Evelyn Chapman Art Award

In 2024, S. H. Ervin Gallery and Perpetual as Trustee of the Evelyn Chapman Trust, honours a second intriguing, yet under-appreciated female Australian artist through the biannual Evelyn Chapman Art Award. But don’t let the award’s name deter. It is open to all genders

Established in 2018, the $50,000 Evelyn Chapman Art Award is presented to an Australian painter under forty-five years to support their further artistic education and practice. This flexible award–which is essentially a scholarship̶  can be used to support the winning artist at a recognised art school or cultural organisation approved by the Trustee, in Australia or overseas, for a period of two years.

Grace Evelyn Chapman (1888 – 1961) was a remarkable woman and an accomplished artist. In 2019 she travelled to France with her father, who worked for the New Zealand War Graves Commission, and set about documenting the devastation of WWI.  She was the first Australian female artist to paint the destruction of the Western Front, setting up her easel amongst the ruins of churches, shattered towns and deserted battlefields around Villers-Bretonneux.  Amongst the scenes of devastation her palette remained bold with colour.  Yet the eerie destruction she was able to depict on canvas makes one fall silent to this day.

Chapman trained in art, studying under the Italian-born artist Antonio Dattilo-Rubbo, with fellow students Grace Cossington Smith and Norah Simpson in Australia, before attending the Académie Julian in Paris in 1911 where she specialised in life drawing. Beyond her war scenes Chapman painted portraits. Her Girl in a Red Hat, c.1918, held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, is exquisite.

After marrying domineering virtuosi composer and organist George Thalben-Ball in 1926, Chapman gave up painting entirely, assuming the role of wife and mother of two children.

Most of Chapman’s surviving works are held by the Australian War Memorial and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, thanks to her daughter Pamela Thalben-Ball. Studying her works one wonders what Chapman could have achieved if she had been offered a different path. Perhaps that is why her name lends so much to the gift to young artists that is the Evelyn Chapman Art Award.

S.H. Ervin Gallery is currently accepting submissions to the Evelyn Chapman Art Award. Entries close on 22 September 2024.

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