Norah Simpson

Norah Simpson (5 July 1895 – 19 February 1974) was an Australian modernist painter. She grew up in Sydney and is described as "giving impetus to modernism" in Australia: when returning from France in 1913, she brought back a series of reproductions of then-current works which were influential to her fellow art students. Sydney-based modernists inspired by those works and Simpson's descriptions of techniques include Grace Cossington Smith, Roy de Maistre and Roland Wakelin.

Norah Simpson was born on 5 July 1895 and grew up in Sydney.^[1][2] In 1911 Simpson was a student of Antonio Dattilo Rubbo,^[1] an Italian-born artist who taught in Australia from 1897,^[3] fellow students were Tempe Manning and Grace Cossington Smith.^[4] Late in 1911 Simpson travelled to London, and lived in Chelsea.^[1] Next year she enrolled in the Westminster School of Art and was taught by Walter Sickert,^[1] then she travelled to France to see the work of Cézanne, van Gogh, Matisse and Picasso. In 1913 she brought back to Australia a suitcase-ful of art books and reproductions of their works, thereby "giving impetus to modernism" in Australia.^[5][6] The works contributed to "the debate and practice of new techniques and new subjects" by Simpson, Smith and Manning.^[4] Other Sydney artists influenced by Simpson include Roy de Maistre and Roland Wakelin.^[1] By 1915 Simpson had returned to London, then moved to Glasgow in 1919 and on to France in 1920.^[1] In 1920 she married Edward Richardson Brown and they had a son, Donald, and by 1921 Simpson was no longer painting.^[1][2] In 1950 she married William Henry Cockren, and she died in 1974 at Crossways, Instow, North Devon.^[1]

• 'Studio portrait, Chelsea', a 1911 self-portrait (1915) kept at Art Gallery NSW.