Clarice Beckett

Clarice Majoribanks Beckett (21 March 1887 - 7 July 1935) was an Australian artist born in Casterton, Victoria. The daughter of Joseph Clifden Beckett, bank manager, and his wife Elizabeth Kate, née Brown. Her grandfather was John Brown, a Scottish master builder who had designed and built Como House and its gardens in South Yarra.

Clarice was a boarder at Queen's College, Ballarat, until 1903, before spending a year at Melbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar School. She showed artistic ability, and after leaving school took private lessons in charcoal drawing at Ballarat.

She is recognised as one of Australia's most important modernist artists. Despite a talent for portraiture and a keen public appreciation for her still-lifes, Beckett preferred the solo, outdoor process of painting landscapes. She relentlessly painted sea and beachscapes, rural and suburban scenes, often enveloped in the atmospheric effects of early mornings or evening. Her subjects were often drawn from the Melbourne bayside suburb of Beaumaris, where she lived for most of her life, caring for her ailing parents during the day and spending time around dawn and dusk painting.

Clarice died of pneumonia in a hospital at Sandringham. She was buried in the Cheltenham cemetery.

She has her works hanging in the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of South Australia.

References

• Homage to Clarice Beckett 30th Oct–20th Nov 1971 -exhibition catalogue, Rosalind Humphries Galleries, Melbourne
• Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 7, Melbourne University Press(1979), p.239.