Women of World War II: Nora Heysen Female War Artist

The first time I heard of Nora Heysen was in 2019 when I was at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. As I was leaving, someone told me they saw my doppelganger. So, I went back in-and found Nora’s portrait. Nora Heysen was not only the subject of the painting, but also the artist, it was a self-portrait. She was the first woman in history to win the Archibald Prize and in World War II she was the first Australian woman to be employed as a war artist.

I am going to start the story of Nora by telling you a bit about her father. His name was Hans Heysen and he was born in Germany in 1877 but had lived in Australia from when he was 7 years old. Hans was a famous artist in his own right and was famed for his paintings of the Australian landscapes. He was so famous that he was friends with the Dame Nellie Melba the incredibly famous opera singer whose face graces our $100 note. Nellie used to go and stay at the country home of the Heysen family and as a goodbye gift to Nora, she gave her an artist’s palette and Nora used this same palette for her entire life. If you want to learn more Dame Nellie Melba, listen to the $100 note episode from last season.

Unfortunately, in 1914, World War I broke out and because of his German heritage Hans was hit with a barrage of anti-German sentiment. Newspapers printed cartoons and encouraged people to ‘Hate the Hun’. The word Hun was used as an insult for Germans during WWI. Hans was asked to resign from many art societies and many galleries refused to hang his paintings. Remember he was only 7 years old when he moved here, so this was especially difficult because he considered himself to be Australian.  After the war was over, he was eventually accepted back into the Australian art world and was even knighted for his services to the arts.

Hans was instrumental in teaching his daughter Nora to paint, and he also encouraged her to travel to London so she could receive a rich art education of the likes that could not be found in Australia at the time. Unfortunately, it was during this experience that Nora took a serious blow to her artistic confidence.

You see she always had doubts about her abilities as an artist, even though she had won prizes for her portraiture and had solo exhibitions of her work. But because her dad was so well respected in the Aussie art scene, she was never really sure if people liked her work because she was good or just because she had a famous artist for a dad.

In London, she had the opportunity to meet one of her childhood heroes an artist by the name of Charles Holmes, who was at that time the director of the National Gallery in London. She took her best paintings to him and he harshly criticised her paintings telling her that her drawing was weak and he told her she had learned nothing from art school. This was a crushing blow to her self-confidence as an artist. Now for the record, Charles Holmes was not very well when he made these comments, in fact he died just a few weeks later. But before he died, he did send her a letter apologising for his comments, however, it was too little too late. The damage had been done.

In Australia there is an art competition called the Archibald Prize. It is seen as the most prestigious portrait prize you can win in Australia. The portrait has to be of someone distinguished in art, letters, science or politics.

In 1938, Nora entered the competition and there were 145 entries in total including work from her own father. That year, she won the Archibald prize becoming both the youngest person in history to win this prize and the first woman to win the prize. The entry that she won for was a portrait of Madam Elink Shuurman who was the wife of the Netherlands’ Consul General in Australia. Some of the criticism she received was that the subject of the painting was not well known enough. And some male artists said that women should not even be allowed to enter the competition. After that a woman did not win the prize again for another 22 years. There was even talk that there should be a government inquiry into the competition that year. Sounds to me like they were just a bunch of sore losers.

Anyway, winning this prize allowed her to become more well known in the art world and this led to an opportunity to become another first. The first Australian woman to become a war artist. She was appointed in January 1943, specifically to document the efforts of women’s activities in the Second World War, but there was an issue with equal pay for women. 9 months later in October, the issue was solved, and Nora got to work starting in the Melbourne studios painting female military personnel.  But there were a couple of glitches. These working army women were busy in the middle of a war and didn’t have time to sit for lengthy sessions, so she could only get 30-minute sessions at a time with them. The other problem was that Nora found the pale blue and khaki uniforms dull and uninspiring, but she did her best. She was excited when she got to paint a matron in her nurses’ uniform that had a delightful red cape.

She was then transferred to New Guinea to paint the nurses at work. Unfortunately, because she got her equal pay and was earning a captain’s wage, the nurses– who had served in North Africa and the Middle East– were still earning less than Nora, and they were not particularly welcoming. As well, the boring colour palette of the uniforms bothered her. Later in life she commented about this, “I was supposed to do the women’s war effort, but the women were dressed from head to knee in khaki with nets over their faces, and there wasn’t any bit of female that you could see. Also, I found the khaki very difficult to paint so I did the men in their jungle greens which was much more to my liking.” 

Another issue with working in the tropics was the damp wet climate. It was just not the right climate for doing oil paintings, she said of this, “Paintings went mouldy overnight… and I was working outdoors quite a bit.” Because of this she did a lot of drawings so she could turn them into oil paintings when she got back to the studio. Because at one stage she was not sending back enough paintings of women, one Army major almost dismissed her, but then it was discovered that she had 100s of drawings and unfinished works that depicted women and she kept her job.

Toward the end of her appointment she was moved to Cairns to the Medical Research Unit and painted an entomologist- that is an insect scientist, Major Josephine Mackerras. You see because a lot of the Australian efforts were in the tropics and many of the soldiers were falling victim to malaria, Josephine’s work focused on the breeding cycles of mosquitos and the prevention of malaria. Nora she described her as an, “odd looking little person, ugly and interesting, bright intelligent eyes with glasses and a lined pallid yellow face and grey wispy hair.” That description is a bit rough, but Nora painted Josephine’s Portrait and it is now in the Australian War Memorial. The actual portrait is way more flattering than that description.

Another thing that came out of her time as a war artist was scandal and a love affair. She met Doctor Robert Black, who, if her portraits of him are anything to go by, was a rather handsome chap. The problem was, he was already married. After the war they scandalously lived together in Sydney until Robert got a divorce. They married and were together for the rest of their lives. Nora died in 2003 at the age of 92 and in my research I came upon a glorious photo of her as a 92 year old. It was taken at the Art Gallery of South Australia and she is standing in front of one of her dad’s paintings. One hand on her hip and a cane in the other hand. She is wearing a knitted red vest, black trousers, matching red socks and a pair of Birkenstocks. I love a woman who proudly rocks socks and sandals.