Australian Women Artists
The podcast
Ep. 41 Evelyn Chapman - a conversation with Dr Anne Gerard-Austin
Dr. Anne Gérard-Austin is the Curator of International Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales and a significant contributor to the current exhibition at the AGNSW, Dangerously Modern, Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890-1940.
And we were discussing the Australian artist, Evelyn Chapman.
By the time World War I ended in November 1918, Evelyn Chapman was already an established young painter, with training in Sydney, Paris, and London (which is a story in itself!).
Like many artists of her generation, she had been profoundly shaped by her exposure to European modernist ideas before the war. However, it was the devastation of the conflict — and her extraordinary access to the Western Front — that would give her most enduring works their form and content.
Evelyn Chapman’s work from France is characterised by the juxtaposition of devastation and rebirth. She recorded shattered churches, cratered fields, destroyed villages, and trenches filled with wreckage. Yet, unlike official war artists who often focused on the mechanics of war and military life, Chapman’s eye lingered on the aftermath: broken walls standing against the sky, poppies springing up from scarred ground, light piercing through collapsed arches.
On returning to Paris in 1919–20, her battlefield works were exhibited at the Salon des Beaux Arts, where they were admired for their emotional clarity and technical execution.
Head to the link in my bio to hear our conversation
Instagram images
1. Ruined church with poppies, Villers-Bretonneux circa 1919
oil & tempera on thick grey cardboard 39 x 30.5
2. EC painting at Villers-Bretonneux gelatin silver photograph
19.9 x 15
3. Old trench, French battlefield 1919
oil & tempera on textured grey paper on cardboard
54 x 73.3
4. Interior of a ruined church, France 1919
oil & tempera on grey card on board
56.3 x 41.4
5. Ruined buildings 1919
oil & tempera on grey card
28.8 x 38.5 cm board
6. May Moore, portrait of Evelyn Chapman 1920–1928
gelatin silver photograph 14.8 x 8.4
