The Life and Works of Grace Joel Quiz

Answer:

Grace Joel was born in Dunedin on May 28, 1865, the sixth of nine children. Her father, Maurice Joel, was a well-known local merchant, brewer, and Jewish community leader who married Catherine Woolf in 1859. Joel was extremely interested in art as a child and by age 21, she became a working member of the Otago Art Society, which "promoted the interest in the study and practice in the fine and applied arts." In June 1888 she enrolled at the National Gallery School of Design in Melbourne. Preferring the school's single-minded commitment to fine arts over Dunedin's more diverse technical drawing curriculum, she practiced frequently. In 1889, she tied for a prize in drawing with charcoal by a first-year student. After a brief return to New Zealand, she went back to Melbourne, where her dedication culminated in 1893 when she won the prestigious Ramsay Prize for painting from the nude ("Back of Female Half Nude"), making her the first woman in the history of the school to win any of its major awards.


Joel became well known for her evocative figure studies rather than sweeping landscapes. Much like her prominent Parisian contemporaries Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, she focused heavily on domestic subjects and intimate portraits of women and children drawn from her lived reality. She showcased a remarkable ability to capture delicate textures and profound psychological depth in works such as "Roses" or "Little Nell". The swirling brushwork was heavily influenced by fellow Australian Phillips Fox. Following a stint back in Dunedin where she taught and exhibited with the Otago Art Society and the Easel Club, she permanently relocated to Europe around 1899, studying at the Académie Julian in Paris under academic painter Jean-Paul Laurens. The school itself famously offered both men and women identical, rigorous training, including the controversial practice of drawing from live, nude models.

Joel found further stylistic inspiration through travels to Holland where she met Dutch artist Josef Israels, a leading member of the group of landscape painters referred to as the Hague School. Settled in London, her work earned her widespread critical acclaim across prestigious international exhibition circuits, including regular showings at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Paris Salon, and the Royal Scottish Academy. Joel died of cancer at Kensington, London on March 6, 1924. She bequeathed 500 pounds to endow a scholarship for painting from the nude at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. After her death, Grace Joel's work was not as well known in New Zealand as her contemporary, Frances Hodgkins, who was a pioneering artist from that country. However, over time Joel became recognized as one of New Zealand's greatest painters even though much of her life continued to be a mystery. A snippet from "Jewish Lives" stated that in an exhibition at the Otago Settlers Museum, one of Joel's oil studies of a young girl holding a bouquet of flowers called "Harmony in Blue and Yellow" yielded up a beautiful nude painting on its back.

Joel has major public collections across Australasia, including the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. These works help showcase her status as a pioneering expatriate Impressionist artist.