Sybil Craig is one of those unknown Australian painters.
Sybil and Peggy Crombie went to National Gallery of Victoria art school together. Sybil reflecting on Peggy said, “All the critics loved Peggy’s work and all the artists loved her work and she was an outstanding person. She made all her own clothes and had a gift for design.”
Sybil captured Peggy’s outstanding quality. Love this lady. Peggy is strong and jaunty looking straight at the viewer. Her natty patterned shirt merging with the interlocking pattern on the wall. It’s a lovely portrait.
| Sybil Craig, Peggy, 1933 |
In 1932 Harold Herbert for The Argus wrote of Sybil’s work in the Melbourne Society of Women’s Painters exhibition – “she has sallied forth into an experimental impressionism that is both refreshing and original. Its apparent careless, happy-go-lucky quality cloaks however, a brilliant and capable sense of drawing, painting, and design.”
Craig died in 1989. Barbara Blackman produced an audio interview, two years prior to her death, at the home her architect father built in Dandenong Road, Melbourne. It’s long and rambling but she tells some lovely little stories.
Julia Ritson
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