Haibun Heaven

Nora Heysen 1911 - 2003




Nora Heysen

overshadowed
by her famous daddy
a woman's lot




Nora Heysen




Sascha Grishin's Art Blog


What if an artist’s daughter becomes an artist? Fathers and daughters

After her opening in Canberra in 2000, at the age of 89, Nora Heysen told me something that has haunted my imagination ever since.  She recounted how, on her return from Europe and working in a style that we could term as ‘conservative classical modernism’ – in other words basically an academic style that had absorbed elements of Paul Cézanne and the Impressionists (in her case mainly Pissarro) – an incident occurred in her studio.

She had been working on a still life composition and left it on her easel in her studio overnight.  When she returned the following morning, she noticed that her father had intervened in the composition, straightening out her lines and reinforcing the perspectival structure of her composition.  Over breakfast Hans did not mention his artistic intervention and she never brought it up herself, but it confirmed in her mind that she needed to get out of Adelaide if she was to survive as an artist.
 


Nora Heysen self portrait 1934

strength and clarity
shines through her lovely face
a girl called nora