Ethel Stephens

Ethel Stephens (1864–1944) was a printmaker and painter, focussing on still lifes, landscapes and portraits. Having studied with Julian Ashton in Warrang/Sydney, Stephens was the first woman member of the Royal Art Society council in 1892, and that same year was the first woman to be elected to the Council of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Stephens was one of the founders, and later a President, of the Society of Women Painters in Sydney. Her pivotal role in the formation of several all-women exhibitions and groups is summed up by art historian Juliette Peers who described Stephens as ‘perhaps the most proactively feminist of all Australian-based artists prior to the 1920s, and perhaps even prior to the 1970s.’¹

Stephens may have met Ethel Carrick as early as 1908, during Carrick’s first visit to Australia, and was clearly aware of her art that was exhibited at this time.¹ Their friendship was cemented during Carrick’s second visit between 1913 and 1916 and continued across nearly three decades. They shared a strong commitment to patriotic projects, fundraising for the war effort during both the First and Second World Wars.

When Stephens travelled to Paris in 1920, she studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére and joined artists Alfreda Goninan (later Marcovitch) and Vida Lahey for classes at Carrick’s studio. Stephens also stayed for a while with her friend Jean Brennan in Carrick’s studio in Montparnasse. In 1922 Stephens and Brenan returned to Australia, the year in which Stephens was elected the President of the Society of Women Painters (SWP) in Sydney. She designed and built her own home in Vaucluse, where she lived with Brenan who died in 1935. Ethel Stephens passed away nearly a decade later, in 1944.

Rebecca Blake, Curatorial Assistant, Australian Art