by Ethleen Palmer was a pioneering artist and designer, sometimes called ‘Australia’s Hokusai’.
This article is part of an ongoing series covering artworks in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). ‘The Honeyeater’ was on loan to the Geelong Gallery when viewed by this author, click here for the full catalogue of NGV articles.
Ethleen Palmer was born in Johannesburg, South Africa on 1 August 1906. Her father was a businessman and her early years were nomadic; in her youth she spent time in South Africa, France and England.
The regular travel did not help her health: Palmer was a delicate child, frequently prone to illness.
Palmer’s mother, an art lover, had spent several years living in Japan and China as a young woman. During this time she built an art collection, which Palmer became familiar with from a young age.
Among her favourite pieces were examples of the distinctive wood block prints found across southeast Asia.
In 1921, the family moved to Australia. Settling in Sydney, Palmer was enrolled at the Moore Park Girls High School, where she showed a talent for drawing and design.
She would later win a scholarship to the East Sydney Technical College, where she studied under artists Rayner Hoff and Phyllis Shillito.
Palmer excelled at her studies, and became something of a workaholic. In addition to her regular courses, at night she took extra classes in design and architecture at the Ultimo Training College.
Her goal was to become a commercial artist, still an uncommon field for women in this era.
On graduation she found a position at ‘Stott and Underwood’, a typewriter manufacturer that ran a chain of business colleges along the east coast. Working full time for this large organisation during the day, Palmer continued to study at night; an exhaustive schedule that took a toll on her health.
After two years she had a complete physical breakdown, and had to return to the family home to convalesce. It was to prove a fateful turn.
Palmer’s health was so poor her recovery became extensive, eventually stretching to four years. But this quiet spell provided an opportunity, as she turned her mind and talents to new projects.
Inspired by her mother’s wood-block prints, she borrowed a book on the subject from the local library. Reading this, she attempted a print herself.
With a homemade cutter, a sharp pencil, some brushes and paints, and some Japanese vellum, she produced a blue wren from a linoleum stencil. The result did not please the artist: ‘very badly cut’, she said in interviews, years later.
But she had enjoyed the process, and continued to make more prints.
Palmer’s print making developed as her health improved. She drew inspiration from Norbertine von Bresslern-Roth, an Austrian artist who produced highly stylised paintings and prints of animals.
Palmer attended an exhibition of von Bresslern-Roth’s in Sydney, which ran from 1926-28. She was also encouraged by other local relief printers, including Margaret Preston and Thea Proctor.
Her own prints often focussed on native Australian animals, with occasional landscapes. She found the technical side of the work challenging, but bracing.
‘At this time, the gift of a tiny dog meant a daily bushwalk, and while we walked I thought and thought, and one obstacle after another was conquered.’
– Ethleen Palmer, interview 1936
In the early 1930s, Palmer began to submit her work to The Society of Arts and Crafts. This Mosman based group was the foremost craft guild in New South Wales, and provided artists with public exposure via their annual exhibition.
The Society hosted Palmer’s first solo exhibition in 1933.
Her artwork quickly found an audience. Palmer’s prints were bold and stylish, utilising vivid colours alongside simple designs, to eye-catching effect.
Far advanced from her modest start, her technique had become sophisticated.
‘Unlike many linocut artists, Palmer did not use black ink to print once and then hand-colour the image. Instead, she would carefully reuse the same linocut several times over with different colours layered each time.’
– AH Crawford gallery
This was a painstaking process, and very time consuming. But the end results set her apart from other print makers of the time, and helped make her name.
Other solo shows followed in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.
One of the works Palmer produced in this period was ‘The Honeyeater’, created in 1935.
Honeyeaters are a group of birds common throughout Australia. They are small in size and lively, and take their name as they are often seen using their long beaks to feast on the nectar of flowering plants (they also eat insects).
It is unclear exactly what species of Honeyeater features in the print, more than 70 species are found in Australia, but to me it looks similar to both a New Holland Honeyeater, and an Eastern Spinebill.
Both are common in Sydney, and would have been seen regularly by Palmer when out walking.
The work gives a good demonstration of her technique in action. The bird is sketched with a simple stencil, featuring straight lines and geometric shapes, then brought vividly to life with different coloured inks: sky blue for the background, sunny yellow for the bird’s underparts, and a warm pink-orange for the flower.
The combination is striking, the colours undulled after 90 years. I see it as part of an exhibition of printworks produced by female artists before 1950; it lights up the room it is in, drawing you immediately to it.
In the top right corner, a perfect capper: the artist’s highly stylised signature, an art-deco riff on her initials.
Immediately prior to World War II, Palmer’s fame reached its high point.
In 1938, as part of the 150th anniversary of Australia’s founding, the Art Gallery NSW organised a nationwide art competition. Palmer’s entry in the print making category, ‘Egrets’, won first prize.
A year later, she produced one of her most acclaimed works.
Titled ‘Spindrift’, this depicted a cresting wave, with an airborne seabird above. The restless ocean, and cool colour palette, brought comparisons to the Japanese wood print master Hokusai; a profile of Palmer in ‘Art in Australia’ magazine that year used that title, calling her ‘Australia’s Hokusai’.
The work was immediately acquired by the Adelaide Art gallery. By the time war broke out, Palmer’s prints featured in every major public gallery in Australia.
During the war, Palmer taight crafts to returned servicemen, as a kind of art therapy. She also opened her own studio in Double Bay, where she taught and mentored young female artists.
To supplement her income, she began producing cards, calendars, and printed fabric, which grew into a successful small business. She also taught part time at her old school, the East Sydney Technical College.
Always looking to experiment, after the war Palmer began using the ‘serigraph‘, a type of screen-printing method. She was the first Australian artist to use this technique, professionally.
But her health faltered again, and this time she did not recover. After a short illness, Ethleen Palmer passed away on 8 April,1958; she was aged only 52.
‘The struggle is bound to take its toll, but I believe that in life, beauty perishes, not in art.’
– Ethleen Palmer, 1939
