Ethel Spowers

This beautiful linocut, printed from seven blocks, manages to describe the light and shade of Tasmanian history. The cemetery of Port Arthur.

| Ethel Spowers, The Island of the Dead, linocut, 1927 |

Ethel Spowers (1890-1947) was born in South Yarra, Melbourne. She studied in Paris and London and seems to have travelled quite a lot. When back in Melbourne she was also a volunteer social worker at the Children’s hospital.

Ethel exhibited frequently and The Sydney Morning Herald reviewed her work in a 1936 exhibition. ‘Few Australian exponents of the colour print can equal the gaiety, the forcefulness and the imagination shown by Ethel Spowers.’

Her gaiety was also captured by The Argus in 1935. ‘Miss Ethel Spowers looked most picturesque in a frock of porcelain white silk crêpe etched with an artistic convolvulus flower pattern in delicate black’.

No portrait of Ethel anywhere but have a look at some of her prints in the Australian Prints and Printmaking database.

Julia Ritson