La robe rouge, 1924
Elizabeth Dickson Gibson was born in Ipswich in 1968 and undertook art studies at Brisbane Central Technical College with Godfrey Rivers. After travelling to visit relatives in Scotland in 1901-02, she was inspired to move to Paris in 1905-06 to further her studies and where she remained living until 1939. She saw early success as a miniature portraitist, including a portrait of her father in the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1905, where she went on to exhibit at least 15 times until 1923. Her diverse subjects covered portraits, landscapes, still lifes and interiors, including miniatures, formal portraits, evocative atmospheric panels influenced by the art of James McNeill Whistler and her American teacher Edwin Scott, and watercolours, in which she particularly excelled and was taught by Frances Hodgkins. Gibson exhibited regularly at the Societe des Artistes Francais and the Salon d’Automnes until 1939, winning an honourable mention at the Salon in 1926. She as one of few Australian artists recognised at the time in France and she was included in the Australian Artists in Europe exhibition in London, 1924. Gibson spent the Second World War in England before returning to Australia in 1947, living in Brisbane and exhibiting in Sydney and Melbourne. Recognition of Gibson’s work has strengthened with the ongoing reassessment of Australian women artists and reclaiming artists whose careers were more well-known in France, such as Bessie Davidson and Iso Rae.