Portia Geach: Activist and Artist

When I attended school in the 1970s, I was keenly aware of the two celebrity teachers on staff. One was the glamorous biology teacher, Kerry Doyle, otherwise known as Miss Australia 1975. The other was the accomplished artist, Sister Mary Brady OP, a frequent Archibald Prize finalist, and three-times winner of Australia’s most prestigious art prize for portraiture by a woman, the Portia Geach Memorial Award (1966, 1971 and 1975).

Being famous can be a fleeting thing. Time moves on. Values change. What once held a certain status, like being crowned Miss Australia, loses its lustre; archival material becomes difficult to find; memories are lost; new narratives take over the old.

This would have been the fate of artist and social activist Portia Swanston Geach (1873-1959) had it not been for Florence Kate Geach’s bequest to establish the Portia Geach Memorial Award at the S.H. Ervin Gallery, in her older sister’s honour. Every year since 1965 the memory of Portia Geach has been invoked, and a talented female artist has learnt anew to appreciate Portia Geach and her upwardly mobile, forward-thinking family.

For many years, however, Portia’s personal story has largely remained unknown. Few of her paintings survive, and her advocacy work on behalf of Australian housewives of the early twentieth century is buried in newspapers, letters and committee records archived in our nation’s libraries. Believing this to be just one more injustice to the woman, art historian Dr Julie Cotter, with a Creative Australia grant in hand, set about filling in the gaps with her 2024 biography, Porta Geach: Portrait of an Activist, published by her own publishing house, Joyce Press.

At 345 pages (including endnotes, index and select bibliography), Portrait of an Activist follows the chronology of Portia Geach’s life. One of six living children Portia was born in the family’s Swanston Street home on Christmas Eve in 1873 to parents, Edwin Geach and Catherine nee Greenwood. Cornish immigrants, the couple met aboard the Monarch that arrived in Melbourne in 1860. The industrious Edwin set about establishing a drapery business and other enterprises, exploiting the economic prosperity of the colony at the time. Edwin’s early financial success is important to Portia’s story, as it was the platform from which she and her three sisters – all single women ̶   were able to enjoy an independent, bohemian tinged lifestyle, travelling the globe and taking on projects as desired, unencumbered by child rearing, homemaking, or husband. Portia’s financial circumstances are under explored in the biography, although we know that on passing, she left a substantial estate to her sister, Kate.

The biography gives equal time to the two primary focusses of Portia’s life: as professional artist, and as activist on behalf of the housewives of Australia. Art, however, was Portia’s first love. In 1890, at the age of sixteen she entered the National Gallery Art School spending six years training in design / drawing and painting. Like most serious Australian artists of the period, Europe beckoned. In 1896 Portia travelled to London becoming the first Australian woman to take-up tuition at the Royal Academy, with its emphasis on the neoclassical tradition under the Presidency of Edward Poynter. She lasted three of the five-year-program before moving to Paris where modernism, the “French Technique” and the social life were more to her interest and temperament. Portia returned to Australia in 1900 with a range of works, eager to exhibit.

As an artist Portia never quite seemed to leave her training days behind, picking through styles and themes of more successful artists. She dabbled in stain glass, etchings, and decorative murals. Regarding her paintings, the Pre-Raphaelite style – particularly its palette – certainly influenced her portraiture, and post-impressionism her landscapes. While she continued to paint and exhibit work for most of her life, no one style became characteristic or personally identifiable.

While the biography strives to portray Portia as an accomplished artist, the evidence it provides suggests she was only marginally successful, despite her extensive formal training, moments of achievement, and self-belief. Of the decorative work in her 1904 solo exhibition for instance, The Age reviewer thought it “showed signs of having rifled through the ‘sweetmeat box of inspiration’” (p.107). She was more successful with her portraits, but even here reception was mixed. Cotter notes that Portia’s 1901 portrait of sister Kate, titled An Australian, “received mixed reviews due to its stone-like quality . . . One critic felt it heroic in size but falling short on achievement . . .” (p.95). Similarly, a 1902 portrait of her brother Edwin “didn’t receive any accolades, reported as cold and lacking any likeness . . .” (p.102). Her 1912 portrait of Miss Phyllis Miller was described as “bearing a wooden head and an arm requiring more treatment” (p.123). Australian public institutions at the time ignored her work. While many of Portia’s contemporaries succeeded – Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington Smith being the most prominent ̶   Portia, according to sister Kate, “felt locked out of the art world by a male dominated management.”

Gradually, and probably due to her lack of commercial success, Portia became interested in other projects. She was introduced to the women’s movement and suffrage campaigns in 1902 by older sister Miriam, who had just been re-elected as honorary secretary of the Prahran Women’s Progressive League. In 1910, with a first-class cabin and four pieces of luggage, Portia travelled to the United States to investigate the American art scene. It was the strength of the American women’s clubs and their social reform agendas, however, that left the greater impression.

Modernity and the “modern woman” are themes running through Cotter’s biography from Portia’s artistic interests to her horse riding “man-style” through Gippsland in rational-dress; her participation in American women’s club conferences; the Astor apartment (where she was neighbours with S.H. Ervin); and her “Lady bachelor” lifestyle. It is odd then, that Portia chose the housewives of Australia upon which to exercise her particular form of activism.

Heavily influenced by maternal feminism – an upper-class philosophy aimed at improving the conditions of women and children in the home without disturbing the patriarchy – Portia established the New South Wales Housewives’ Association (HWA), becoming its first president in 1917. In 1928, following an internal dispute between members – which reportedly turned physical – Portia left the HWA and established the Housewives Progress Association (HPA). In 1947, after being expelled from the HPA, Portia went on to establish the Progressive Housewives’ Association (PHA) and – ever the committee woman – remained president until 1957, just two years before her death at eighty-six. These associations provided Portia with a platform from which to educate women in the principles of thrift, proper nutrition, particularly the benefits of vegetarianism and wheatmeal for a youthful appearance, whilst lobbying for cheaper prices. A masterful user of the media, Portia organised two potato boycotts to combat profiteering, the second boycott in 1929 thrusting her name into headlines across the country and finally giving her the fame she seemed to crave.

But fame can be fleeting. Time moves on. Values change.

In Portia Geach: Portrait of an Activist, Cotter has achieved a biography of meticulous detail, making a fine contribution to understanding women’s reform agendas in Australia between first and second wave feminism. The biography, however, never makes it out of second gear. The density of facts and dry chronological approach prevents the development of a narrative arc with which to provide contrast and coherence. Portia’s personality remains obscured. Questions go unanswered. Cotter treats Portia with a certain deference that thwarts critique. Despite her social status, leadership, and talent for self-promotion, we are still not much closer to really knowing Portia Geach, the activist artist.

Book 
Portia Geach: Portrait of an Activist
Julie Cotter
Joyce Press, 2024
RRP $38