), though in most other respects Rix was not an outstanding student. Both Elsie and Hilda took some art lessons with a Mr Mather, before Hilda went on to study at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School from 1902 to 1905, where she was taught by a leading member of the Heidelberg School, Frederick McCubbin. Her fellow students were mostly women and included Jessie Traill, Norah Gurdon, Ruth Sutherland, Dora Wilson, and Vida Lahey. Rix would subsequently be critical of McCubbin's approach to teaching, referring to his methods as "vague persuasions". Nevertheless, the author of the only comprehensive biography of Rix, John Pigot, considered that McCubbin influenced her in several ways: he emphasised the creativity of individuals rather than imitating the style of any one school of painting; he modelled the importance of nationalistic ideas and subjects that would become so prominent in her later painting; and his work emphasised the painting's subject over technical considerations. Drawings undertaken by Rix while she was still a student were included in annual exhibitions at the Victorian Artists' Society and the Austral Salon. At the same time, she was working as a professional illustrator for textbooks and a periodical, the ''School Paper'', published by the Victorian Department of Education. In 1903, all of the Rix family women had works included in the Austral Salon's exhibition. One of Rix's early sketchbooks survives and pages from it were reproduced in the 2012 book, ''In Search of Beauty''. Although she described the works as her "very earliest drawings when a child in Melbourne", the dated pages indicate they were created up until at least the age of twenty. They mostly portray women, and the settings and dress of her subjects reflect the relatively affluent and educated milieu of which the Rix family were part. In this period, it was common for aspiring Australian artists to seek further training in Europe, particularly London and Paris. Henry Rix arranged to take his family there in conjunction with a trip he was making to study British education reforms, purchasing first-class tickets to travel in 1906. But Henry, who had been overworked and ill, died suddenly, and for a time it appeared the trip might not happen. Denied a widow's pension (Henry had been 58: too young for his wife to be eligible), the family had to reorganise their affairs and work out if they could afford to get to Europe. Finally, by combining an inheritance, rental income from their home, and money raised through the sale of works by both mother and daughter, they were able to trade the first class tickets for second class berths, and they set sail for England early in 1907. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hilda Rix Nicholas」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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